Canal Roach — Forks at Dawn

Do anglers dream of electric roach?

Thinking about this challenge I've set myself. You know, the (catching the) impossible one of banking roach over two-pounds in weight from lake, canal and river and before March 15th. Well, it seems more and more possible the more I think about it. I guess that reducing 'the impossible' to the lesser rank of 'the improbable' is only a matter of thinking things through and then taking it down a peg to 'the possible' when a peg or two further to 'the probable' is just a matter of application.

If the fish are certainly there no matter how thinly spread, then they certainly can be caught by design. 

But exactly where and exactly how? 

Stratford town waters do hold a few very large roach. This is documented fact . They have cropped up in matches from time to time. I went there with Judy on our annual Xmas shopping trip. Of course I hate boutique shopping just as much as any other man unless it's about tool boutiques and the materials tools are designed to work upon. Therefore part of our annual trip is about me using the tools of this trade upon the materials they were designed to work upon. Which is fish. 

By taking a brief couple of hours out of our day I manage to stay out of her shopping hair by go getting myself tangled up in some other more enjoyable problem at Lucys Mill . It's a family tradition that I just cannot bring myself to break with...

But I wish I had last Saturday!

Setting up at one of my best chance pegs I think fishing may not be at all easy. The water is choppy and I don't know if the rod is going to cope with the buffeting. A few minutes later there's a great crack, a splintering groan, when I turn about and witness a large tree fall into the head of the swim with a splashy crash...

You may remember it was a windy day? No doubt it was a named storm that passed through given that every little blast of winter normality is now to be dubbed thus... 

It wasn't violent enough to be anything other than an annoyance to the tourist (unless you were on a boat passing under a weakened tree at the precise time it fell on your bonce and killed you stone dead) and even to an angler it was quite entertaining.

If I ever had a bite at The Mill then it went unseen what with the rod tip bouncing about all the while. Up to the Recreation Ground where I pitch up where the wind is least. I get a quarter of an hour respite during which time I catch one small roach till the wind veers and comes directly upstream when I'm forced off. 

Last chance is the 'S' bend at the Lido because there's an island there that should shield me. There I have two half-pound roach and both give the most unlikely bites. Massive rod-wrenchers they were.  Unusual for a fish that takes bread so delicately and warily under the usual run of weather. Just as well because otherwise I'd never have seen the little delicate plucks that roach ordinarily give.

No luck on the river two-pounder front though. And it was not expected given the atrocious conditions...

Whenever a comment is posted on Idler's Quest then I get notification of it in my inbox. This one came through yesterday, but despite the alert this comment does not appear on the post. Some sort of Blogger glitch, I guess. But it does need to be published because it contains news of a very important capture indeed if you are Jeff Hatt currently looking at the North Oxford as his best chance venue for a 2lb canal roach. 

I'm not at all surprised that such a fish was banked there. I've narrowed down the impossible to the probable precisely because of such captures. What is surprising is that it was caught by Jim Hogben but not George Burton!

A third angler fishing the NOXC for roach? Never. 

And succeeding to bank big ones into the bargain? Blimey. 

That's no small beer, let me tell you. And Jim's fish is up at the top of the pile too. I believe it ranks at equal third place alongside those banked by George and myself at the same weight and below George's famous 'two' and my infamous near miss at one-fifteen-eight. If three anglers can manage that kind of a fish on a tough venue where roach of any size are caught at a rate of about one-per-man day, then you just know that I had to get cracking at Grassy Bend...

And I did. And it was very interesting if it wasn't exactly successful. And I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. Or the next day, I promise.

Tomorrow morning you see...

Forks at dawn. 

Itchen Grayling & Roach — Chalk & Cheese

I'm on sure footed terms with the Lower Itchen Fishery now that I've completed my sixth trip. I'd call myself 'in training' till my tenth, but I'm not bemused by it these days. The sheer quantity of stock swimming there is no longer surprising. It is now a problem to solve. A brick wall in front of the worthwhile things it promises — the 3lb grayling and the 3lb roach. Neither of which are impossible, but made all the more difficult to approach because of daunting number.

I'm seeing it for what it really is. Purely and simply — it's a 'commercial'. 

Inside the fort...

That is never more apparent when you've spent a couple of long hard days fishing the free stretch below Gaters Mill as I enoyed in the expert company of local rod, Simon Daley, back in 2012. That is a true coarse fishery with occasional wild migratory game fish to make things an interesting challenge. Most migrants that fall are taken away for the pot, as you'd expect. They do not dominate proceedings and grayling are uncommon therefore roach fishing, though not easy, is a simple matter of building a swim throughout the day by accurate, constant, regularly timed feeding of what amounts to an enormous amount of bait over the session and hopefully reaping the rewards of patience. It is not a party certain to be spoiled by gatecrashers. And when they come along then it's usually chub often of some size...

I've seen it done well and thirty pounds of roach fill a net. I've done it myself inexpertly, and though I struggled to do well, I still put together ten pounds fairly easily with a good few pound-plus fish to make things feel upwardly bound. Roach there are not the elusive ghost they are upstream. They are the backbone of the population. 

Things above the mill are something else entirely. Heavy feeding there just cannot work. As with any commercial fishery stuffed bank to bank with millions of fish of all shapes and sizes, overdoing that attracts entirely the wrong crowd and reduces the chances of selecting the best from it. Roach are not party animals. They will back off...

James Denison trotting the free stretch early morning 

I think that James and Brian may have enjoyed themselves more if they'd stayed 'free' because I don't think they were entirely happy with what was in store. It is a tough prospect. Commercials are that if it's   specimen fish you are after. If they are there to catch then it means thinking through the problems they present very carefully and coming up with a plan.

I thought I had one...

I'd never crossed over the footbridge to explore one of the carrier streams till today. The difference  with the main river was something of a shock. Ambling through dairy pasture a convoluted gentle-paced watercourse lined with trees meets a gushing boiling torrent of sparkling clear water tearing across shimmering chalk gravel. Its character is absolutely nothing like that of the main river and not at all like a chalk stream either. At their confluence they were chalk and cheese. 

It felt familiar. Like a Warwickshire brook. In contrast to the main river where hopefully a a pluck or more likely a wrench will come to bread often within seconds of casting out, I was struck by the lack of immediate bites. Had to work hard at finding them just as I would have to when fishing my local River Sowe. It was too placid for the paternoster feeder rig I'd tied up for the main river. Free-lining by stealth might have scored. As with the Sowe where I always free-line bread, anything more than a single shot splashing down here was clearly too much of a disturbance for my target species.

But I really didn't expect to catch them anyhow. This was just a dabble. To ascertain depths and features and future potential. And besides, the day had dawned bright and clear and the only real chance of roach would come around dusk. Between times I was going to work hard for a good grayling but I stuck it out in the carrier for a good while longer and was rewarded with a few tippity taps here and there and a one pound chub. I'm sure on a future trip on an overcast day or even better, one shrouded in thick mist, that time spent creeping about and staying low might well throw up a surprise or two. Because it really did look to be prime small stream roach territory. 

When I left the carrier behind and crossed back over the bridge I went out on a nearby jetty and dropped bread into angrier waters. The tip wrenched around violently and after a bit of a tussle, in came the first of what I expected to encounter from time to time throughout the rest of the day — the Itchen Standard Brownie. 

What I didn't expect was that from the end of that jetty I'd haul ten in the next hour! 

This swim was alive with them. The best at around the three-pound mark gave me no end of trouble tearing about in lunatic fashion but the smallest at a pound and a half and all the rest between were no different. I was hoping for one of the big cocks with their lurid plumage and outlandish kypes who'll spend half the fight up in the air. A battle like that is something else. But they occupy pools so it seemed I'd not have that here...

It was great sport but it paled quickly being far too easy. Nevertheless there was a bonus grayling at 1lb 6oz between them all so I had my fill of trouty fun and earned myself 36 challenge points too. 

Mick was having a great time trotting maggots and then corn taking grayling of ever increasing size and enjoying the once-only thrill of beating a personal best over and over again in the same day. Because before his first cast when I assured him he certainly might (and actually did!), he'd never caught one before. Mid afternoon he hit the ceiling at 1lb 8oz...

It's a challenge to do better than that...

Mick Newey. Banking a new PB most likely!

The rest of my morning was spent in pursuit of one of those dusky three-pound grayling. They are possible. But most unlikely amongst so many competing greedy mouths. Here and there, there's places that really feel as if the big fish might come. Quieter. Deeper. Smoother. Fewer.

The fastest water and the shallowest too.  Brimming with small grayling

Feeder fishing is good for that. Explaining precisely how seemingly rapid swims up top can be placid and even-paced down low. But when I finally did find a place where I felt that an hour more might just produce that dream, the entire rig including the feeder and the good grayling it'd hooked, was devoured by a pike. 

Brian tried for the gatecrasher with a float fished dead roach while James tried to tempt grayling rising in hoards to his free offerings of red maggots. 

Jeff Hatt and Brian Roberts watch James Denison not catch grayling easily

Interesting that he found it very hard to hook them. They were absolutely determined to mop every last one up but were ignoring the baited hook fished mid water. Very cute. And something of a lesson in how to avoid grayling and catch roach because it was clear that grayling are either not great mid-water specialists or are very good at spotting a baited hook.

Which suggested a question I'd never considered before.

A shame it was a question that didn't occur to me right there and then...

Ooh... Should I camp out for roach, or just go camp?

It was high time to go all out for roach but should I ignore them today and just keep going at grayling?  This was a tough call. I didn't think it was a good day for roach to be honest. The weather had been highly unsettled and extremely changeable the last few days, had been bright all morning, but would turn again by evening with thick cloud and high winds approaching fast.

Against my better judgement I made what I feared would be the wrong decision. 

So I made my way downstream to the slow flowing lower beats and on the way thought about setting up a rod for the job of trotting caster. But I couldn't decide if this was a ledgering bread kind of day or the trotting caster kind. So I set up both.

Well, I plumped for trotting. Feeding hemp and caster regularly and lightly I began fishing well under depth. Bites were not forthcoming. But inching the float up by degree and lowering the bait through the bite-less zone till I was fishing near bottom at around 7 or 8 feet down, then they suddenly arrived. They were from grayling and minnow. And as the feed increased in effect the grayling increased in size and the minnows vanished. But they were still grayling. Not roach.

A trout was next. A very tricky and determine trout. But roach were not going to come along unless by sheer luck because time was running down, the weather had turned for the worse, and I really should have started trotting far earlier in order to feed off the small fish. However, it was the same story for all. They could not be caught on the float. Unusually, around dusk not a single ripple caused by roach was seen anywhere by anyone. It was as if they did not exist.

Packing down when I couldn't see the float I went down and joined Mick fishing out the last light in the windy weir pool. He'd had two small roach there on ledgered maggots. I mentioned that it was very unusual that apart from the pounder I'd caught in the carrier, nobody had found the larger chub that had always shown in the latter part of the day on all my previous trips.

His tip bangs hard over as I speak and in comes a four pounder! 

And that was that. Completing my stillwater-river-canal 2lb roach hatrick in the same season was never going to be anything less than 1% of the possible, but it's going to be 99% impossible to find the river roach from my midland venues. One best chance of securing the two up advantage had passed me by and right now I can't think of another but that of working tremendously hard and striking very lucky at Stratford upon Avon town waters, or, arranging a train ride back down to Southampton and cracking the free stretch of the Itchen.

Nevertheless, it was a very enjoyable day spent with great company. I learned much for the future and have a carrier to explore by stealth next time around.

But...

Only on the way home did the question — that if answered earlier might have changed my fortunes — finally arrive in my thick head.

'What if I forego easily won bites and fish the apparently dead zone above the grayling's reach'? 

Not an easy thing for a self-confessed biteaholic to contemplate...

Avon Roach, Barbel and Pike — Tunnel Vision

Martin hasn't got over it. Fishing the Wye with Trefor West and Joe Chatterton, he hooked but then lost what all agreed was a huge pike and according to Martin, taking his hands off the steering wheel and making shapes in the air, one with "a head this big". He has my sympathy. I once lost a pike at Bury Hill with a head that size. After 20 minutes of fraught battle and with the fish just starting to tire, the hook hold failed. It happens to us all from time to time...

'The one that got away'.

I love such stories. Angling would not be what it is without them. What is interesting is that I have lost large chub and barbel, pike, perch and zander and desirable specimens of every other species, but have never lost a large roach in my career. In fact I cannot recall ever losing a roach of any size once hooked, though I know I must have on occasion. 

On arrival at the banks of the Wark's Avon we encounter one that didn't get away. A carp captured, killed and mutilated by an otter. Interesting that they devour only the protein packed liver and kidneys leaving the carcass behind for the buzzards and the carrion crows.  This carp weighed probably four pounds but just a quarter of a pound of meat was eaten and so each otter must kill a lot of large fish in order to survive on such small portions. I wonder how many gross pounds of fish they must kill for their net daily rations?

I have no personal grudge against them. How can you blame a creature for doing what it must? But I think if we are to coexist peacefully then numbers must be carefully monitored and culls instigated when and if those numbers rise beyond the capacity of a watercourse to support them without decimation of stocks. I know that nature lovers would recoil in horror at such a proposal, but this island is an entirely managed landscape from coast to coast without one square inch of wilderness between.

Mother Nature cannot be left to her own devices here, I'm afraid.  

Not a wilderness

I've decided to go roaming from swim to swim where I'll flick bread and maggots about, see what I find in the way of roach. Martin will squat in just the one for barbel, chub and predatory fish. It doesn't really work out for me. The smaller species do not seem to be active. Bites are curiously hard to find and when they come are non-committal, and so I manage a few gudgeon, but dace and roach are nowhere to be found. Even small perch aren't bothering the grubs. It is most frustrating.

But then the rod is very nearly pulled in the water. Something really worthwhile has taken a bunch of maggots and greedily. I think it must be a trout by the lively fight which tests the light roach rod to its very limits. But it's a baby barbel!

I never expect to catch them this size and I'm always fooled into thinking, 'trout' whenever I do. The Avon does have a few here and there, but I've never had one yet. One day I might be fooled correctly!

Martin is getting what he set out for with braces of barbel and chub and a pike to his credit. Nothing spectacular but encouraging. I struggle to catch anything but gudgeon. And that's very discouraging. Of course there are those who'd blame such a lack of bites on cormorants swearing they'd cleaned the river of all small fish but that just isn't true. They are here in their millions but for some reason they are just not feeding while the larger ones are. Perhaps it's the known presence of an otter that is to blame, and when Martin calls and reports sighting a dog right under his staging, then perhaps there's a little truth in that.

Whatever the truth it seems I'm bound to fail. After last week's great success with roach I was cautious about being too gung ho about my prospects today. But I didn't expect to fail so dismally. 

We round off the day with a single chub to my rod and further pike and barbel to Martin's. Last week may have been all about 'yours truly', but today was all about 'the big guy'. 

Perhaps I should have changed tack and fished for barbel for once... 

But where roach are concerned I do suffer terrible tunnel vision! 

Avon Roach and Barbel — Saved by the Belles

To the shops!

Between yesterday's morning and evening work commitments I had a short session planned on a local free still water. Was going to fish corn over an experimental corn laced meaty ground bait to see if it would work. Had it all prepared and was ready to go when I learned that the girls were off to Stratford for the afternoon and were leaving in the next ten minutes... 

To the river!

Lucys Mill looked better than it has for ages. Last two trips the place seemed somewhat stagnant with hardly any of the exciting flow complexity I've learned to read and exploit. Apart from a trickle of water passing over the bottom weir, really it was just a lake then and most uninspiring. Now the top weir was flowing strongly and the bottom weir gushing noisily. It looked vital, and I hoped it might be alive with hungry roach.

The influx of water combined with the seasonal die back of weed had clearly caused something of a problem. Not, I thought, a serious one. Just the usual one of having to wind in occasionally to clear the line. However, this weed proved to be that from the great cabbage beds at Stratford Recreation Ground, fragments of which are neutral in buoyancy unlike reeds and rushes. And so the debris was not only at the surface but spread throughout the entire water column below.

I discovered quickly that this would cause a second problem. Fish were biting alright, but were scattered here, there and everywhere, and without any particular shoal concentrations I could locate.

So I was forced to cast my bread here, there and everywhere. I plucked a few small roach and a single gudgeon from various locations. But there wasn't the usual continual run of bites I'd come to expect. I'd get one there and then have to cast here to get another. And wait some time between. It was all too random to be successful unless by sheer chance.

The fish were clearly chasing natural food about — all that invertebrate life dislodged from the decomposing cabbages — and at all levels.  I could not compete without a float rod and a box of maggots at hand, neither of which were. And then an isolated shower approached and it rained. Heavily. And for some precious time in which I could not fish having left the cagoule I always have stashed in the side pocket for just such occasions drying in the shed. I stood under the trees and watched my hopes for this snatched opportunity crumbling...

When it stopped I tried downstream a little way for bream with corn on the hook and a large feeder full of experimental corn laced meaty groundbait. Cast way across the main flow and into the big slack far side I hoped it would sit still. Usually this will be fine so long as the flow channel is not very wide but today it was. Even with the rod set near vertical I could not stop a big belly of line developing. Not a problem so long as it doesn't dislodge the feeder and it didn't. Well, it didn't until sufficient weed had found the line when it was dragged along and bite detection was nigh impossible.

I dropped the tackle in the one place I reckoned it would stay put. Right under the bank and in the strongest and smoothest flow of all. Something of a gamble with only a roach net to hand and large barbel the only fish likely if a bite were to come. They would be chasing food too but along the bottom and right where my bait was placed. 

I'd banked a double-figure pike for Keith Jobling in that little pan and that at Stratford Rec. And it had happily accepted Simon Daley's seven-pound Dorset Stour chub too. Surely I could manage to fit a big barbel in head first, tail out, if I were to walk it downstream to slower and less tricky waters? 

Given sufficient time it would have happened, I'm certain. The conditions were perfect and my personal history of barbel fishing sessions at Lucys Mill, though not exactly extensive having tried just four times for them and them alone, is one of having hooked up to double-figure fish on three occasions. 

Luckily there wasn't nearly the time for such a sticky problem to occur or the session to count as 'barbel fishing'. Though I thought I had an hour to go, two happy ladies refreshed by their jaunt round town appeared earlier than anticipated with a funky little cardboard doggy box with a string handle and my hand-written name on it full of cheese and pickle and poached prawn sandwiches. 

Saved by the belles.

Back to the car and home...

Avon Roach — Bloody Peculiar

Finally, I have my license to fish and with a trip down the Avon planned for Friday evening I think I'll rack up a few scores on the Blogger's Challenge board and begin to give the lads a run for their money. My approach will be ledgered bread, an art form I am overly familiar with, and to be honest, finally tiring of. But it does tell me a lot about a new stretch of river that other approaches cannot.

It usually works well at getting bites and pretty much instantly. If bread loving fish are there to catch then you'll know within five minutes and usually less. And the beauty if it is that with enough experience under the belt you can tell with certainty which species of fish they come from before you hook and land one to prove it.

It's raining now and will rain all evening long by the look of it. Setting up first in a complicated pool with hundreds of options to choose from is not great where roach are concerned should they be the target. I don't even think roach like pools very much. I don't think they enjoy complexity, you see. But I cast about for bites, here and there, and everywhere, when I soon find a spot with fish in it. But they are not roach — too bouncy. I think either gudgeon or dace. Sure enough it's dace but very small ones. Nevertheless, three ounces of dace earns 14 points...

After half an hour or so I try a plume of faster water exiting the willow occupying almost the entire width of river upstream that has made this pool more complex than it ever would have been before it fell. There I get a roach bite. So I sit on my hands and wait out the initial quarter inch twangs for a more progressive and confident one inch take. In comes the first roach of the evening followed soon after by a half-pounder worth 12 points. Hoping I have a shoal at my disposal and possibly fish of decent size I find two is all I'll likely get because no more bites come.

On retrieve there's a jolt and a tug and a strong response deep down. A good chub perhaps, or even a big river bream with any luck?

No such luck. It's a bloody jack pike! But it's worth five bloody points...

It snaps the line in the net so I try to extract the hook lodged in its jaw. Of course it flips at just the wrong moment and punctures my thumb. Great. My reading glasses are at home and now I have to tie up another spade-end without the aid of focus. And the blood will likely flow for the next hour or more knowing something of the anticoagulant properties of the slather on pike teeth...

I think one more cast back to the spot will suffice and then I'll move along. I'm packing down for the move when in one brief second the rod lurches toward the water, springs back hard and then swings straight and level toward where the fish is headed, which is under the willow. There's nothing there. The hook is gone...

Damnation. Another tie up to perform...

Of course I'd failed to take the precaution of washing the blood off my thumb before baiting the hook, turning innocent bread devilish. Should have remembered that other strange day at Saxon Mill when on consecutive casts I caught both pike and perch on bread with the scent of my blood on it. I make a mental note to prick my thumb on a pike tooth next time I go piking proper and rig up a great dollop of bread as bait, because I'm sure it'll be the pike bait nonpareil.

Enough is enough and so I trot downstream in search of chub passing Martin and Joe on the way. Both are after barbel but they've had a small chub apiece, so maybe I'll join their club with one of my own? Settling into a new swim, and this time one that really does look very roachy in it's dull simplicity, I cast out and get roach bites straight off the bat. Another half-pounder flops into the net but then the bites stop.

On the retrieve there's a jolt and a tug and a strong response deep down. Yep, it's another tie up for me.

Just how powerful is the attraction of the scent of human blood to pike, eh? And how very little do you need to taint bread with to bring them to it? The flow abated half an hour ago, I've washed my hands, and had them covered in roach slime since, but still they seem to be able to detect it.

River score board 24/07/15

One more move and I'm done. I want a chub and will have one. A cast down the inside line finds me  chub bites. Unmistakable ones. A second cast nails it, though till I see the fish I'm not that sure it ain't another jack. But it heads under the raft of weed under the staging and gets stuck fast, when I'm certain it's a chub and certain to get a few more points should I extract it.

Just under two-pounds in weight it may be, but is worth 20 points...

Martin and Joe both go home without improvement though both catch more chub and Martin has a barbel too. But that's barbel fishing for you. When it comes to strategic scorings and tactical time management, once you have a scrawny summer eight or nine-pounder under the belt, you may as well leave them till early next springtime when points will be very hard to acquire across the board and then fish all out for a big double when they're fittest and they're fattest.

We plod across the field each weighed down with a stone of extra water about us and go home soaked and freezing, but I've a grand total of 51 points for four species to tally which pushes me one notch up the leader board and into 8th place on the river board.

Now, 51 points in an evening may not sound so great an achievement (think 4:12 chub) but small pike, roach, dace and chub combined trump by one point the barbel of ten-eight that might have taken me a whole week's worth of work to nail this time of the year but might weigh 12lb or more come February...

A bloody peculiar day, for sure, but not without its reward!

Leader board 24/07/15

Lords of the Piscine Punyverse — Whore's Drawers (Pt 5)

You never know with rivers what you're gonna get. Last week I had to wait ages for it to come down to acceptable conditions and then when it was good to go was forced to fish bank-high, mucky water, within the hour. Of course I thought I'd not get back for days but next morning was amazed to find the water not only flowing moderately but perfectly coloured once more. I guess that a localised heavy downpour in the very north of the catchment had put a great deal of water in very quickly, but the ambient precipitation over its entirety had been as low as I'd experience on the bank.

Seems good theory to me. Usually heavy rain up here means a sudden influx of dirty grey water from the great swathe of asphalt that is the M6 motorway, 640,000 square metres of which drains into the river extremely efficiently and often too quickly for comfort. Imagine how much salt finds its way in during wintertime... But the rising water had been brick red which means that it originated directly from the red sandstone agricultural plough soils found a little way upstream, but from not the M6 in any great amount.  

The Sowe. Up and down like the proverbial...

Anyways... Such perfect water meant I had to go fishing. And this time I felt I was in with half a chance of actually catching what I'd originally set out for, which was not simply fish — but data. 

So I sat down in the serene seclusion of the dell of the pool and fished the gentle swirling eddy currents, hopeful for those gudgeon I'd originally wanted to find but content to catch minnows and bullheads if they didn't show. Because they had now become the subject of my own project — a record of them and comprehensive enough to create valid charts from. 

Luckily the minnows were all too eager to feed and the jam jar was filled in short order with the first eight. Out came the quantification tackle, their vital statistics were jotted down, and they were released downstream so they wouldn't bite twice. 2 bullheads and 19 minnows were recorded in total. More than enough to flesh out the middling weight bracket for the minnow chart but very small fish were very hard to catch and none of the largest came close to the big fish I'd had on the first day who is looking to be something of a lucky capture.

Click to enlarge

What was fascinating was the weight variation between fish of near equal length. I'd never noticed it before, I mean you wouldn't, would you? A minnow is a minnow. Well, the British Standard Minnow is not the useful unit you might think it to be. The third smallest at 72mm for 4.5 grams, was just 2.2mm shorter than a fish weighing an astonishing 7.2 grams. That's an enormous difference, and I think larger than the kind of weight variation you might get between equal length cock and hen tench just prior to spawning. But minnows spawn in May and June, not February and March, so there's just a huge difference in girth between fish the year round, I guess. Come June 16th, sexing minnows will be easy because of the male's vibrant mating garb at that time. Right now it is not easy so I couldn't say whether the short and the fat, the long and the lean, were either girls or boys. 

The trend line produced by the spreadsheet is polynomial. It attempts to strike a balance between all data points therefore it will change with each new addition and in time stabilise. There's no data before the smallest, between the largest and second largest, and none after. Hence the hills and valleys and without an end point as yet, the upward whip after the largest fish. The start of the curve will be very steep with almost all fish species because they grow long in the first spurt of growth but weigh relatively speaking, very little. For instance, the six-inch roach pictured above who was caught after two bullheads but before the minnows, weighed exactly two ounces. A seven incher won't weigh very much more, perhaps three ounces or maybe four. A roach of 12 inches, though, can weigh as little as a pound but as much as a pound and a half. However, a roach three times as long as that little six-inch blade will set a new British record. That is why the trend line flattens out as weight rises. As fish mature, extra inches in their skeletal length and at great size, fractions thereof, mean absolutely everything in terms of the potential weight of flesh their frame might carry.

Which brings me neatly to the British record for minnow...

Mark Wintle has stepped in and clarified the situation. It really was 13.5 drams after all and not 13.5 grams as I (and Dr Everard) once thought. A simply huge minnow, the like of which seemed unimaginable to my boggling mind. Turns out that because of the data I've compiled so far with the addition of those fish known to have been larger than my best specimen so far, that it might be quite possible after all. Of course, Dr Everard's fish is included in the chart above, but Mark supplied a minnow of his own caught many years ago and weighed accurately on beam scales at 10.5 drams (18.6 grams) and an estimated 4.5 inches in length. The chart agrees with the accuracy of his estimation, I'd say. I've also added Russel Hilton's recent capture measured at 104mm in length but not weighed. My weight estimate for it is conservative. I don't know how fat it was but if similar in girth to my 102mm fish then it weighed approximately 14.6 grams. 

The length of the Spennymore record is also an estimation. So far as I know it was never measured. However, it's not just speculation and not so great a thing to imagine now because the data set suggests that it would have been a believable, 130mm in length, not the ridiculous 170mm I first thought it had to be. The trend line won't allow it to be very much longer nor very much shorter if the fish was normal and not diseased.  I think ±10% a reasonable deviation in length from the norm at that great weight. But then again, if two near equal length small fish can differ so very much in weight then it might have been only as long as Mark's fish, but hugely fat... 

Who knows? 

And who cares?

These are minnows we're talking about here. A fish so commonplace and miniscule that you just can't take them seriously, can you?

From top to bottom — Spennymore, Everard, Sowe largest, Sowe average. (cm)

Lords of the Piscine Punyverse — On Yer Bike (Pt 3)

Having lost my minnows, not yet found my gudgeon, and more than a little concerned about catching bullheads for the hell of it, I was at a loss to explain to myself where next to try.

Because I'd only ever seen gudgeon once and then amongst a mixed shoal of roach and perch, because such shoals are typical for the northern reaches of this small river, and because I know where such shoals can be found, therefore, revisiting known haunts armed with worms might well get me what I wanted. Hoping that this genius thought process would send me all the way to the bright lights, elegant bistros, wine bars, and intellectual chatter of the art houses of uptown Gobions Reach... 

I got on my bike and went downstream in earnest.

The river looked good. A nice tinge of green from the previous night's brief rain meant that natural cover was over their heads and therefore things should go according to plan. Straight off the bat I had bites and fish too. Roach, then perch, then roach, and then perch. None large enough to warrant much attention but very pretty all the same. My worms were all the rage. Bites a'plenty.  

But there were no gudgeon. Nor were there minnows. Bullheads in very short supply. I'd heard that they don't like to be disturbed. Liking their rocks so much they'll live under one alone and for an entire lifetime only going out on the town once a year to meet and seduce a mate, shag, the bloke tending the resulting eggs while the bird presumably continues her flirtations, and when it's all over he'll abandon the offspring, go home and put his fins up, popping round the corner shop for a caddis and shrimp paella ready-meal every now and then.

If you catch one and return it anywhere far from its abode apparently it'll be accosted and mugged  by other pugnacious fellows defending their personal kingdoms, and be likely killed. I don't know what 'anywhere far' means for a bullhead. I suppose safe means ten feet or less, because they are very small fish and eleven feet is a long and perilous swim home through the dark, dingy and downright dangerous environs found in the downtown quarter of Millers Thumb Lane.

To be honest I didn't expect worms to fail me. Almost all the fishing I've conducted downstream has been with bread baits and very successful it has been with roach up to a pound and a quarter and often multiple catches of pound plus fish. Bread will take gudgeon on occasion, but I never saw one. I did fish worms once in high summer but I was stalking individual perch that day. Fish I could see quite clearly and cast to. I had loads. I think I caught every one I saw plus the pike who attacked those I'd hooked. Again, the perch reach a pound and a quarter just like the roach. It seems to be the ceiling weight for such a small watercourse.

Worms were not nearly so selective of the larger roach as bread had always been and I was surprised how many small roach I was catching. I don't know if it was the tinge of colour in the water that made them so easy. I'd always assumed they didn't like worms because that day I'd caught all the perch in the entire stretch, the accompanying roach whose numbers trebled those of their stripy shoal mates, wouldn't go near them. 

Hopping swim to swim I wound up on a corner pool that I'd never fished successfully. Again, plenty of bites but these were timid ones that I hoped might be from minnows. I could not hook them. I thought that encouraging and so I cut the bait size right down in an attempt to snare one. What I got was a slew of small roach and even smaller perch, but then hooked what was clearly a much larger fish. 

Against a featherweight rod the fish in this river fight really hard and so I didn't see it clearly for a time. You can't easily bully them up and till they tire they race up and down, here and there. Sometimes when hooked they'll leave the water in surprise. They really are worthy opponents and give it their all. When I did see it, I thought it was a perch because it wasn't flashing bright silver flanks as roach would. But it was a roach after all. And one of the very oldest residents I'd say because its scales had that peculiar quality that on big rivers ancient two-pounders might acquire. Not so bright and clean as a youth's clear complexion. And despite the fact that its fins were in absolutely mint condition, its armour plating was kind of gnarly.

I didn't quantify the old girl, but I guessed a pound or so. 

I do like to catch roach of this size (and who doesn't)? But on this occasion I couldn't help feeling that she was something of a consolation prize for failing to find those fish I'd ventured out for. 

I guessed the absence of gudgeon, minnows and bullheads might have had something to do with the substrate of sandy silt and the sluggish flow not suiting them well where the graded gravels of the swifter upstream waters suited better. But I honestly don't know. I only began fishing seriously for these tiddler species a few short weeks ago and though I'm learning every day, I'll freely admit I know next to nothing about their habits and their habitats.  

Maybe it'll take years to acquire knowledge of them, but by end of season I hope to have plenty enough errors and hopefully few enough successes under my belt to approach an understanding of sorts. 

Avon Roach — Cardinal Sins

Unusual for me to spend so long in the one place when the itch to move is usually under my skin within ten minutes of not getting what I want from wherever I happen to wind up. It's a roach angler thing, upping sticks and off in search of new potential. I suffer terribly from it and simply cannot persist in fishing a swim I've lost confidence in. And that's especially true with roach where that crucial confidence can evaporate within ten short bite-less minutes.

Over the past few years I've observed that they're not like any other coarse fish because they cannot be enticed away from where they want to be. Sure you can move them a little to one side or bring them upstream a little but you cannot get them to shift into what they consider dangerous territory elsewhere just for food. That's not enough for them. They require safety too because they're fearful creatures given to picking at their grub at the slightest upset inside the strictly delimited zone of comfort they'll not leave for anything till leaving suits them. 

I've also observed that their liking for a safe house means that for the majority of the time they'll likely be wherever we ignore. That is to say the blandest looking piece of water on the stretch, the one where the easily seduced angling eye doesn't dwell, wherever the fishing brain fails to register interest. If it looks like it'll have chub in it, that raft of rubbish caught up in a willow on a bend for instance, or it'll likely throw up barbel because of this and that and whatever, or is a lovely looking glide of smooth water certain to be a textbook roach fishing paradise, then it won't produce the desired quarry.

In my experience they'll turn up in the between.

This particular stretch of river has had me fail singularly. I saw them once. It was my first session on the water in fact but I was stuck fishing meat for barbel while all around a shoal of large roach topped, and yes they had to be roach because no other fish would do such a thing in such a particular fashion on a river around dusk. It was classic stuff straight out of the big roach hunter's textbook. But that evening I'd committed the roach angler's first cardinal sin because intent on less demanding quarry I'd failed to pack the back-up insurance of a roach rod and half a loaf to fish with...

I never go to a river without that! 

But that time I did and have sorely regretted it ever since because I caught no barbel that night and couldn't have cared less, couldn't hope to catch those roach but cared a great deal about that, have tried for them over and over in the meantime but in every swim that looked 'roachy' I've never caught a single one. 

Great chances in roach angling come around rarely. One had passed me by.

Day one

An evening session again after barbel. After a few swim changes I settled into a peg with little to recommend it. Looking like nothing much, just a piece of dull water between more attractive swims, it did have one salient advantage over the rest — a comfortable bank where I could sit on the grass and while away a few moments in restful idleness before moving to another altogether more testing peg further downstream.

I had plucks straight away so decided to stay. A savage classic barbel bite came and for a short time I believed that it was one it was so heavy and determined but when enough pressure was applied, I found a one-pound eel who'd merely wrapped itself up around a raft of streaming weed. It was hooked cleanly in the bottom lip but getting it out was still tricky, so I smoothed the belly to send it into a coma making it perfectly docile even when held upright. When put back in the water though, it recovered immediately — a remarkable thing.

Day two 

An excursion with James Denison up from London on a day trip to the Avon and him intent on rolling meat down the weedy gravel runs for a barbel. It was a warm day under shafts of bright sunlight showing bottom in three feet of clear water and about as bad as could be for locating roach but I persisted fishing ledgered bread in the hope of finally finding them out. Once again, after a few hops from here to there in search of roach bites but finding only chublet twangs, dace jangles and surprisingly vicious gudgeon twitches I wound up in the dull but comfortable swim where I'd had the eel.

First bite was a roach bite and was the first I'd ever had from the place. Thankfully James is an experienced roach angler himself so I had someone to chew the cud with and we both agreed on that score. When fishing ledgered bread, a roach bite is a roach bite is a roach bite because no other fish bites on bread quite the same way.

When one was hooked sure enough it was, and though a relatively small fish of just five or six ounces, it was the first I'd had in so many sessions and cause for celebration. Of course I should have put it back half-a-mile distant, or packed a keepnet, but I plopped it back directly when I committed the second cardinal sin of roach angling.

Thereafter I could not connect at all because on the Warwickshire Avon returning a roach to the shoal almost always spells the end of your chances. The bites which had been quite confident considering the conditions became simply impossible and though I struck a hundred times over I never connected with one again. But at last I'd discovered them and as always, where I'd least expected to. Of course the reason I'd never found them before is that I'd ignored my own hard-won knowledge and overlooked the obvious. Roach are always found in the most boring water and failing to apply that rule here was how I'd committed the third cardinal sin of the roach angler.

After finishing up on the stretch James and I walked the near five miles to Stratford Upon Avon and fished Lucys Mill where I ledgered bread in one of my favourite weirpool swims. I had a predictable roach pretty much first cast and then a roach hybrid but then the swim died off and I struggled for bites. James float fished bread in my second favourite swim and had six or seven up to three-quarters of a pound. That was a lesson learned and I'd committed the — what is it now, four or fifth — cardinal sin of the roach angler. That of sticking with one way when another might be better.

Third day

Consequently on the last day I decided to try something that for some unfathomable reason still remains to me a novel approach to roach — the textbook method of trotting bread after them. I've done it before but half-heartedly. Never really stuck at it because it seems so unproductive compared to the instant gratification of ledgering the same bait when you know within minutes beyond doubt if they're there or not. 

First trot through and the float buries at the very end of the run through. A chub clearly— it segues from weed to snag to weed and back, so on and so forth. As they do. A nice fish of two pounds or so, but I shouldn't have brought it up through the swim. In doing so I commit another of the many cardinal sins of roach angling when the bank was clear and I could have gone down to the troublesome fish more easily than bring it up to my position disturbing the swim in the process.

Nevertheless the next fish is a roach. Then a dace and a gudgeon and another roach. They come from here and there but there's no line to speak of. Under the bank, down the middle, across the far side. Bites are few and far between as I expect with trotted bread but there's no pattern when they come. There and here, all over the place but nowhere in particular — I decide to feed to concentrate bites into a zone. 

That was the final cardinal sin. The death knell. The balls of bread mash served only to bring in more and more chub (who seem to be my default species at the moment no matter what I try!) drive the resident dace into a frenzy midwater and together they forced the roach's noses out of the trough. They were never to be caught again.