Canal Roach and Eel — Slow-n-Easy

A couple of spare hours Saturday evening just had to be used up fishing. The mild overcast weather demanded it. It won't last... Surely it can't last? But while it does it is an unusual opportunity that must be taken advantage of. 

Grassy Bend once more. And further trials of the helicopter rig with lobworm bait. 

I'd set up in the same swim as last time but was struck by the attractiveness of a boat some way along. Don't know why she was calling me but she was. Should this swim not be good then I would surely follow my nose and fish there instead.

It was hopeless where I'd sat down. In start contrast to the previous session the bobbins did not drop and all I got for my initial hopefulness was a little tremble of the left hand rod top. 

So off I went to 'Slow-n-Easy' to see precisely why she called...

This time around I cast the worms to positions a few feet off the middle and stern end of the hull and over the top went handfuls of hemp, five or six broken worms, but far fewer maggots than before because most by now had turned to floating caster. I chucked in what I had. They were no use after.

And there I sat to wait things out.

About an hour in and without the slightest indication of fish a portly fella turns up on a stroll out from the pub and it turns out he's an angler, his young son is fishing off the pub bank, and he's trying to establish the whereabouts of Tusses tackle shop half a mile up the towpath. No need to go any further. And so we strike up conversation about fishing and he sticks around a while longer...

Out of the blue the stern rod arches over bending into the butt before I get my hand on the grip when I pick it up against a hugely powerful and heavy fish tearing off down the side of the boat and taking a great deal of line with it. My immediate thought is 'male tench' but there's something worrying about the angle of the rod which is straightlined against my best effort to put a bend in it. I just cannot do a thing right there and then.

But the fight is soon over when abruptly the line falls limp and I'm believing the 2lb hook-link snapped. Casually walking up the bank winding in 20 yards of slack I find the rod veering toward the near bank and then realise that the fish is still on. 

I speed up the retrieve and regain straight contact when all hell breaks loose...

The rod jerks like some demented death metal headbanger and the tighter the line, the more neck-breaking the breakneck rhythm of this astonishing kick drum hammering becomes. 

Slow and easy this is not! 

But close contact is hard to maintain. The fish rips line off the spool one direction only to go into immediate reverse when all goes slack. Nevertheless, the hook hold is good because frantic winding throws me back in the mosh pit every time. But now it's tearing up and down directly beneath the near bank revetment trying to find a snag...

I dismiss the few species it might once have been and arrive at the only one it can possibly be — when I know that I don't stand a chance in hell of banking it. 

This roach tackle is just not capable of tiring such a monster before it surely does find some small solid thing to wrap its tail round when it will smash the flimsy line. I consider plunging the net down so it can find that and tangle itself up in the meshes, but I'm too far off to grab it. If it tears back up that way then I think it my only real chance!

The vicious pounding that the rod is trying its level best to absorb is becoming worrying now. Beneath my feet there's no real sensation of weight or linear power. Just the one of being attached to a furious ball of violent energy. Something must give. And of course, something does...

Winding in the rig I find just a single float rubber on the line. The rest is gone. The failure point is the line at the point of contact with the bead protecting the knot to the feeder. The hook-link held up. But the stress point with this rig is where the swivel meets the bead and I guess the crazed head shaking just weakened the 3lb line by degree till it gave out. 

In all the time I've fished these canals I always wondered when the day would arrive when I'd finally hook one. Thousands of hours spent dabbling with all kinds of baits that might attract one yet I'd never yet succeeded in luring one of these elusive secretive creatures and feared the moment when I finally would. But that moment had arrived and my worst fears were confirmed. On the day I was fatally undergunned. 

George Burton's account of his successful tussle with such an unexpected beast chimes with mine. Though I did not see the fish, the fight was so very unusual that I was convinced about what it was in the heat of things, and when George recounts that same jack hammer fury then I'm absolutely certain.

If only it had fallen to a zander rod then I'd have banked it for sure...

Probably!

Avon Barbel - Rock Eel & Chips

How often do you venture out, all full of yourself, tooled up, and ready to do battle with the monsters you imagine, only to be brought down to earth with a bump? Given the brief but hectic hour we had last time out, an hour when bites from barbel came thick and fast (but actual catches were admittedly, a little lean) we thought we were in for a session from heaven, Well, at least I did. Martin was suffering a hurt knee and dented pride after a work accident in Stratford, and I know what that does to quell enthusiasm, having recently suffered in the legs department myself.

Eels — Toxic Shocks and Jellified Memories

>My last post raised a few emailed eyebrows after asserting that the blood of eels is poisonous, so I thought I'd better explain how toxic it really is, and how it might affect anglers unfortunate to catch, as I did, eels mauled by the lions of the river, and spurting their blood all over the place

Avon Barbel & Eels - Blood and Sand!

It looked the most attractive piece of barbel water imaginable. The tip of an island with a long glide of fast water to our left pouring downstream from the rock weir above us and trundling into the distance below, with a cutting to the right and its associated slack water. A typical Warwickshire Avon navigation lock. Oddly, despite its good looks and clear potential for a barbel or two, the grass beneath our feet was hardly worn through and the banks overgrown. Clearly, this was not a popular spot.

Big Pit Bream & Tench - The Dark Interior...

Friday evening saw Martin Roberts and myself humping out gear down the bank of a nearby gravel pit after the first tench of the year. I was after big bream too, but hadn't any confidence in my swim choice for that species as it doesn't have much form for them, however, I wanted to try out a maggot feeder fished helicopter style, and at range, just to iron out the problems. My swim choice soon proved bad for that too, the cast requiring a short wade into the water just to give enough clearance overhead through the narrow slot of the trees either side of the peg, consequently I had to cast directly overhead on a short drop to the lead like carp anglers habitually do, not at an angle of 45 degrees to the vertical and with a long, steady, power building arc firing a lead hanging from drop half as long as the rod itself, as a beach caster would. Consequently, my range was 50-60 yards absolute maximum. Which seems a long way off when the lead splashes down, but really isn't.

Avon Roach and Dace - Methinks Methinks

Saturday may have been bitterly cold but Sunday would be a completely different prospect with the mercury expected to rocket overnight and top out at the balmy heights by noon, of five degrees above melting point, an ambient increase of seven or eight degrees. It would be overcast and later it might rain, with mists and fogs by evening, conditions that would seem perfect for roach, the best possible in fact, if only that is, conditions have been stable for some time.  Not surprisingly, with violent change on the way Saturday night, I'd expected very little from either Saturday's cold and expected even less from Sunday's warmth, despite the apparently perfect weather following on, and was to be proved (almost!) completely right.

River Zander - Severn Quest - Big Fish Eat Little Fish

Fishing in places where monsters lurk has been an abiding theme of my year's angling so far. Two trips to Marsh Farm after outsize crucians provided me with an inevitable personal best for the species for in such a place as that fish over two pounds are the stamp so I would have been a very bad angler indeed to have failed to improve upon my previous best of one pound six. As it happened I beat it three times over in three hours and still failed to get past two pounds, five ounces. If they had fed all day long I might well have beat it ten times over in consecutive fish and ended up at four pounds something...

Then there was the hunt for a gargantuan record shaker/maker of a perch on Hanningfield Ressy, a trip where we failed miserably to even locate perch of any size let alone one to wake the record committee up for. That was fun though - messing about in boats always is - and them trout wuz ard bastads...!

When Steve suggested an overnighter after really quite large zander, I of course said yes, even though zander, a fish that I've found bites hardest through a crack in the canal ice, are not exactly a fish I'd naturally associate with high summer. Who cares when no less than four over mid-double figures have come from the river stretch responsible in the fortnight since the season began in mid June

Gravel Pit Bream - Down't Pit by Crack a' Dawn

I'm really into the gravel pits this summer. It's a rekindled old flame as I always did love to fish the pits down Essex way for carp and tench but when I lived there I never really considered just what it was I had on my doorstep as I wasn't that concerned with catching lumps at that time.

Gravel Pit Bream - A Sniff of the Slimies

In my new found enthusiasm for figuring out the foibles of large stillwater bream I decided that I'd need to have at least two waters to fling a feeder at in order to be able to compare and contrast data sets. With a little googling I found one not too distant that contained them in small numbers of the required size. Also, I had it on an eyeball from Lee that the other pit was still choked with its current algae bloom and showed no signs of a pending die back, so having suffered an eerily silent blank there I wasn't about to suffer another.

The Ribble - Tackle Graveyard of the North

Judy had to go see her mum in Blackburn Hospital on Sunday, and because I would have been an awkward spare in such a delicate close family matter, but was also required to accompany her on the round trip, had to figure out some way to idle away the hours of the whole day