Canal Roach — NOXC2LB5OZ

The long cold wait commences...

It's just a mile distant but I haven't fished the North Oxford Canal much since the winter of 2009. Occasionally I'll roam out that way on a zander mission because heavy boat traffic really isn't a problem where that's concerned but otherwise I'll fish the relatively quiet Coventry Canal on the outskirts of the city. 

I have ignored it since because I found it nigh impossible to fish there with bread fished under a float. And that method is my preferred one these days. The one that I have developed specifically to tackle canal roach. But it requires time to work and uninterrupted time is what the NOXC does not give. So I've concentrated efforts nearer to home in order to refine things in relative peace.

Milky white lobworms dug from a back-filled section of the Oxford Canal behind the Coventry Canal at Longford Junction. Because of a labyrinthine and controversial toll debacle when the canals were first built in 1777, the two ran parallel for a mile. The issue was resolved in 1803. Hawkesbury Junction then became what it is today — the point where both join at a stop lock, and the closed section of the Oxford Canal eventually filled with Coventry's household waste and capped by the 1920's.   

However, the head of roach in the Oxford Canal seems lower than that of the local Coventry Canal, but the average stamp far higher. I've caught just seven specimens there. Six were fooled by huge lobworms in 2009/10 but just recently I had one on bread. In ascending order they weighed, 1.00, 1.00, 1.01, 1.03, 1.08, 1.13, and 1.15. An average of 1lb 6oz compared to just 15oz for my local hunting grounds on the Coventry Canal. 

Back in 09 I thought the numbers so impressive that they surely predicted that two-pounds and better were not just possible but very likely. I'd missed that weight by just half an ounce with what was the second roach I'd banked there. How could it not be certain when the first was over a pound too?

However, averages cannot be trusted when they are drawn from such small data samples and I just could not catch enough of them. Fifty fish would be needed to validate and a hundred to set it in stone. I was catching one in every three five-hour sessions at that time. Outlandish baits sizes may have selected only the very largest but stumped the smallest. Add twenty half pounders to my list and the average would be reduced enormously. I just couldn't be certain.

A roach is 'big' only when you'll hold it close and it still looks enormous

Molly took a swim that afternoon. Springers are born impervious

February 6th 2009.  Temperature -2 degrees Centigrade

A very near miss at just half an ounce under

A fish that was warmer than the air!

Oh, my poor frozen hands 

Brrrr.......

Then George Burton began fishing the Oxford Canal for roach but some miles down the way from where I'd fished. He'd always use bread and so I'd pounce on each and every blog update just as soon as he'd hit the 'publish' button. I was fascinated. I had a brother in arms! 

Doing on the Oxford what I was doing on the Coventry, I just knew by gut instinct that he'd stick at it through the many trials and tribulations to come and therefore establish facts one way or the other. 

Perhaps he'd even succeed where I had failed and break through the two-pound barrier?

It was my sincerest hope he would...

His results, now that he's fished it three years or more, are remarkably similar and his average just the same as mine even though he has at least three or four time the quantity of roach to his credit. He had his second best just the other day at 1lb 13oz. For any canal that's a great big roach but his very best came in at just under two-pounds and four-ounces which is a truly astounding fish because that's just a few drams below the weight of the best roach caught from any canal in this country.

Ever!

His account of that close call with the history books quivers with excitable disbelief. I read it again and again because it tallies with my feelings when I had my early near miss with a 'two'. I simply could not believe that such a dirty canal could produce such a pristine marvel. I wasn't concerned at all that it was half an ounce under. It was magnificent!

(And yes of course there's a link. But you can finish this first before dashing off!)

George had validated my numbers and my belief in them and gone and done something better. He'd made the Oxford Canal the truly great roach fishery it really is by banking its very first documented and properly weighed two-pound fish.

It was about then that I decided a better way must be found than fishing lobworms...

Now I must go catch a two-pounder myself, because I have set myself the demonstrably preposterous target of catching two-pound roach from river, canal and still-water all in the same winter season. I have the still-water prize done and dusted. The river prize will be very challenging locally but there's a trip to the Itchen planned for early December where such fish, though undoubtedly hard work, are more than possible for both Mr Newey and Mr Hatt.

But for the canal category, I'm afraid that boat traffic notwithstanding I must mount a long and possibly arduous campaign alone on the crayfish burrow riddled banks of the North Oxford because it is never going to happen on the City Coventry Canal in a month of Sundays even though it certainly does hold them. 

And worse still. I want to set a new canal record for roach. Currently standing at 2lb 4oz for a fish caught way back in the 1970's by Mr A. Swan fishing the Gloucester Canal — one extra ounce is what the Oxford must provide nigh fifty years on because it deserves that crowning title.

Such a roach is there for sure. The numbers say it must be. 

But they don't say exactly where!

George's great day

The canal toll debacle