Clattercote Roach, Pike and Tench — Unexpecting

Yet another mild day forecast for the next. A piking session at Clattercote Reservoir planned. And, Tesco fishmonger's slab is a broad expanse of scrubbed stainless steel on New Years Day. Luckily, there's a single pack of sardines hiding amongst the smoked haddock and Vietnamese river cobbler in the reduced rack.

I'll take along a few worms. Should the sardines prove a bad bet, then I'll wangle fresh baits.

But, I find Mark Wintle extolling the roach potential of this venue on Fishing Magic forum. Apparently it holds fish well into the two-pound bracket and, the average stamp is high. The venue record stands at 2lb 10oz, according to the Canal & River Trust, and given the size of the venue it seems more than plausible. Too much information for me to ignore. I think I'll grab a pint of caster on the way down.

It's painfully low. All the pictures I'd seen beforehand had shown water lapping at the boardwalks but today there's bivvies pitched on the beach below and just a few feet of water out front where I'd planned to float fish. However, there's plenty of depth to be found off the rocky dam...

Martin nabs an ideal peg for fishing two pike rods. Certainly the one I'd race to if I were about to do the same. Setting up to his right, the depths found by the ledgered sardine sleeper are surprising. The line enters the water at near 45 degrees for a shortish lob out and I have plenty of depth to work close up with caster. But I find myself snagging rocks too often for comfort. So I move around to easier prospects within shouting distance. 

Seems a good bet. Four feet of water and a nice clean shelving bed. Very occasionally I'm spotting lazily rolling fish between our positions. Certainly not carp. I fancy they might be large roach. These signs occur always along a line two rod lengths out from the dam. No further, no nearer. And one occurs just a few yards to my right. That's where I concentrate. 

Martin scores a small pike in the morning. Looks like it might prove a good day for runs. Perhaps one of those twenty-pounders we've heard about will trip up later...

However, by mid-afternoon further runs have not come and it's looking grim on the pike front. As for the roach front, well, I'm certain that every free offering I've chucked about the float still sits on the bed ignored. And so I decide that I must go tough it out on the rocks and fish right in the middle of the line of signs I've seen and where they were most frequent. 

As the light begins to fall, finally I have a bite and reel in a very small roach. Martin steals it, holds it in his capacious net, and rigs up a live bait rod. Of course, I think my roach sport is about to begin. So I change the shotting to fish more actively on the drop rather than motionless on the deck. It doesn't quite happen, though an hour later I do get another equally tiny blade. It's desperate stuff!

But then a fish rolls nearby and I spot it clearly. A good sized tench...

Perhaps it was them all along, eh?

There's a dilemma. Should I consider tying a larger hook straight to the four pound mainline? This size 18 will hold a tench of any size should it find a good hold but the 2lb hooklink will struggle should one take the bait.

I don't bother now that I'm catching small roach regularly and thinking large ones may turn up around dusk...

And what's the chance of tench feeding early January? 

Martin comes over and sits behind. A fish rolls in the swim. Down low all I see is the swirl but up high he spots it clearly. It's another tench. 

Of course the next bite comes and I hit what I initially think to be the good roach I've fished all day for. But that's what you get for expecting. For a few brief seconds there's the illusory sensation of just the right kind of middling weight without any great power driving it, but then things do get heavyweight. There's a very strong lunge for the deeps when I know I have tench problems on my hands. But the hook didn't set well. Off it comes.

Oh dear. I can barely see the float by now. It's too dark to be fiddling about changing hook. But I just know that the next bite will come soon enough and it likely won't be from roach! And sure enough, when it's so very dark that the float is seen better by looking slightly askance rather than directly at it, away it slides and a risky bout commences. 

I think I stand half a chance. So does Martin. "Keep the rod high and the line vertical!". He's right. The nearer fish comes the greater the risk of disaster. These rocks are 45 degrees of trouble. Nevertheless, the fight is dour, uneventful, and well-controlled despite the light tackle. Well. It is till the fish finally comes up in the water and the float emerges, when, it suddenly decides enough is enough, stops pussyfooting about, and charges back down to deep water and the safety of the bed...

Where the hook-link breaks three or four inches above the knot, and we part company.

Ah well. Eel at Christmas. New Year tench...

Caught unexpecting again!

Commercial Perch — Gimme Shelter

I don't usually endure atrocious weather if I can avoid it. However, yesterday morning we had a perching trip planned during what was forecast as a period of heavy rain and high wind. I remembered that I had a brand new fishing shelter that I'd never used stashed somewhere in the house so I thought it the perfect opportunity to test its mettle. 

It was simple to set up. Well, as easy as it could be given the wind trying its best to wrest it from my grip, but once pegged down it provided perfect protection against the elements. I'm usually quite neat and tidy having done so much canal fishing in the past where tackle must be laid out in military order so that things don't get broken by passing bikers hurtling down the towpath hell bent on beating some personal time trial. However, within the hour the interior was strewn with jumbled gear and soon assumed all the appearance of a 1980's Stonehenge free festival tarp bender on an acid trip comedown.

The fishing was pretty dire. I didn't get my first bite till the 2 hour mark and then all I caught were bream, hybrids and the very occasional roach from that point. At least I upped my hybrid score on the challenge board by 7 points...

I've never thought heavy rain a good thing where perch are concerned. Or roach come to that. And I'd caught neither by noon. Actually, the only kind of fishing that really works in heavy weather is long stay carping and the like. Then getting a bite during the worst of it is not a hardship. But when float fishing it is a busy style that demands a high work rate, so everything gets wet and muddy and there's no way to stop the gradual accumulations of these minor discomforts, Before long it's a mire and the only way to avoid it getting worse is to stop fishing till it ceases.

My swim became alive with fish by degree attracted by a constant drip of chopped prawn. Perch may love them. But so does every other fish and I was stuck with them and them only. Normally I have an answer to that problem but moving to somewhere more productive of perch was not on the agenda today. I had a shelter set up! 

2lb 12oz perch rescued

The weather broke early afternoon and the rain ceased. I continued catching bits and pieces the rest of the session but Martin finally broke through with a big perch. It would be the only one caught all day long between four anglers around the pond sitting it out for them.

For some reason my camera made a complete hash of the trophy shot. All three takes were completely out of focus and somewhat overexposed though pictures taken before and after were perfectly sharp and well exposed. Quite why automatic cameras freak out on occasion I have no idea. Luckily Photoshop can rescue almost anything except a whiteout. Good job this was not his personal best perch, though!

And before...

My only spell of excitement was evening time and finally hooking what I truly believed had to be a big perch. It was hard fighting, kept its head down, and felt quite weighty. There's no other fish in the lake that it could possibly have been except a good crucian. Imagine my face when some kind of washed out gnarly old brown goldfish with a nick out its back hit the net.

City are at home and the crowd turning out in ten minutes time and we have to avoid the traffic.

Hey! Ho! Let's go!

Cotswolds Roach — The Seeking Wind

Once or twice a year we make a journey to the Cotswolds to pit our wits against the coldest fishery in all England. I think we've returned six or seven times now. The experience has never been an all out pleasure, let me tell you. And it's nothing to do with the fishery itself which is as spick and span as you'd ever like and stocked with a nice balance of species (and some of them desirable specimens if you know what to go at). But is to do with the peculiar location of it. 

You'll think the day pleasant enough as you close the front door and believe yourself well dressed for it. That's when you must turn on your heels and go back indoors. Are you wearing thermal undergarments? A turtle necked jumper and jeans? A heavy tweed jacket? That's not nearly enough, I'm afraid.

Though I'd dressed in what I consider ample protection for autumn fishing elsewhere, I packed a spare jumper yesterday morning well aware that where we were going I'd almost certainly require it at some point during the day. That point arrived just as soon as I'd dropped the tackle into my first choice of swim...

Here we go again. 

Martin tends not to move once settled in his first choice. In fact I cannot remember him ever changing his peg without being forced off by circumstance in all the time I've known him, which is getting on for a decade now. He's fishing two pegs to my left. About ten minutes after our first casts I hear him call "fish on...", and then there's this sickening splintering 'crack!' followed by, "Oh, Shit!".

His 'circumstance' has arrived.

Lucky for us that I have my roach pole with me because without it we'd be going home far earlier than expected.

I have ants in my denim pants. I'll move two or three times in any given session. But fishing this venue I'll change six or seven times to find my fish because their location is determined by an all important factor and I think that never more so than with our target species. For some reason those roach that live in lakes (and the big ones especially) do seem to like a bit of undertow. 

We have the wind on our backs. Though the water is choppy over the far bank it's quite calm out front but we have undertow flowing left to right to contend with. Martin fishing worm and caster fares well with an opening specimen of 1lb 6oz between plenty of pound-plus perch. But my maggots fail to raise a bite in the first two hours and so I move round the lake a little way and fish worm myself. 

It seems a good move. I do get a respectable roach there and plenty of good sized perch too but the swim dies off and does not seem to be entering recovery any time soon so I move again. More in order to seek shelter from the persistent wind than to actually find roach, I might add. I discover a peg tucked behind a bush that offers what my chilled body requires.

However, there's no denying that I'm going to have to move again because there's just small perch in front of me and too many carp splashing about for comfort. When I hook and bank a small example I decide that either I go to a different lake on the complex where I know there's a sheltered spot and there catch small tench, or, I go back where I started, endure the wind, and pursue big roach with a couple of handfuls of scrounged caster.  

Passing Martin on the way round I see him playing a carp. Looks like the same one I'd just returned a hundred yards away. I think two carp arriving so close together an ominous sign. Last time I fished caster at this venue I caught six or seven roach over a pound in a couple of hours only to have carp invade the swim around 2pm and wreck it. It's 2pm now. Nevertheless, an all out caster attack is what I plan and what I'll execute regardless.

This next and final choice of swim is a more a matter of instinct than anything else. Dropping the tackle on the grass I walk past a dozen options and back again before deciding that I really am drawn to one in particular. It smells ever so 'roachy' for no particular reason that I can fathom because it smells just as much of nothing peculiar as the rest...

However, once summoned for his spaniel-like nose, the judgement of my primal angler must be obeyed. 

Fifty or so of the wonder pupae are broadcast just where near shelf slopes away to deeper water. Then I practise the 'little and often' method — feeding accurately over the float with just a pinch of three or four every few minutes. It soon works its magic but the worm rig must be amended because the sudden sharp dips are impossible to hit. At least I know that I have found roach. Perch would just drag the bait off and produce clear sail away bites.

The shotting pattern is radically altered to allow a single dark floating caster to sink through the last twelve inches by weight of the hook alone and with just one small tell-tale shot above. All the bulk bar one left at half-depth are bunched under the float. This has the appreciable effect of slowing bites down. Finally I hook what I know must be a roach. At just over a pound in weight I think it a promising start. 

The trouble with caster is that the slow fall of free offerings brings roach up in the water. They will then attack the shot and produce many false bites that are almost indistinguishable from real ones. I guess its just something that has to be put up with. Roach never do get any easier. Even when caster drives them crazy they'll suck them in, crush them, and spit them out in the blink of an eye. And I'm getting shelled almost every bite.

So I thread them up the shank of the hook. 

'Clonk!' 

Whatever this is — it's worth keeping.

It's not a carp and I don't think it's a perch either...

"Perhaps it's a bream?".

And I tell myself that's what it must be even when I see a broad green back emerge. 

Just as well. I might have made a terrible blunder at the net had it flashed a bright silver flank...

Calling Martin over I put the fish back in the water for safe keeping — but not before checking the meshes for large holes!

A truly beautiful young thing without a scale out of place. I tell myself against all reason that she might run close on two-pounds because disappointment is so often the roach angler's lot and prudence his best friend. But my other best friend arrives in an incautious frame of mind and he declares it "a good 'two and a half ' any day of the week" at first sight! 

Only the one way to find out...

The pointer of my trusty 4lb Salters bought eight years ago after a very near miss with and expressly for the purpose of weighing my future 'fish of a lifetime', had never registered better than 6 ounces under in all that time... 

At long last it plain sails past the two-pound mark and settles rock steady at three-ounces in excess. 

The sun shone upon the lake for the first time in the whole of the day. The seeking wind petered out and the air warmed. A coincidental lull in the weather. 

I thought it remarkable how very impressive roach of such size are when taken out of their natural element but how very slight they seem on their return. She was as long as my forearm and extended hand to the tip of my middle finger. Yet back in the water such measurements seemed insignificant and tawdry. In a few seconds she was gone.

I'll admit I was quite saddened by her dignified vanishing because as preposterous as it may sound... 

I'd felt the overwhelming desire to take her home.

Crucian Carp — After Noon

Crucian carp are one of those fish that are fairly easy to find round here. Perhaps I should say that fisheries that contain them are not that uncommon. They live in many local ponds and lakes. Catching them however, is another matter. These venues are not at all like Harris Lake at Marsh Farm where you can fish for crucians specifically. Their bites being very easy to differentiate from those arriving from their main competition, which is tench. All you have to do there is strike at every little indication — tench will pull the float straight under. There's no problem seeing which is which.

A tip off from a local angler fishing the canal put me onto a new prospect. A local free pond where just because it looks as if it should hold them I've tried for them once or twice, but unsuccessfully. He mentioned having caught one to his surprise whilst enjoying a day's general fishing. Asking what kind of size it was he opened his hands and indicated a length that I reckon would be about 2lb, depending on body shape. 

So I went over with a rod hoping to find one for myself. Unfortunately, because the venue is free to fish, not cared for as a fishery should be, and not fished very often, it was choked with weed and so there were just two viable swims open. Before setting off I'd noticed a wind knot in the hook length but forgot all about retying before commencing fishing. It cost me the only bite of the short session when what was certainly a small carp pulled the float straight under, snapping the weak spot under little strain.

I do think it worth a very early morning return soon, and to a swim prebaited the night beforehand to get the fish out of that weed and into the clear. Seems like a plan to me.

My next effort was at Monks Pool in Bulkington. This would be an entirely different prospect. I have caught a crucian there but just the one. It was taken on a prawn intended for perch in early springtime. They are rarely caught because no-one ever tries for them at Monks. All anyone seems to care for are its king carp. It is full of all kinds of species, though. Millions of individuals. Most present in every swim. And therefore crucian bites are impossible to tell from any other. 

I don't think I arrived quite early enough. It was a warm morning and bound to get even warmer later. That would mean after noon it would probably turn into an endless round of arm wrenching tussles with sub double-figure carp. I was not to be proven wrong... 

First swim I managed small rudd and roach, hybrids, perch and bream on both prawn and corn. Moving about I caught more of the same and gudgeon too. No crucians though, and no signs of them either. Of course I knew at some point there'd be carp crashing the party. So I rigged up a barbel rod and flicked out a piece of free-lined crust just to have the first caught by design. It wasn't in the water longer than three minutes before it was engulfed by a pair of rubbery lips attached to 8 pounds of muscle. 

After that three minute knockabout I went back to my float fishing. I'm thinking 8lb would suffice for still-water carp points — I'm probably not going to camp out in hope of a twenty at any point unless it be down the river or the cut. But carp were beginning to show themselves all round the lake by eleven and I just dreaded the thought of getting attached to an endless series of them on a three-pound bottom with all the attendant hassle of re-tying new hook lengths. Then of course, the float zipped away and a small carp stripped twenty yards of line from the spool in seconds. 

Here we go...

It took a little while to tame but was netted and without breakage. Clearly the old bulk spool of 3lb Sensor in my bag was still serviceable and my tying of the spade-end fine-wire B911 up to scratch. But then a swim move brought a proper problem. I'd trickled mashed prawn into the reedy margins of a quiet corner where I'd not seen carp movement, then plopped the baited hook amongst it hoping for a delicate little lift of the antennae to strike at. 

Which I got...

At first I really did think I'd hooked my target because it felt like a two-pounder of one species or another. But then the fish, that clearly had no idea it was actually hooked, became heavier and heavier and heavier. After about fifteen minutes of guiding the fish around in circles in an attempt to tire it, the float appeared and then the shot, and then the huge tail paddle of a carp the like of which I'd thought this lake did not hold. For a while I really thought it was a twenty-pounder. But in the murky water I wasn't sure. 

Very risky short line hook and hold tactics in play. Kept it out of the reeds though...

I didn't see it again for another twenty minutes. I don't think I'd actually tired it much — bored it more likely — but it had begun wallowing. Which was a good sign. I thought I might actually net it eventually if the hook-length could stand the strain of my trying to get it up in the water more often than it was down on the deck.

When I'd managed that I began to see the fish more frequently and it was clear it wasn't quite so large as thought, but still, it was obviously into double-figures so it was well worth being careful with. I netted it (and it only just fitted in the frame) only when I had it make the mistake of coming in close and high at the same time. If I hadn't teased the lump into that position, I might have been at it all day long! 

It was thirteen-pounds nine-ounces and quite a handsome mirror. But was nigh an hour in the beating! 

Because I rarely fish for carp specifically these days, it is the largest I have caught since August 2008 when I was lucky enough to catch a 15lb river fish. I was dead chuffed with this capture. Really pleased. And very impressed with my entire outfit which had coped with a fish it wasn't really built to tame without ever feeling near breaking point. It feels balanced and correct. Forgiving but man enough to fight well above its weight. And that's nice to know when I might encounter a canal carp I cannot afford to lose when fishing for silver bream or roach.

And therefore I'll do something I have never done before and endorse the lot...

Rod: Korum Neoteric XS 11ft Power Float — Feels capable, absorbs lunges perfectly. First proper test of this rod.

Reel: Korum CS 3000 — Predictable smooth clutch without sticky spots, Again, performance when it really mattered.

Main line: Daiwa Sensor 5lb — Cheap and reliable. Doesn't seem to go off with age if kept in the dark.

Hook length: Daiwa Sensor 3lb — Ditto

Float: Drennan Glow Tip Antennae (2 No1) — A peerless float without equal for the lift bite method. Think the larger sizes better for general use. This was the smallest version I think. 

Shot: Dinsmores Super Soft — Does not damage light lines.

Hook: Kamasan B911 (barb-less spade-end fine-wire) size 12 — Holds fish of all sizes without complaint. Surprisingly strong for such a lightweight hook.
Hook tying tool: Stonfo. — Ties super strong knots to spade ends with little effort once the technique is learned. Five turns is best. More or less than five makes for a weaker knot. 

One of the uncommonly encountered  fully-scaled mirrors. Lean and wiry. Like a wildy in many ways.
By far the toughest scrapper I encountered through the day and actually the fairest test of the tackle

After that it was one carp after another and wherever I tried I simply could not avoid them. I think I banked another five or seven. I can't remember quite. I got so used to playing these fish in by degree that I entertained myself by taking selfies mid-fight. Not something I would attempt when playing barbel!

My day concluded with earnings of forty odd points and a climb of another couple of notches up the scoreboard into a comfortable 7th place. Not bad work. I only got my license a month ago and was at the very bottom in last place not so very long before. More importantly, though, this challenge sees me fish with burning desire, zeal and passion. I really do want to do well at it. It feels good to try hard but work harder.

It even feels good to catch carp again...

Every now and then, I might add!

Early Season Tench — The Width of a Circle

Last year the tench season lasted about three days according to some. Depends what you mean exactly by 'the tench season,' though, doesn't it? If you say that three days was the entire time frame in which a specimen was to be caught at maximum weight before spawning commenced, then yes. It really was that brief.

So very brief that I blinked and missed it. Not that I missed blinkin' much by all accounts. It was dire at best.

I decided to put out an experimental rod equipped with a circle hook. I've used them before for tench and with startling results, results that I'll publish one day but not before catching a few by the same method from fisheries altogether less easy than Lemington Lakes where I conducted my initial experiments (hooking in excess of thirty in the five hour session but losing not a single one...) and at far greater weights.

Circle hooks really do work with thick lipped fish you know. It's just that you need to get the gape bang on or you lose them due to the mechanics of their hook-up. Get it right and it clamps down on the lip like a padlock ensuring that the hooked fish will never come off but just slightly too small a gape and it cannot get a proper hold. That means using hooks that look outsized for the intended quarry but actually are not.

Anyhow, I chucked that rod out left and fished a standard J hook rig at right. Both employed corn — two grains side hooked on the circle hook and two hair rigged on the standard. Martin fished two rods with worm on the hook and large feeders packed with groundbait and chopped worm.

He had the first run. A perch. I had the second. A roach.

I thought it a good enough roach for a photo considering that just two years ago they were unheard of at this venue unless young blades caught by the occasional match angler. They started to show up as by-catch on tench rigs at around the half-pound mark and have come in well over the pound recently. This was a lovely looking fish of 14 ounces.

On the J Hook ?

Nope...

It was caught on the circle hook, was hooked perfectly in the lower lip, and that's food for thought...

Then Mr Rat made a visit and then Mrs Water-Vole too. Rodent bait spill battle entertainment whilst we whiled away the hours for the first of the expected tench of our evening

Martin had the third run. Another perch. I had the fourth run. A tench at last!

It was on for a minute or so before it was gone. Gape slightly too small I'm afraid and no doubt I'll explain exactly why that was the case at some length and in great detail at some future point but in a nutshell, the gape of the hook I was using will hook up but never let go of every tench that takes the bait up to a certain size but will not hook any fish above that weight. However, I don't actually know what the watershed weight for this particular gape size is!

Sounds mad? Circle hooks are...

But when they work... they're super bad!

Fifth run was Martin's. A perch exactly the same size as both of his previous brace. Worms won't work for tench here then...

There was no sixth run. So, we had our lake mate, James, take trophy shots of ourselves holding a couple of stand-in specimens we'd caught earlier...

And I'll tell you all about them...

Soon enough!

Kamasan B560 — The Best Roach Hook, Ever?

I don't know about you but I swear that if I'm not using the right tool for the job then I'll do the job badly. Hooks are general purpose tools of course and not designed for any specific species on the whole, but some seem to work so well with certain fish it's as if they were designed specifically for them.

The Kamasan B560 is such a tool and roach their fish.

I doubt if there's a better hook for roach on the market and doubt there was one ever made that worked as well. Others may not agree and have their own firm favourites but I cannot make a cast after roach nowadays if I haven't one tied to the end of my line and pretty much give up hope when the packet is empty.

Why are they so good? Well the B560 is quite a looker with its fine wire, gracefully shaped bend and long tapered incurved point and it's because of that shape that it's a 'sticky' hook that finds a hold on roach where others fail. Secondly, it's of a springy but not hard and brittle metal, so it will open out under pressure and that's a very good thing, believe it or not!

I'll explain. It won't open out under the strain of playing fish — I banked a carp that broke my rod but the hook was fine because the point was fully home and the straight shank took all the pressure. Just the other night a chub was teased upstream through thick beds of club rush, a ridiculously difficult fight that took nigh on twenty minutes to win where in open water it would have taken two or less, but the hook never failed.  

But, if the point isn't driven all the way to the bend it will open out. That means snagging on underwater sticks and logs you'll get your hook back intact, with an opened out gape of course, but because the metal is malleable it can be put back into shape with a pair of pliers, or even between the teeth.

You'd think that would weaken it wouldn't you? Well it might but not so much that it makes any difference where roach are concerned. I've never broken one yet but have saved myself a lot of pain when fishing in weir pools where such snags are always present where roach are found and will be encountered as a matter of course.

The fact that it's a spade end pattern might deter some from using it because of the fiddly and unreliable knot required. It's a perfectly strong knot when properly tied, astonishingly so in fact, but one false move and it's the weakest knot in the book, failing at silly strains. I use a Stonfo hook tyer to make the job easy but even with this handy gadget it can still fail to tie up properly if care and attention isn't taken with it. I take high magnification reading glasses to the bank for such fiddly work because my focus range has lengthened and lengthened as I've aged. Then I can see the knot and close up it's obvious when it's wrong.

Again, just the other night a chub was lost because of my failing to test the knot before use with a good hard pull to near breaking strain to set the knot and check its for weakness. The same fish was later banked on a carefully tied and tested knot and my lost hook retrieved! The lesson is that spade end knots are not to be trusted until they've been pre-tested to very near their limits.

I do think the knot also plays a crucial role in helping the hook find hold because the line comes off not on a rotating hinge as it does with an eyed hook but from a stiff link. Whatever the reason the hook is as I've already mentioned, 'sticky,' and since using them my hook-up rates with roach have soared, in fact when ledgering bread, a notoriously difficult method that can drive the roach angler insane with frustration when they're finicky and is never easy even when they're really having it, they've tripled.

They don't let go either and I cannot remember ever losing a roach once hooked, which is remarkable.

This hook is so reliable and trusted, a fact established over two season's use constant usage and comparison with those used beforehand, that if I'm not catching fish but am getting bites then there's no getting past the fact that on the day I'm just a terrible workman because there's no blaming the Kamasan B560 — the perfect tool for the job.

Commercial Perch — The Effing Difference

The venue? A local lake and one of the most pleasant 'commercials' I know of. Neat, tidy and very well run by a stickler for good behaviour who ejects miscreant breakers of the tight rules governing his domain; consequently there weren't any so we'd the place to ourselves. The weather? Finest of the year thus far and possibly the finest in recent angling memory: neither warm nor cold, hardly any wind driving what little chill remained made for very pleasant fishing. The target? The outside chance of a big close season perch.

Wayward Chestnuts, Rioting Foxhounds and a Plucking Pheasant — The Spills and Spoils of a Day in the Country

What had started out as a mission to catch a few redfins, and big ones hopefully, soon transformed into an Ealing-style-comedy-turned-real-life-entertainment featuring a motley cast of clowns and crazed creatures all vying for centre stage whilst a guffawing audience of anglers looked on in bewildered amusement.

Roach and Crucian Carp - Big Fish, Little Fish, Cardboard Box

On a recent trip to the canal after silver bream, I saw a carp the like of which I'd never have guessed would be swimming around in it. I'd seen a twenty-pound plus koi moving swiftly up and down the far bank the previous day, but she was not interested at all in the bed of bread ground-bait I'd set up, passing across it time and again without stopping off for a bite to eat. I'd guess she was looking for hot sex under the weather conditions prevailing at that time, not a cold snack.

Stillwater Roach - Bait Your Hook with Love

I don't quite know where I came across that expression, and have always wondered what the hell it could mean. I'm sure it's quoted somewhere in a fishing book of mine, but I don't remember where. Perhaps it means that you must bait your hook with bait lovingly applied ? But that makes no sense to me. What is there to love about baiting a hook? And what fish could tell the difference, if you did?

Stillwater Roach & Perch - Master Caster

Off to gloucestershire for the day. Last trip to this fishery saw a couple of good roach come to net and perch of an encouraging size. My plan was to go for both at once, so, two matched rods fishing the same float rig, one fished in the margins for the perch, the other a couple of rod lengths out for the roach, prawn on the hook for the first, maggot or caster for the second.

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.

Confounded Fish! - Bream, Silver Bream, Roach and their Bastards

The local canal is where I catch the odd fish that looks like a big roach at first sight, remarkably so on occasion, but who turns out to be a hybrid with bream and roach parentage. It's not like catching one of those rudd x roach hybrids discussed in the previous article, where the body shapes of the parent species are so very similar that a mix is really confusing to the eye. Most of the time with roach x bream hybrids the distinction is really obvious, with the majority of looking distinctly different from both parents. Though they have a mix of bream and roach characteristics, because the parents are so vastly dissimilar in appearance themselves, they look like 'hybrids' at first glance and are rarely mistaken for anything but.

Confounded Fish! - Roach, Rudd, and their Mules

This is the time of year when I begin to catch fish that slip between the meshes. I don't know why Spring should throw up so many oddities but it does seem to bring them out of the weeds. Hybrids, fish of two species parentage, seem to go on a feeding rampage right about now and over  the past four spring seasons I've been collecting pictures of these fish and trying to sort out, by visual clues alone, because portable DNA testing probes are not yet available in Maplins (but they will be one day!) the reliable visual clues that distinguish them from their parents.

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 ~

A Seeswood Seizure, Rare Flying Anglers & The John Wilson Self-take Trophy Shot Experience

Steve Philips invited me over to Seeswood Pool the other evening. It was right at the end of the fabulous October heat-wave which has to have been the best spell of summer weather in autumn I can remember. It was warm and then the clouds of doom came over and the end of the balmy degrees we had enjoyed so briefly was nigh.

Summer Carp - A Hard One Off The Top

We went on a long, long walk last Sunday, Judy, the dog and I. A nice Sunday morning stroll that then became a hike and later a near marathon when we decided, with good reason, to take a trip up the Ashby canal as far as the Lime Kiln pub on the A5 and then turn about on ourselves after a pint (me, two) of cool beer. What we hadn't bargained for was the incredible inaccuracy of canal-side visitor maps that contract and compress the canal into an illustration comprising of mostly bridges and other landmarks but without any true indication of distance between each - so what we thought was a couple of extra easy miles turned out to be a further arduous five

Silver Bream - Pond life - My Menagerial Hell

I'm being stalked by domesticated albinos and now, stock on the hoof...!

Last night I went fishing at the Pit Pool just to see if I could catch a bigger silver bream than my biggest example from the pond — a whopper of seven ounces or more — and had a terrible time of it. Things were progressing just fine with the swim building nicely and a healthy procession of small silvers, skimmers and roach coming to net, when I became aware of a living presence to my unprotected rear.

Big Perch Quest - Occupational Hazardry

Like most anglers I'm a weather freak, constantly scanning the Met Office website for news of upcoming weather events that might hamper or indeed, improve fishing prospects. The short range forecast for the coming week looked very bad for my prospects with a rash of unseasonably warm days coming along coupled with bright clear skies that would bring on the carp and tench who do like an upturn in temperatures

Roach - My Quest for the Magic Two - Cold Start

What with one thing and another my traditional winter specimen roach campaign, a pursuit that should have been well under way by mid-December at the very latest, has been postponed and delayed, deferred and waylaid to the point where half of its potential has already been spent leaving just two months in which to attempt to scale the slippery peak that all British coarse anglers with a soul call, 'The Magic Two.'