Seedy Experiments...

I had to try hemp at some point, having no other option on the canal when all other possible baits had been rendered useless by the evil twins - the ravenous attentions of perch and the stark inattention of roach. I've tried them all this summer, and only worms seem to work when the perch allow the roach to get a look in. Those baits that roach do take that perch don't, seem useless too. I have never had a roach bite bread or corn, so hemp has been looking more and more of an option, or more accurately, a last resort.

First off I had to buy a suitable hook, no easy task when tackle shop selections of small hooks to fine nylon are so wide. I eventually found what appeared to be a reasonable pattern, the Kamasan 911 in a size sixteen. I think these hook are intended for carp so are marked as 'heavy' - not a good state of affairs with such a fine bait but I couldn't find anything else that looked right. Kamasan 510's are apparently the hook of choice for hemp, but I don't remember seeing them to nylon, perhaps I should learn how to tie spade ends after all these year of avoiding the issue!

Next stop was the local pet shop for some cheap hemp which was cooked as usual, then it was off to the Avon at the Saxon Mill for my first trial. Now I'd read a lot of old books whilst boning up on hemp technique and the main advice apart from keeping tackle as fine as possible was to bait as sparingly as possible too. In running water a pint was reckoned more than ample for a whole session and on still waters half or even a quarter of that, indeed a roach fishing fool was once reckoned by the quantity of excess hemp he'd taken to the water and offered up to the fish, the more hemp the bigger the fool, and a practiced roach master was marked out by a frugality bordering on meanness. The principle at work seemed simple; every grain being filling feed, an angler should seek to drive the shoal into a state of frenzied competition by first inducing a fish to notice the seed, then investigate the seed and then actually take the seed by which time other fish would be discovering the tasty morsels too and the result should be if the angler has timed the art of feeding the stuff in properly scrooge like quantities, all-out scrummage, the shoal having lost its sense of coherence, rampant individualism ruling, natural caution thrown out the door.

Naturally, as soon as I hit the bank I lost my bottle. The idea of waiting patiently for hemp to work its magic over the recommended first few bite-less hours of its cumulative effect seemed most unappealing. On went a couple of maggots and in came the chublets one by one. A change to bread flake eventually brought a hard earned teenager chub to the net, but of roach there was no sign. I moved down swim by swim in order to find roach, after all it is no use even contemplating fishing hemp for fish that are elsewhere.


Under the willows lie roach

On a right angle bend overhung with willows that in the bright sun of the clear day produced deep shade right across the width of the stream, I found my fish. A pinch of breadflake accounted for two half pounders in succession and some dropped fish that felt like roach too. Suddenly hemp fishing was viable, but would I bother now having the prospect of some good bread fishing in front of me? I dithered, and decided to bait with no more bread mash, have flake run through for a while as I fed the first grains. In went half a handful as the books recommended and half of that next time and so on till I'd cut the feed down to a small pinch of five or six grains every time. I kept this up for half an hour, before finally baiting a hook with a seed, not an easy task as the right way is apparently to just push the hook into a closed grain and I found that this wasn't working with the relatively thick wire hook, so I had to get the point through one end and have the seed pushed up the shank, back out to avoid impeding the point. Then I cast, expecting naught.


'Scuse me fingers...

To my utter amazement the float dipped and dithered the whole run down. A few casts later I hooked and landed my first fish on hemp, and it was a roach !


First hemp caught roach

What else?!

I wished I'd started out with it earlier as I now had only an hour left before my pick up, but I managed another seven roach in that time. The bites were quite easy to hit, not the sharp tugs that I'd expected but the confident pull-unders that I had not. And, it must be noted that the fish were all well hooked, indeed a little too deeply for comfort, and almost never in the lip where I'd always desire a hook to lodge, evidently they really wanted those tasty little grains! It was pleasant fishing despite having to use the disgorger a little too often for complete peace of mind, nevertheless I feel that my bookish feeding regime actually approached something like respectably accomplished. My thanks to Heaps and company! But, I failed to follow the fish up in the water as recommended and bites died away at the last as predicted because of this, but by that time I had to split.

Judy turned up t'mill a full hour late...

I could have stayed on and had that elusive big un!

Next time...

The canal was next, and having learned my first lesson in meagre hemp feeding I selected a likely peg, one that I have observed roach in time after time but never actually fished, and baited the far shelf with way too much! I knew it, as soon as I'd thrown it...

You gotta have faith, right? Well on the cut, and on hemp, despite my little river success, really I had little of that ineffable but crucial thing. Ian Heaps once mentioned that a one to two hour wait before the first indications was normal for hemp on stillwaters. I cast and waited, baited and baited, less and less, and waited, on, and on, and on....

I got so very bored that I put out a sleeper rod, quivering a piece of breadflake to the right, but that just sat there motionless, refusing to entertain me. Patient? Anglers are never such.

A fish primed right over the offerings, a good sign so I thought, as no other fish had primed all the way along the stretch in the near two hours I had been sat there, and now shivering too, having made another of my summer weather/apposite clothing underestimations. I was sorely tempted to abandon the hemp experiment and go after whatever on maggots. Some little voice in my head told me that to do so would be the ruination of my carefully, if ineptly laid roach trap. Somehow I resisted the temptation...


Contemplating the seed ...

At the almost two hour point I was close to upping sticks, and then the float dipped. And then it dipped again! A bite...

This continued, and persisted. Little dithers and slow dips of the float, but nothing positive enough to strike. Shotting adjustments seemed to make little difference and I suspected that at least half, if not most of the indications were fish nudging the shot. I changed to a silvery Gravity shot as dropper and had the first sail away bite on the drop, the float going away and the strike meeting fish for a second before bumping off. I thought that was the sign that things would improve but sadly the little dips and dithers continued until they faded away and the swim fell quite dead. Hmmm....

Overfeeding probably. Those ancient roachmeisters were right!

Next time!