Canal Roach and Eel — Slow-n-Easy

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

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

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

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

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

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

And there I sat to wait things out.

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

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

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

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

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

Slow and easy this is not! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Probably!

Canal Roach and Perch — The Grubs Don't Work

I could tell that the dogs needed their serious weekly walk but I had plans to get my serious weekly fishing done so I thought I'd combine both and take them to the open space at Grassy Bend where they could run themselves into the ground and I could get a few hours in . The idea of fishing bread was out of the question because it demands my full attention and having dogs about makes that impossible. Then I thought about going after zander. No need to concentrate very hard with them apart from keeping baited hooks out of canine gobs. But I plumped for two rods fishing helicopter maggot feeder rigs for roach. 

I have had some encouraging success trialing this approach on the Coventry Canal where a couple of good hybrids fell, but both times I tried it on the North Oxford it proved useless. Nevertheless, I thought I'd learn something because I'd shortened the hook links to three inches down from six or seven and added an inch of tubing to keep them stiff. I really need to make this approach work if I can because it allows fishing to be conducted during spells of heavy boat traffic and throughout the day where effective bread fishing requires being up at dawn just to get an uninterrupted hour in. 

I need an answer! 

The weather is mild and heavily overcast with intermittent rain. It is perfect even if it's grim. The approach is simple. Cast out the rigs, tighten up and attach bobbins, chuck a handful of hemp and a handful of maggots over each. And wait. 

An hour and a half later without a touch I'm beginning to believe the approach a poor one and maggots next to worthless. Wishing I'd brought a float rod and a loaf of Warburtons along I occupy myself taking pictures of nothing happening just to entertain myself. Might as well practise something worthwhile...

I'm tapping my Timberlands to that infernal tune again. The ground beneath is getting rather sticky, but then I look down and there's a lobworm. This is the third time this has happened now.  I know it is simply that worms respond to tapping by crawling out of their burrows — a habit that buzzards exploit and that old time bait collectors called 'worm charming' or even better, 'fiddling' —  but I can't help thinking this is a sign.

I resist the urge to use it. But this time I do put it in the baitbox for later. Because if these damn grubs don't work soon enough it's going on the hooks instead!

But the trial is not yet over. A trial requires persistence. Another hour and I'll know if maggots are worth persisting with... 

The picture above is no fake. I was trying to get myself 'in swim' together with two yampy springers running about like lunatics in the same shot. A big ask. What I didn't bargain for was that the first bite of the afternoon would come just as the camera's 12 second self-timer began beeping the last second countdown. Good timing, and the very reason I take so many selfie-style establishing shots.

No one ever took a photograph of a 2lb roach bite...

But no one ever took a worse selfie with a small perch!

Nevertheless, the bite was the classic twitch and drop helicopter rig one. Maggots have their stay of execution. And I've a lobbie in reserve...

But nothing happens after. The bloody maggots are just no good and that juicy worm is exerting an ever greater pull on my gut. Just as soon as I detect a fall in the light levels I open the box, halve the poor thing, nip tail and head on either rig and cast them out.

The response is absolutely instant. Within seconds of clipping up the bobbins the right hander drops to the floor. A roach hybrid. The left hander drops while I'm unhooking it. A perch. 

The grubs don't work, they just make it worse. These fish were there the whole time but ignoring them! 

Maybe they were preoccupied with hemp?

Yet another hybrid. But at least it's got roach in it...

Perhaps. But the worms do work and make it better. The rest of the session is a blur of dropping bobbins and frantic Estelle fuelled worm fiddling securing fresh supply of this wonder bait of which I get a further two that I quarter to make eight baits just to keep pace. Unfortunately, not one bite is from a roach. All thereafter are perch around the pound mark and I believe there's seven or eight or nine of them who've tripped up...

Now all this begs a few questions, not least of which is why I have never fished for perch this way. But actually, and more importantly, why it is not seen as an essential part of perch fishing...

None of that fiddling about with disgorgers down the throat or finding the hook hold all over the random place. Each and every single one was hooked squarely and securely in the lower lip. Very clean and tidy. Surgical, you might say.

Also, why did I not realise earlier in my long life that I was an expert worm fiddler?

I could have made a bleedin' fortune!

But most importantly of all. How can I fish worm but avoid perch when it is roach that I'm after?

That is the question...

PS. If you're thinking the lobs don't work for roach, then think again...

Dan's opposite experience

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. 

Canal Roach — Highly Unlikely

In advance of the annual excuse for a blogger's chin wag next day, Russel Hilton and girlfriend, Beth, motored up from Exeter to stay over at ours the Saturday night. We all went down to Warwick for a Chinese sit down meal in the evening and then retired to bed prepared for an early morning rise and the gift of a possible two-pound roach courtesy of George Burton.

Judy enjoyed a lie in. Beth came along...

I was full of anticipation. I'd never fished the venue before and there was the very real chance of good fishing should things go well. George wouldn't take us along to a dud. This had a proven and established pedigree for very good roach sport and somewhere along its short length likely does hold those fish of our dreams. 

But it was cold. The canal was liquid though frost dusted the ground. I would have far preferred a thin sheet of cat ice, in all honesty. That would have meant the water temperature had fallen so far it had bottomed out around the three to five degree absolute lower extreme when in still frigid air a fine sheen of ice crystals forms on the surface just as soon as the air above drops below freezing point. When that happens the temperature of these canals will remain more or less stable for months on end rising and falling just a few degrees as weather changes, the roach will have acclimatised fully, and will feed reliably early morning and often throughout the day and night too. 

However, these last few days of cold wintery weather following unseasonably warm conditions has produced a cliff edge drop in water temperature that has not yet hit the deck. Best appreciated when mashing bread in canal water for ground bait, just a week ago it was a comfortable operation. Now it means drying fingers and thumbs carefully and hiding them away in the armpits for a few minutes afterwards otherwise the chill turns them into a team of ten uncoordinated fumbling idiots incapable of precision work. 

It can only be a bad thing where cold blooded creatures are concerned. Well, not for them. What they'll do every year twice over — once in springtime and again in late autumn — is adjust to sharp and sudden rises and falls in the ambient temperature. Both are as bad as each other for anglers, though, because this necessary adjustment period really affects feeding patterns. There'll be a time each day when they will, but you have to be there in the one hour when that happens. And who knows when that will be?

Would it be around dawn on this Sunday the 22nd November? 

George put me on a likely ticket. A swim where large fish often show themselves by topping at the surface. It was dead still there. Rarely is a canal swim that. There's always some kind of water movement to contend with produced by one agent or another. This morning I could leave the line unsunk and it didn't drag the float under. But neither was it moved by the agent of change I wanted. Bites were failing to materialise.

But an hour in an extremely rare event occurred when as predicted a large roach rolled. 'Rare' because they really don't show themselves very often, and when they do it's usually some way off and out of reach unless a move is made to them. 'Extremely' because this was just a few yards away from the float. Whenever this had happened in the past it had meant an imminent catch because there were active feeding fish right by my baited spot. And it had often occurred within short minutes...

I was in with a very real chance of tripping one up. Transfixed by the tip of a motionless float that might well shoot in the air the very next moment, I sat like a coiled spring in anticipation of that sudden and decisive motion. But time wound down. And down, and again, till I knew the opportunity had swum away.

Both Russel and George struggled too. Beth wrapped up in swaddling layers but gamely reading a book in gloves really should have stayed in bed! Though George did eventually bank a small roach right after losing a low pounder, which indicated that roach were indeed willing even if they weren't exactly obliging if you could just put a bait right under their noses. 

All this put a dampener on my sincerest hopes for the coming afternoon. With a dozen or so arriving at Hawkesbury Junction around noon, if roach were not prepared to forage then what were the chances  that the zeds would go on the prowl?

I thought it highly unlikely. 

Canal Roach — American Boy

The second proper session of my winter campaign for a 2lb canal roach did not go at all well. To be honest. I'm sure something or other was worth going for, but I'm struggling to remember what exactly it was that was noteworthy about it...

I have to jot down my thoughts, though. Idler's Quest might be a vehicle of questionable roadworthiness to many but it's also a personal run-about of inestimable value to myself. It is the journal of my days. And if I don't make the effort then I just know that years hence I'll go looking for the account that contains the details of that crucial little thing that I've suddenly realised was the important one. And it won't exist...

And besides that, the act of writing often forces the issue hoiking what seemed an innocuous and inconsequential happening at the time out of obscure memory and projecting it into sharp focus.

Let's see. The two pairs of ravens whose winter lodgings are the looming pylons were very active. A pair of jays have also decided that the far bank hawthorns are a good place to hang about. The dogs walkers were up and about early and some before first light. No cyclists went past but a group of hikers did.

Err, the first boat went past about an hour after starting; the second half an hour later... 

Oh! A low plane out of Birmingham International flying off to a far distant continent passed overhead.

'Take me on a trip, I'd like to go some day.
Take me to New York, I'd love to see LA".

Hmm. Weather was bright and clear with a sharp cold breeze blowing from behind. The water was towing a little but not forcefully. And it was fairly clear at dawn before boats came through and thereafter was lightly coloured. 

I changed swim three times over. Each choice was made based on where I'd caught roach before. Each change was forced by passing boats because they wreck bread swims. 

But perhaps they don't...

Who says they do? 

I do. 

Why?

Because somehow I've come to believe that it is fact. 

Nothing whatsoever occurred in either swim, so what would it have mattered if I'd stayed put in the first and just fished on? I might have learned something that couldn't be learned by hopping around hoping to land on a shoal of fish and extracting one or two. What if I'd stayed and patiently built the first swim over the four hours I spent at the venue? Would a shoal have come along later?

Perhaps the crucial thing might have been my own impatience. An adherence to self-imposed 'golden rules' that might just be crusty old habits. 

The utter lack of bites made it feel as if I'd cast into waters that contained no fish whatsoever. That's not true of course. I know it contains very large roach if little besides. Or does it? Maybe it once did and now does not. Maybe it still does and the reason it does is because there are so few others competing for food. Let's face it, true big fish waters rarely hold vast stocks, do they? Some gravel pits hold just a handful of very large bream, for instance. And those souls who fish for them expect to sit it out for weeks for the chance of just one bite.

But this is a bloody canal! I don't know how to sit it out here...

It's - just - not - natural.

"lalalala, lalalala."

"You'll be my..."

Aahhhhhhh!

Of course............. 

As I'd sat tapping my itchy feet on the bank in time with Estelles' 'American Boy' rotating round and round and round in my head, I'd remembered what had happened on the first session when sitting in precisely the same spot doing exactly the same thing to the very same tune...

A big red juicy lobworm had left its burrow and passed through the lush grass between.

I'd let it go about its business...

And fished on.

Canal Roach — Ghosts

The roach campaign on the Oxford Canal is now well underway. Well, underwhelming is probably the correct word for it, because on Friday I uncovered a few home truths about my first port of call that I hadn't reckoned with. I got to fish bread at Grassy Bend without a boat passing by for an incredible four long hours. I packed up and went home frozen stiff by an increasing chill wind when the fourth hour had passed by so who knows? There may not have been another boat pass through the rest of the afternoon...

However, what that period of uninterrupted peace framed was a distinct lack of fish. In four hours work there should have been at least six or seven bites. That's what the Coventry Canal would not fail to give in such a time frame at just about any location I know of even during the toughest of times. But I had just one. 

It arrived just as it should at around the three-quarter hour mark. That's typical when fishing bread over mashed bread in wintertime. Almost a rule. It was also a typical roach bite. The float shot up in the air without prior warning and a good fish was hooked. And it really could have been that 2lb roach I set out for the way it fought. 

Jag, jag, glide....

When I saw the flash of a broad silver flank deep down in the murky water I went all jelly legged and giggly headed thinking I'd cracked the barrier first try because the fish was clearly a good two-pounder.  But then it came up in the water and rolled over when I saw a white underbelly with two pairs of pink fins. 

All ideas of roach went out the window. With the Grace of God this must surely be a simply monstrous silver bream heading for three pounds...

Only in the net did I realise that this fish was something of a disappointing freak. It looked all the world like it had to be some form of hybrid because surely it could not be a true bream. Not a hint of yellow-bronze anywhere, just a plain silvery white from tail to snout. Except for the pairs of pink ones the other fins, that should be a mid-dark grey in normal bream, were colourless and transparent. I had to turn my back to the sun to get a picture of it in the shade of my body otherwise the camera couldn't cope with the blinding reflection.

But checking the oddly wonky lateral line, the scale count was way over fifty and absolutely conclusive. Nothing more than a common or garden bronze bream, I'm afraid.  It was one of those strange 'ghost' bream I'd seen years ago swimming beneath the ice a mile up the road. 

A 'ghost' bream accompanied by dark fish of normal colouration

The shoal I saw was about forty strong spread over a large area in small groups of two to five large fish. All were the normal colour except for a couple that were pallid white. These were spotted in a group of five and I wanted to catch one from that day on just to examine them closely to see if they were indeed very large silver bream that I fancied were living amongst these ordinary bronze bream.

Shame that they weren't quite what I'd imagined they might be. At two-pounds eleven-ounces this fish would have been 83% of the current British record and a new British canal record too if they had been! 

I have to say that I always suspected that this area where I have always struggled to get bites was actually something of a desert without much to commend it apart from the undeniable fact that fish when they are caught there do tend to be large roach. Now I was certain that my past ruminations were correct. It really is very sparsely populated indeed.

Which begs the question — should I return to tough it out there or should I explore alternative options elsewhere? It's the specimen hunter's eternal dilemma, isn't it? Do you fish where a proven track record has already been established or seek to confirm a new place with all the uncertainty that entails?

Thing is, for long sessions it does provide what few other places do. And that is, as the venue's name suggests, large spacious grassy verges. And they provide a great deal comfort. Also the ravens were back on the pylons. Two pairs now. And they are quite an entertainment chatting amongst themselves and soaring around while the hours pass by, one by one.

Another try or three, I think. Early mornings perhaps...

Canal Roach — NOXC2LB5OZ

The long cold wait commences...

It's just a mile distant but I haven't fished the North Oxford Canal much since the winter of 2009. Occasionally I'll roam out that way on a zander mission because heavy boat traffic really isn't a problem where that's concerned but otherwise I'll fish the relatively quiet Coventry Canal on the outskirts of the city. 

I have ignored it since because I found it nigh impossible to fish there with bread fished under a float. And that method is my preferred one these days. The one that I have developed specifically to tackle canal roach. But it requires time to work and uninterrupted time is what the NOXC does not give. So I've concentrated efforts nearer to home in order to refine things in relative peace.

Milky white lobworms dug from a back-filled section of the Oxford Canal behind the Coventry Canal at Longford Junction. Because of a labyrinthine and controversial toll debacle when the canals were first built in 1777, the two ran parallel for a mile. The issue was resolved in 1803. Hawkesbury Junction then became what it is today — the point where both join at a stop lock, and the closed section of the Oxford Canal eventually filled with Coventry's household waste and capped by the 1920's.   

However, the head of roach in the Oxford Canal seems lower than that of the local Coventry Canal, but the average stamp far higher. I've caught just seven specimens there. Six were fooled by huge lobworms in 2009/10 but just recently I had one on bread. In ascending order they weighed, 1.00, 1.00, 1.01, 1.03, 1.08, 1.13, and 1.15. An average of 1lb 6oz compared to just 15oz for my local hunting grounds on the Coventry Canal. 

Back in 09 I thought the numbers so impressive that they surely predicted that two-pounds and better were not just possible but very likely. I'd missed that weight by just half an ounce with what was the second roach I'd banked there. How could it not be certain when the first was over a pound too?

However, averages cannot be trusted when they are drawn from such small data samples and I just could not catch enough of them. Fifty fish would be needed to validate and a hundred to set it in stone. I was catching one in every three five-hour sessions at that time. Outlandish baits sizes may have selected only the very largest but stumped the smallest. Add twenty half pounders to my list and the average would be reduced enormously. I just couldn't be certain.

A roach is 'big' only when you'll hold it close and it still looks enormous

Molly took a swim that afternoon. Springers are born impervious

February 6th 2009.  Temperature -2 degrees Centigrade

A very near miss at just half an ounce under

A fish that was warmer than the air!

Oh, my poor frozen hands 

Brrrr.......

Then George Burton began fishing the Oxford Canal for roach but some miles down the way from where I'd fished. He'd always use bread and so I'd pounce on each and every blog update just as soon as he'd hit the 'publish' button. I was fascinated. I had a brother in arms! 

Doing on the Oxford what I was doing on the Coventry, I just knew by gut instinct that he'd stick at it through the many trials and tribulations to come and therefore establish facts one way or the other. 

Perhaps he'd even succeed where I had failed and break through the two-pound barrier?

It was my sincerest hope he would...

His results, now that he's fished it three years or more, are remarkably similar and his average just the same as mine even though he has at least three or four time the quantity of roach to his credit. He had his second best just the other day at 1lb 13oz. For any canal that's a great big roach but his very best came in at just under two-pounds and four-ounces which is a truly astounding fish because that's just a few drams below the weight of the best roach caught from any canal in this country.

Ever!

His account of that close call with the history books quivers with excitable disbelief. I read it again and again because it tallies with my feelings when I had my early near miss with a 'two'. I simply could not believe that such a dirty canal could produce such a pristine marvel. I wasn't concerned at all that it was half an ounce under. It was magnificent!

(And yes of course there's a link. But you can finish this first before dashing off!)

George had validated my numbers and my belief in them and gone and done something better. He'd made the Oxford Canal the truly great roach fishery it really is by banking its very first documented and properly weighed two-pound fish.

It was about then that I decided a better way must be found than fishing lobworms...

Now I must go catch a two-pounder myself, because I have set myself the demonstrably preposterous target of catching two-pound roach from river, canal and still-water all in the same winter season. I have the still-water prize done and dusted. The river prize will be very challenging locally but there's a trip to the Itchen planned for early December where such fish, though undoubtedly hard work, are more than possible for both Mr Newey and Mr Hatt.

But for the canal category, I'm afraid that boat traffic notwithstanding I must mount a long and possibly arduous campaign alone on the crayfish burrow riddled banks of the North Oxford because it is never going to happen on the City Coventry Canal in a month of Sundays even though it certainly does hold them. 

And worse still. I want to set a new canal record for roach. Currently standing at 2lb 4oz for a fish caught way back in the 1970's by Mr A. Swan fishing the Gloucester Canal — one extra ounce is what the Oxford must provide nigh fifty years on because it deserves that crowning title.

Such a roach is there for sure. The numbers say it must be. 

But they don't say exactly where!

George's great day

The canal toll debacle

Canal Roach — Cronk, Cronk

Had a few hours spare this morning so I thought I'd go to my projected winter canal roach venue and run another experiment — to see if roach were actually there to catch, because I've seen precious little of them lately! 

Even when this particularly busy cut is covered in thin ice they still make life difficult. If they can break through they'll travel. so last time there I tried helicopter maggot feeder tactics to see if they would survive the boats and allow reasonable amounts of daylight hours in which to fish effectively.

Of course I still intend to float fish in the brief hours when I can. And float fish bread because it is the best bait for the job.  Or at least has proven itself that so far. And so, I set out with a rod, a net, a seat and a box of bread disks to see what I could achieve with them.

One roach would do. So long as it was over a pound in weight, I'd be encouraged...

Along the way a fish topping a hundred yards round the bend from my intended swim was an encouraging thing. A rare sight hereabouts. There's a nook under the far bank cover where i wanted to cast as tight as possible and into two feet of water and less. A boat came through just as soon as I'd established dead depth. However, I'd not put in any mash by then. So, no problem.

Just as soon as the water had settled, In went the mash. But I waited a little while before casting above it. Meanwhile I watched the local raven couple who regard this particular area as their sole territory see off another pair high in the sky above. 'Cronk, cronk'. They called out. 

Which means 'F-off' in bird lingo! And they did.

When I cast five minutes later the immediate result was a one-pound roach! 

Good work...

I didn't get a second bite though. So after another half-hour had passed by, I went home satisfied. 

Below is a video of the beautiful method. Not the bite. Just the way it hangs together and the way it settles down. You'll no doubt be appalled at the sheer size of the bait used. At 18mm that's not even a big one. I'll use 25mm in the depths of winter with utter confidence that it'll pluck every large fish from the swim should they be there. I will try to film a bite but not at this venue because I'll run down the battery trying and then what ever will I do with the two-pound roach that falls just after?

There's enough here to go on should you want to understand it. Click on the video, go to 'Watch on YouTube', read the description, shuffle back and forth to view things, and you can work it out for yourself.

Canal Roach — Kinda

After testing things out near home and satisfied that things would work having hooked and banked a roach/bream hydrid at the lower end of the size range of roach I hope to catch, I went to the venue earmarked for my winter roach campaign to see what trouble would lay in store when two helicopter rigs were cast into the tricky place.

I've started out fishing these rigs wrongly on purpose and for good reason. I do know how is best. They should be fished on a very tight line to the rod and the heavy bobbins clipped on high to register only drop backs. I used them the first afternoon mid-way, so that I could view more of the truth of the matter. That this might make them less effective meanwhile is not the point. Seeing what happens during the bite is. Clipped up tight it's all or nothing. I want to see rises and falls and drops and lurches. All good information to my mind

Secondly my hook links are currently at six inches length and set to hang from the mainline at about 7 inches up from the feeder. They should be 4 inches or less and set just half an inch higher up the line than that so the hook cannot snag the top of the feeder. However, having them work perfectly all the time every time from the outset is not how I learn things. I want to see how they work when set up incorrectly.

And I soon learned something that demands that I must change things to suit this venue.

Boats passed by without problem. Fishing the inside of a long and very wide right-angled bend meant the track was way off. Those that came all took this line and missed my near shelf casts by miles. No rewinds necessary then. However, then came along a convoy of three genuine working boats with professionals at the helm.

I'm always happy to watch this kinda craft pass through. Their skippers are expert!

Strangely, I was just thinking about why I'd not caught perch... and then one appeared!

These fellas don't tiptoe round the corner afraid of what's out of sight. They really gun it hard to get their very long and fully laden vessels round in a smooth clean arc. You should see one towing a butty of equal length round the sharp 360 degree hairpin outside the Greyhound Pub. The missus pumping that great big rudder to not only steer but power it round. It's very impressive stuff. All in a day's work. But this show of gumption churns up the bed no end and chucks all the rubbish about. A lot of which was found festooned around the rigs on retrieval.

The second and more serious problem was that the long hook lengths were twice found tangled in looped knots around the mainline and itself. Turbulence on a tight line had caused them to do the propeller motion they were designed for, but the long supple link had been able to turn in on itself.

However, I did not shorten them. There was more to learn. 

First fish I had was fish in name only. A crayfish. And recasting to the same place I received more bites from them so I cast elsewhere. Then there were a few short pulls of the tip that never shifted the bobbins.  These were from fish. The maggots were expertly skinned so probably from roach, but I was not to discover which species actually caused them. I suspect the incorrectly set up 6 inch rigs had failed to prick as they always should when tied up 'right'.

Big roach don't need to be given nearly an inch to take a mile out of an angler! An inch or two will be subtracted next time... 

What a two and half-pound canal roach kinda looks like...

I left the place satisfied that I'd identified what needed to be sorted at home and then tracked back down the towpath and set up for the last hour of daylight in a banker swim. A fish topped that I fancied was a very good roach indeed so I cast to it And then the heavens opened and I was caught in a long, heavy  and persistent downpour of rain. Of course, the bobbin dropped to the floor during the worst of it when I found myself attached to a strong fish that I wondered might be a small tench.

When I saw it in the water I then had the thought it might be a very large silver bream indeed and one to smash my personal best. But at the net I knew it was another hybrid. But I wasn't complaining. At 2lb 7oz it was a new personal best for roach x bream. And was slap in middle of the size range that I predict for true roach at the venue where I'd just been instructed in advance of wintertime pursuit by boats, crayfish, and purposely ill-tied rigs.

'Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted'. 

The rain wasn't easing any time soon so I attempted a quick shot of the fish straight off the ground.

Kinda worked...

But room for improvement.

Canal Roach — Round the Bend

Had an idea going round in my head lately. There's this canal, you see. And it contains roach. Big ones and proven ones. Not ordinary roach, mind. I truly believe that it holds monstrous roach that you would not believe the size of. In excess of wildest dreams, if my calculations are correct...

The trouble is, the venue is almost impossible to fish effectively but through the night and very early morning times and that is because it is plagued by an endless two-way procession of you know what. That thing I cannot abide. Those once essential but now pointless contraptions that make life hell for the canal roach specimen hunter. 

Imagine, if you will, that one day the motorway system becomes redundant because technological advance renders the vehicles that ply them redundant. They moulder. But Mother Nature transforms them into pretty strips of weathered and crumbling tarmac on which weeds grow tall, butterflies flutter by, hares frolic, and on which pedestrians and cyclists might get to work or take a casual stroll along after. Then imagine that business-minded upstarts buy up all those rusting articulated trucks, punch holes in the sides for windows and kit them out with galleys and bunks. And then rent them out to holiday makers who'll burn tens of gallons of diesel fuel in pursuit of joy by making pointless journeys to nowhere and back again. 

Did I digress? 

Now I said, specimen 'hunter' because I meant just that. A person who goes out and actively hunts prey. Moves around. Does this and that to improve chances. Changes tack. Changes mind. And all to put himself at some small advantage in trying to gain a winning edge against very tricky quarry. Anyone who knows me well will testify that I cannot sit still for long in any swim unless I get the right kind of bites or expect them to come with certainty. I am a hunter by my very nature and never more so than when roach fishing.  

I am not a natural specimen 'trapper' by any means. It is not me who digs a hole in the ground, covers it with sticks and leaves, puts a morsel of food on top and waits for as long as it takes for prey to follow the scent trail and fall in it. That is what I never could abide. All those fruitless hours spent wondering if things are right. Are the rigs correct? Is bait is the right one to use? Was it cast to the right place? All the million little concerns that plague the trapper's waking hours. Who has no idea till his hapless prey falls in when he's fast asleep whether or not it ever will... 

It's no wonder carp anglers buy so much tackle. They have a lot to think about while they wait, and wait, and wait. Maybe this will work better? Maybe that will work better? After yet another blank session during which the uselessness of an approach is revealed, they'll go straight out and buy the answer. And then take the new kit to the bank along with the doubtful stuff just in case it was right after all but the prey were asleep at the time. All piled high in a wheelbarrow. 

Well, I think I have no choice but dig my holes and prime my traps if I want those roach I anticipate, because this venue demands I do. I really don't see any way round it. I cannot keep a float in the water for nearly long enough and when I think I might get a whole half-hour of interrupted calm, round the bend comes yet another.

It's not that I hate the drivers. I don't know them. And cannot judge them. I can't see what kind of footwear they've chosen to go with their appropriately broad-brimmed but usually ill-fitting style-free headwear.  And if you cannot see a man's shoes then you cannot make character judgements about him. Ask any woman if you don't believe me. Women always check your eyes and then your shoes before smiling your way — for the quality of both together belie a man completely. 

The only one I ever saw wearing equally great hat and shoes was a woman...

Surprised I noticed at all when I couldn't take my eyes off her lovely bum. 

An 18 inch roach pan and a very compact outfit

So, anyhow. I digress yet again and must get back on track. This morning I began by tying up helicopter maggot-feeder bolt-rigs and then went round the corner to my test bed swim to see what might happen. I was hoping for roach but didn't know what I'd get. I suspected lots of small perch and skimmer bream. Maggots draw both like nothing else...

The buzzers have no batteries in em. Merely convenient rests. I like to be alert at the wheel and may not buy any for the planned future. The rods are little nine-foot Shakespeare wands teamed with ABU reels. Both are excellent at the job in hand and the outfit fits neatly into the confined spaces of canal towpaths. The feeders are two little green things once given away for free on the cover of some magazine or another. Very small capacity of just twenty grubs. I added extra weight to them by cutting up scrap lead flashing found in a skip into strips and folding it around the original too light pieces. I don't want to spend money I don't have to, and over-feeding on canals is the kiss of death in every instance. 

I was most surprised at sitting about for half an hour without so much as a touch. Fishing the near shelf and at almost a straight line along it I survived three boats in a row without a recast. Something of a miracle that every one passing by actually stayed in the track when yesterday one misjudged and crashed into the bridge by making too wide an approach on the bend. I was just beginning to doubt my traps when the right-hand swinger twitched, rose and fell, and then slammed into the rod. This was not a roach and neither was it a bream. The creature was mad as hell and somehow that I still cannot figure, managed to get under and then cleanly over the other line to be beaten and banked on the left side of it.  

It was a hybrid, of course. But I was very happy with that result because it was very 'roach like' and if the rig would catch such a fish then it would certainly catch my roach too. Experiment concluded. But I stayed around for another half hour to see what else might occur.

I had one more bite and a small skimmer to show for it. But at least there was just the one to show for it. And not even the slightest sniff of the dreaded gorge swallowers. Believe me, where I'm going that is going to matter very much.

If I can beat both of them and the boats too then I think I'm in with half a chance.