Canal Roach — Beancounting

There's a two-pound roach with my name on it swimming about in the local canals. The Oxford canal four years ago, under similar conditions with snow on the ground and by fishing a stranded hole in the ice cap threw up a fish just half an ounce under and ever since I've thought that the next bite there would be the one to break through, but though plenty of fish have come well over the pound suggesting that it's certainly possible, it hasn't happened yet.

Canal Roach & Bream - A Gentleman's Exchange

A rather good blog appeared on the local scene last February. 'Float, Flight & Flannel', by George Burton is a fishing/wildlife blog that held an immediate appeal to me because George fishes the local canals for roach, as do I. George's enthusiasm arises from the fact that he is, or rather was, a match angler now entering into specimen fishing for the first time, so at every turn he encounters new problems, problems that will be familiar to anyone who stalks big fish. Consecutive blanks for instance...

Canal Silver Bream - Are We There Yet?

It seems an age since I last fished the canal seriously. A few half-hearted and unsuccessful attempts at zander and pike, but hardly any roach fishing in a season of year when it throws up the largest fish of all, is all I have done with it since November last. That it's on my doorstep is neither here nor there, I just haven't wanted to fish it. The roach of Longford Junction just around the corner from home have not topped in the evening as they often do in winter and I've seen hardly any others signs of life anywhere else on my routine walks along the towpath with Molly. It's looked most uninviting, so I haven't bothered to try.

Stillwater Roach and Perch - Lemington Lakes

Lemington Lakes in the Cotswolds was our venue for the day. A complex of five or six lakes all carefully manicured and just as carefully stocked. We chose Abbey Lake because of its potential for a sizeable roach and I believe they have been caught well over two pounds there so I was raring to have a go for them and try, for once, to at least break what has been a paltry one-pound personal best in the category of 'stillwater roach' (ponds and lakes, but not canals. They're not still waters to my mind) that's been hanging around unbeaten for far too long.

River Stour Roach and Chub - One Strike Wonderment

Day three of our southern excursion saw Keith and myself offloading gear from the boot of the car in a car park above a stretch of the Dorset Stour. It was much, much wider than I had expected it to be, three times the size I had in my head in fact, and from the bridge it looked fast, shallow and streamy. Downstream of the bridge the streamy runs petered out and then became a broad, even flow of slow moving water that looked to be quite deep, leading eventually to a weir. We chose a couple of adjacent swims about midway along, Keith on a high bank upstream, and myself on a fringe of marshy old reed beds that had died right back.

Stillwater Roach - Hand Forging a Guiding Principle

After the trip to the Itchen was over, Keith and I had decided to stay on for a couple of days to fish a couple more venues for big roach and chub. The first venue was what we shall call the 'Roach Pit' to protect its location and identity, and I shan't publish a single picture of it here lest I blow its cover for others, for it contains fish up to three pounds, and over, in its waters. After a whole day spent catching roach, after roach, after roach on the float, but not one on the hot method for the venue of helicopter style, bolt-rigged maggots, in fact my sleeper rod did exactly what its name suggests without my hearing even a single bleep all day long, we packed down and went back to the B&B. I'll probably never return there, big roach notwithstanding, and for two reasons ~

River Itchen Salmon, Chub, Trout & Grayling (and a blue surprise!)

This being the fourth of my annual forays to the Itchen at the Lower Itchen Fishery and it becoming a familiar place now in want of further exploration and discovery, I started off as I meant to go on all day long, trying out swims and beats, nooks and crannies that I'd never tried before. First ports of call were a few swims downstream of the weir at Gaters Mill where I found a few bites but nothing worth striking at, the first being no deeper than a few feet at most at the tail of the run off from the weir, and the second, a far bank slack a little further down.

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.

Avon Chub and Roach - Jacking the Stream

I rarely get the chance to fish twice in the same weekend and even less often on the same river, but Saturday and Sunday both threw up opportunities to get out and put in some serious swim caning. I knew it would be hard, expected the worst, but hadn't bargained on granite hard...

Saturday morning was preceded by a hard overnight frost and the daytime temperature would never climb above zero even in the sunnier spots under a clear blue sky, so I expected the fish to be somewhat sluggish, if not comatose, with perhaps a brief feeding spell some time in the afternoon, and for the roach I was hoping to find, if my prior experience fishing for them under these kinds of conditions is anything to go by, between two and four O'clock if it occurred at all.

River Roach - Repetitive Strain

Up in The Wilds beyond the woods and well beyond the reach of watching eyes is a swim where I've fished three times lately and with mixed results. The first time I dropped in there a few nice roach and a single dace were caught in a couple of hours. Bites, they came every cast but there was a bit of a wait involved before they materialised. The second was an hour spent there, a desperate last minute river switch at the end of a long biteless morning spent on the Leam with Phil Mattock. The bites? Well there were none at all, not even the slightest tremor, which for this stretch of the Avon is almost unheard of it being so full of fish.

River Roach - A Royal Leamington Blank

It's hard to write about a blank if nothing happens, fortunately something happened just as soon as Phil Mattock pulled his motor into the car park of the Leamington AA stretch of the Leam at Newbold Comyn. We found a tiny grey tabby Kitty Kat transfixed in the beam of the car's headlamps... I couldn't just leave it there to fend for itself as an easy meal for one of the foxes we later saw prowling about in the predawn light so I stashed her ( I checked its rear end!) in the car and we made our way down to the river.

An Anglers Ghost Story - The Watcher in the Woods

Those recent reports of big Warwickshire Avon roach had me salivating at the prospect of catching one myself. Now, just because a couple have been caught doesn't mean it was certain that I would manage one first time out, in fact I think it will be a task to get one before March as they aren't going to be any less common just because of a few fish on the bank. However, just knowing they are around is enough of a spur especially as before these reports I was labouring under the impression that the river simply didn't have it in it to provide them. Now that it is certain that it surely does, the job is made a whole lot easier as there's bound to be more around of that class than just the two we know about.

Canal Roach - Ronny and Reggy on My Manor, and other Tales of Hope & Woe

The trouble with blogging about angling is that any angler's blog is, at a basic level, a diary for the blogger to scan back through from time to time in search of archived information. They are just the most effective means I have ever come across for such a purpose as Google's Blogger kindly gives us the means, in the form of various clever sidebar widgets to index and re-access the information at light speed.

Canal Roach - Slick!

Grassy Bend is affected by the worst oil slick I have ever seen on the canal - some worthless turd having seen it fit and proper behaviour to pump out their bilge straight into the cut. The wind is keeping it concentrated in the bend and I guess it'll slowly break up and disperse over time but in the meantime, its disgusting stuff. I don't think it affects the fish down deep until it does sink and so I fished way off to one side of it in clear water.

Canal Roach - Just One Kiss

The only place I know of in the whole of Warwickshire where there really is a chance of a proper big roach is Grassy Bend on the Oxford Canal. I can count the roach I have had from this place on the six fingers of one hand but they have all been over a pound and three of them have been over a pound and a half with the largest at just half an ounce under the magic two. That's quite a pedigree but it takes time for each to come, a lot of time actually,

My Quest for the Magic Two - Rock Steady Beat

Before setting out yesterday for Stratford upon Avon and my beloved Lucy's Mill with Lee Fletcher, I'd spent the morning preparing myself for a two pronged assault upon two species of fish - roach during the daylight hours and then barbel around dusk and into darkness. The roach prep was easy - nipping across to the local superminimarket and purchasing a loaf of Warburton's blue was about it - the barbel prep rather more involved, as you can imagine.

That was the Week, that Wasn't

This last fishing week has been a ragbag of apparently disconnected short sessions without any great result from any one of them but all, in some way, instructive. Last Sunday I managed to wangle a whole day at Stratford only to arrive and find the place all but un-fishable due to the high winds blowing straight up river - five degrees change of direction either way and it would have been sheltered enough for comfortable quiver tipping, but as it was the rods were trembling so much that bite registration was nigh impossible.

Canal Roach - My Quest for the Magic Two - A Blessed Relief

The prospects for the success of this late winter campaign of mine hinge upon two things, firstly that the local canals contain two pound roach, which is an established fact, and secondly, that the Avon at Stratford contains them too, which is a fact I have to establish myself. It also requires that I be able to catch them.

Canal Roach - My Quest for the Magic Two - Nothing for Something

You may have noticed in recent posts that I am now the owner of a pair of buzzers? Well, I haven't used buzzers in decades - the last buzzers I owned were a pair of the first Optonics ever to hit the shops in the early eighties. At the time they were a revelation to those inured to the struggle with Heron buzzers and their ilk, of which I'd a home-made pair built at great labour expense and ingeniously I thought, out of ex-GPO telephony components and bean cans, deliberately designed to equal the remarkable ineffectiveness of the originals...

River Roach - My Quest for the Magic Two - Maverick Decisions

I love fishing the river at Stratford-upon-Avon. Not only does it contain some of the largest fish of the many species that it is possible to catch along the whole river, it also has tons of character and the whole gamut of river fishing possibilities going for it.

My first love is fishing the weir-pools at Lucy's Mill. You never know what's coming along next