The Pre and Post Christmas Rush

PRE-CHRISTMAS

Sinking into the marsh, subsequent steps no deeper than before but each consistently sucked in by the peat-like soil, slowed the walk but did not diminish the enthusiasm as the river was to be at a high level and, with the summer weed now ripped-out and flushed through by a month's heavy rain, the opportunity to apply pole feeder tactics in slack water was irresistible

'Anything that swims' would be in order, as the first priority is to avoid a blank, but there would be that Peter Stone-style aim to pick-out a bigger fish, as always

Choosing a slack below a bridge where the main flow hurtled to the far bank, toward the overhang of hawthorns, the water appeared steady with barely any flow and, closer in, flowed against the main torrent but, there was an 'eye' to this back eddy, centrally, where the water stood still

The essential of offering an attraction of feed on the river bed in such circumstances is limited to a bait dropper or swimfeeder and, with the most recent rain at that time having been cold, this needed to be in limited quantity. The introduction of a single chopped lobworm plugged with a minimal but heavy mix, containing a sprinkling of worm extract, would be introduced and only for the first three lowerings of the rig, after which the ear would make decisions on the state of play

Bites would be expected to be early and consistent, if they came at all should there be any fish in the slack, and sure enough this came in the shape of a rare river gudgeon, and a surprise boost in Challenge points. The marker quivered and disappeared with a disproportionately positive vigour as compared to the size of this tiny mottled brown visitor, which weighed in at just 0.54 ounces on the mini-fish scales

Adding challenge points at the time of year, and with such weather affecting all possible options, is largely an exercise in luck, most of it bad, but the great thing is that the flood, if it produces anything, often produces pleasant surprises, unseasonable species being one of them but also bigger fish than we might anticipate

Ones natural reaction approaching such a situation is to think that anything will do and therefore be happy with a little fish of any species simply to rescue the day from a blank but regularly this can be found to be a negative and pessimistic attitude. That's not to suggest that big fish will be caught from each and every slack. Indeed, some of them won't appear to hold any fish at all but on average it seems every other trip might throw up something a little more interesting. This past week, for instance, a chub of 4lbs+, an eel of over a pound and a string of pristine hand-sized roach have sprung from different swims on various days

For a few weeks the canals locally had been like milky tea, the lakes shocked into the dormancy of winter by the first cold weather and rivers in and out of the fields with varying degrees of turbidity, pace, level and temperature

The most recent rain, a brief but violent downpour on a Friday, of the increasingly prevalent 'climate change'-driven type, was warm, as the weather turned, and, although the river was rising, it was not now carrying much debris. Consequently the fish were more obliging. Simply more hungry, and, thankfully, a series of chublets and roach came to hand in the ensuing couple of hours accompanied by the incessant twittering and wheezing of starlings on the wires, and the occasional whistling of teal

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POST-CHRISTMAS

Rocky Res would be the location as temperatures were expected to be steady and mild for a couple of weeks

Bleak Midwinter, and windswept at even the most enticing of times, this was not a place for the tentative, sensitive nor indeed the unprotected angler

Visits must be preceded by careful analysis of wind direction and speed plus the likelihood of rain, otherwise the most uncomfortable, nigh-on unbearable, sessions are bound to be endured

The first visit was to be the now standard winter stillwater roach approach of maggot feeder and closely positioned two inch heli-rigged hook-length, also loaded with maggot, usually double but part of a constant merry-go-round of hook-bait options in search of a 'killing' combination

HonGenSec beat me to it on the first trip, as usual (albeit biteless at that point), but, even though there were a few carpers and pikers ensconced, swims were going aplenty

Ultimately it became apparent that my negativity in hook size would come to haunt me, catching four fish and losing five due a surprising interest from tench in just 5degC water temps [no one tell Len Head!]. The best roach was 12ozs, for each of us

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Next trip and HGS was well in front of me and had 5 or 6 roach to 1lb before I'd even turned-up.

The approach was to be different this time, and new. I recalled having a tube of 'sticky mag' in the bag and, combined with a slider rig, this was to be the challenge of the day fishing into 10' of water at around 20-25m. How this would take me back!

Never having used sticky mag it was a bit of a challenge to even get it to work, but it did, and very effectively too. It was easy to roll 20 gentles into a ball and fire them out with a standard catapult. It did require a bowl of water to swill the fingers in, as the stickiness was staggering. I had imagined it would be like a cornflour-type thickening agent but in use it seemed more like powdered toffee, or the like. So adhesive was it that the bait became rigid under its power

My recollection of the slider rig (it had been a while) wasn't the best and I did suffer with tangles, however subsequent seeking of advice from experts, a couple of errors with shotting and casting technique are now resolved. I think the hook bait was attached directly to the float for 50% of the session! Not good, but maybe you gotta make mistakes to learn sometimes (I keep telling myself!)

The upshot of the session was that HGS kept trotting along showing me roach of ever-increasing size, to over the pound mark, in fact, while I kept plugging away. It was during one of those chats that I actually had a bite and landed a very respectable perch of a pound thirteen. Later came the light-bulb moment that this might even have represented more unexpected challenge points

It did, sixty-odd of them!

Another 10oz roach followed but then the dark set-in early with heavy cloud and mist. HGS had by then quit for the heated car seat option but his catch of nine roach, all over ten ounces, for a total catch of around seven pounds, would do more to keep the home fires burning than any amount of hot food

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Next day, the third visit, there could be no excuses. I knew where the bigger roach were, the rig, the slider episode was out of the system and I had doubled-up an eleven foot 1lb t.c. rod prior to the holiday and matched them to alarms and bobbins. The heli-rigs would be back in action!

Arriving just after sunrise, the light southerly would again be from behind the chosen spot, if it was free. Again there was total cloud cover (very much akin to the Dutch 'Total Football' but without the game itself being in anyway involved...unless a perch was caught, obviously) and no one else there, (a Saturday!), again, the water was around 5degC

Pilfering a few rocks from the bank, the rods were set-up perfectly (this time). Maggot at first, then a few flavours proved nothing until bites started to emanate. Inquiries at first then full-blown backdrops; never frantic but regular and generally hit-able

Firstly roach, in fact the first fish was over a pound and followed by a couple of twelve ouncers

1.1.5

Then the tincas moved in, inexplicably smaller than the average summer fish initially, at two and half pounds, but cracking fish to take in Christmas week

Not one, but two bailiffs, approached me at various times to see if anything was stirring and both were genuinely pleased that the answer was, "Yes", as the lack of bums on seats bivvy bed-chair thingies demonstrated that things could only have got better

Then a passing couple or two. It was a dead-end. They had to come back so it was easy to lose count, honest. Suspected as angling husbands and non-angling generally frozen partners suffering the event in the hope of ending-up somewhere warm later, maybe?

My final visitor however was actual angling royalty in the ever-upright form of 1960's England International Hubert Noar; now in his seventies; still match fishing on canals; still seeking bigger fish than the youngsters, albeit more so with perch than roach these days, it seems, and still drawing more than his fair share of what we used to call 'coin', I suspect

"Didn't expect to see you here!" he said, binoculars at the ready in case the regular passage migrant from Norfolk, a bearded tit, should emerge from the reeds

We reminisced

Old names, old techniques, preferences and, as always with anglers of this stature, a couple of nuggets; gems, if you like. Apparently back in the heyday of the middle Great Ouse, when anglers from Rugby Federation, it is fair to say, dominated, it seems Hubert used to come to Rocky Res to practice the unique long float technique into surface drift-affected deep water rather than driving for ninety minutes to the actual venue between matches. It paralleled my own experience, teaching myself to fish bread punch in readiness for a Grand Union Canal NFA National in North London by using the Leicester Arm of the same canal, it would be similarly clear, in the early mornings at the very least, and, sure enough, it worked in that manner too.

Suddenly - resounding bleeps on both rods at once

I struck into what was clearly a better tench on the left-hand rod combined with a solid drop-back on the right-hand rod leaving the alarm bleeping constantly. Hubert was desperate to help-out so I let him pick up the r.h. rod and he held it until I had netted the tench and soon it was joined by a good roach in the same landing net

A quick weigh put the tench at 3lbs 8ozs and the previously unmolested form of the freshly minted roach at a cracking 1.5.3, and (just) more unexpected Challenge points

Best tench of the day

"I expect you'll be doing a film about this place next then?!", he enquired. Very much matter of fact

"No, I think there are plenty of people who know more about this place then I do Hubert", came the reply. His response was indeed flattering, yes, but, I have to say, very much wide of the mark

According to my build-up of notes (no keepnets allowed) the catch comprised 5 roach and 4 tench for a total of exactly sixteen pounds with the smallest fish again eleven ounces.

Quality fishing at one of the best stillwaters in the area

Best roach of the day

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all, let's hope the fishing is on the up at last!

Wide Options Narrowed (or The Big Roach get Bigger)

Cracking the glass ceiling caused a rapid repair to the metaphorical understairs cupboard contemplating zone. From thence some noteworthy conclusions were drawn
Sadly however, a month or two ago, all records for 2012 and 2013 literally disappeared in front my very eyes from the screen of my iPad together with a lifetime's list of pound-plus canal roach. 'Sadly' as a word is of course no true reflection to an avid lister and recorder of the feeling of loss at this event. Apparently it was something to do with my phone and tablet syncing but not being backed-up to the cloud, and all that clap-trap, however it has continued to happen arbitrarily since so I'm not so sure

Anyway, cue a watershed decision not to let 'the system' have control of my information henceforth and the subsequent investment in a set of superb moleskines; one for the initial returning dabblings of 2010 and 2011; one for what remnants of 2012/2013 I can glean from the blog (thank goodness for the idea to commit so much of it to that!) and one for general species records but, as that one is red, mainly for roach

Thankfully I know that, at the time the glass ceiling was breached, 37 rutilii in excess of a pound had been enticed from the murky depths, for which I thank the industrial revolution generally. Since that time, brightly I thought, individual records of each trip had been made but some of them had also subsequently been lost so there are definite gaps in the record however a few of those relate to sorties to the Grand Union and conjoined Oxford and Grand Union between Napton on the Hill and Braunston (that's another story!)

In compiling a resume on rolled moleskin it became apparent that this year individual captures over the 2012 PB of 1-4-12 (and the average of 1-2-4) had become quite regular. The average for the year must be around, if not higher than, 1lb 4ozs but the facts will never be entirely known now, although I do realise that henceforth the record can be recalculated to determine loose figures to hang a somewhat woolly and holed hat on

The change from liquidised bread, to mashed bread, to quantities of mashed bread as feed around March/April this year has had a notable impact on results, and the number of fish over last years PB is already past five.
This apparently simple change has been the most striking during the big roach quest
I have commented before on the problems with being unable to sustain bites over a decent period on bread with this feeding technique but it is by now certain beyond doubt that the downside is comfortably outweighed in fish above the 2012 average. Fish that were 'of dreams' last year have become sufficiently regular in 2013 to confirm that around three mashed bread satsumas on arrival are the key factor in weeding out the also-rans
It is no less easy to put together a weight of roach however, and, for that, the previous line of thought of a slightly more 'little and often' approach would still be the preferred choice but with the prospect of really big canal roach currently perfectly possible on every trip it is rare that this tactic be adopted unless prevailing conditions suggest it may fail (usually based on water clarity)
In many ways it feels as if the two-pounder came a little early in proceedings. Here we are less than two years into pursuit of the largest of the species, with a formerly unimaginable barrier broken, and yet with the follow-up list well behind, over half a pound in fact, which, in a species that doesn't grow too large, represents a considerable gap in results
Certainly it is perfectly possible that the biggest was a fluke, the last or at least one of a tiny group of monster roach I just happened to cross paths with, it's highly likely in fact, but it has been so noticeable that the largest fish at any one time has been a small incremental increase on its forerunner that it makes this one stand out at being in excess of half a pound bigger than its nearest rival at 1-9-11


The back-up list would nevertheless have been unimaginable pre-2012, and fanciful until April this year, but on two occasions since no less than two fish over the 2012 average have been taken in one session, but, with mention of the word 'session' comes the predicament

The North Oxford Canal benefits from various factors that make it a waterway able to produce these kind of results:

• It is relatively deep in a good number of stretches,
• (almost) always carrying some colour in at least one of the two key lengths (which I separate as above and below Hillmorton Locks), and,
• has a generally low fish population, but,
• a high relative predator population together with,
• a correspondingly low range of successful species; these could be listed simply as Bronze Bream, Roach, Perch and Zander, with Silver Bream a little way behind.
• It also snakes on its winding course through the Warwickshire countryside such that, no matter how horrendous the weather, there is always somewhere worthwhile that one can find sufficient shelter to fish

All of this serves to demonstrate that the canal has the capacity to hold bigger roach and, in roughly equal measure, provide the circumstances for their capture
The downside though is that it carries a high level of boat traffic and, while it is deep, it is also generally a touch too narrow to cope as a fishery, as compared to say the Ground Union in Northants where, on a decent peg, it is possible to resume catching straight after a boat. Fish seem to scatter when a boat passes and it is very time consuming to bring them back onto the feed, it can take as long as an hour and the chances of another boat, or in fact numerous boats, in that period is high which reduces chances to close to zero. When fishing with bread this is even more of an issue but is exacerbated by the fact that the heavier one feeds at the outset the shorter the initial catching period will usually be because the fish can be fed-up (in the falconry sense) within minutes
Evenings are not much better as narrowboats currently have no idea of when to stop moving and a recent trip met with boats after dark making a mockery of the effort
So, it is very much a case of starting at first light and continuing until the boats start but, on those days when the boats are lenient to the angler, it is very clear from experience that when bites are forthcoming immediately the session starts they will end with the rising sun. The heavy bread feed and 20mm-plus punched flake generally limits caught fish to those over 14ozs and the littl'uns only get a look in when they have whittled the bait down to something manageable but it is abundantly clear that what equates to one and a half to two slices of bread being thrown-in at the outset quickly encourages those roach over the pound and, more often than before, over 1lb 2ozs to have a go

Roach of 1-8-5 and 1-5-8 together with a hat-trick silver bream of 0-14-13. Quite a catch!

Soon I will try upping the initial feed even more, expecting it to kill it before I've started, but I would have expected that with the current level of feed so who knows? Secondly, the hook bait can be increased to over 25mm and that will make a logical combined step. Nothing ventured...

Posted with Blogsy

A Crescendo of Big Fish Populations

A non-descript modest canal but currently full of surprises

So what to make of all this currently exceptional angling on the local canal?

Over the past few weeks I have posted details of catches enjoyed from a wide variety of pegs along the central and eastern sections of the canal and even the areas with no previous pedigree for producing any number of fish have offered unbelievably good sport

It is, as they say, 'a known fact' that zander have been present in the water for decades with their initial impact being seen in the loss of gudgeon and then ruffe shoals. All these years later the impact is seen in a different manner with the previously predominant small fish below three ounces now in the minority and constantly being controlled by the alien predator resulting in larger fish dominating the extant biomass

More surprising still however is the number of fish over a pound now being caught. When I quit fishing back in the late nineties matches on the canal would often produce the odd big roach or skimmer and also the occasional big perch or two thus proving that anything over a pound was a rarity. Whereas nowadays fish over that weight are caught on, almost literally, every trip and regularly, recently, in multiples

The cut is reasonably deep in some areas, over six foot, but generally it's depth is not unusual and historically it has not been noted for big fish nor high populations. Indeed back in the 1980's a pound of small mixed species of fish was a run of the mill weight in matches, although I do recall a couple of seasons when ounces were all that was required to do well, so poor was sport, and then in the 1990's catches improved such that one was fishing for two pounds or more to make the frame but, even then, weights over 4lbs were exceptional red letter days for the lucky captors

Other changes have taken place too; the percentage of hybrids has increased with one or two being taken in the majority of catches and roach over one pound are quite literally commonplace as are bream and good perch in the right areas...and then there are the zander too of course

Personally I have never been what I consider a specimen hunter, i.e. an angler prepared to stake-out a location for days in pursuit of the fish of a lifetime, much more for me the incessant anticipation of a bite through the guile and thoughtfulness we now call watercraft, and all that goes with it, in short sharp bursts and it may therefore be that a few even larger specimens exist now and perhaps may also have been present in the past.

Certain Rugby, Warks-based anglers of yesteryear; 1960's England International Hubert Noar, Norman 'Ted' Adderley, Johnny Knee and Maurice Smith or (to a lesser degree and in a different style) Bedworth's John and Steve Haynes spring to mind as those who would not be averse to hanging-out a significant lump of bread (or even paste or cheese) and consequently would from time to time, and often in bursts, enjoy some success with the odd big roach or skimmer, and sometimes maybe up to four or five of them at once, to take the honours in locally run matches. Those few circumstances apart however the present situation is unprecedented and, in terms purely of roach, must currently offer some of the finest sport on offer anywhere for the early riser, for, after the passing of the first narrowboat, the going is instantly less than average

It has been noticeable that since the end of the extended cold winter the fishing has improved beyond belief. There have been times through the coldest spells when bites always seemed possible but often with just one or two occurring per trip and, between mid-December and the end of March, sport was hard with not a single roach over one pound taken and the ceiling during that period being 13 ounces. Once water temperatures rose past seven or eight degrees though things began to change dramatically. Catch weights went from averaging under one and a half pounds in January to three pounds in February/March are I've just calculated were in excess of seven and a half pounds for April

Recently, while basking in the unmistakable and unavoidable ensuing glow of a roach of over 1lb 7ozs, I became engaged in conversation with a dog-walker who explained that a new marina was to be built nearby and, being a nosey so-and-so, I sought to investigate this upon returning to the Burton Roost. Apart from the sheer scale of the proposal, approaching 600 moorings(!), two things struck me - first the depth; marinas are apparently constructed with a water depth of 3.5m, quite an eye-popper; and, secondly, that apart from the area loosely based around Rugby there is only one 'proper' offline marina between there and Oxford. This latter point was not something I had previously considered but, as with many of these things it becomes immediately obvious when pointed-out that this is indeed the case

So why is this relevant you may ask? Well if the fish are not there at certain times, and I am a great believer that if they are there then more often than not you are going to catch a few of them, why are they not there at other times? There are a few new marinas and a few old established ones that could influence the situation in this respect but the one factor they will all have in common is that they will not have many trees on the banks, they will generally be lined with boardwalks and interlocking steel sheet-piling. The upshot of this is that in order to spawn the scaled inhabitants need to run the gamut of heavy day-time boat traffic to find that shallow water with roots in which to deposit and then fertilise their eggs that simply will not be present in the marinas particularly in respect of the needs of roach, bream and perch

At other times of course the depth of the marinas will offer shelter, especially below the propellor line, particularly in the depths of winter which would appear to explain why fish were scarce just two months ago and yet now are present in impressive numbers. It would also explain why they are so large with the vastness in volume of the marinas enabling them to thrive and grow to sizes previously unimagined on narrow canals and, with the zander also benefiting from the same advantages, they continue, in the absence these days of annual electro-fishing by, then, BW, to effectively cull the small native fish with their own inimitable team-work

The acid test will come when spawning time is over. The fish cannot have appeared from nowhere and there must be some logical explanation for the sudden upturn in excitement so if they disappear as quickly in June as they turned-up in April I suspect we can be fairly certain of the answer. Of course it is just possible this phenomenon may have occurred, presumably to a lesser degree, in the good old days when close season rules applied to canals, but we would never have known of course

So what price a two pound roach now then? Are they still genuine canal fish or a form of lake fish? Time will tell

DEATH OR GLORY AS THE CHUBBY LADY SINGS



Last venue of the river season

One day left then and it was back to the Leam to follow more precisely the 'laws of small river fishing'. With Jeff Hatt's timely advice fresh in my mind I left the village stores with TWO White Tin Loaves and a ladle to apply it with, perhaps I took him too literally?!

Having given myself less restriction than the customary 2 hour slot I walked a touch further than previously, commencing at the furthest swim I had formerly dabbled in and starting around 3pm by introducing two handfuls of mashed bread into that and, on the grounds that I was alone on the venue, each of the next three swims. This decision was preceded by some genuine pangs of guilt as I was brought up to fish one swim so that the others were available for other anglers but I am getting used to the fact that small river fishing would falter on that aspect alone and, as we are not talking venues where all the pegs are defined and worn, this was the time to get used to the principle

In doing so I fairly immediately questioned the wisdom of such an approach as I watched a shoal of 5 or 6 chub in the 2lb class slowly sink their black-piped grey forms into the deeper darkness of the second swim, the water so clear as to make concealment of my presence almost an impossibility

The early start could quite easily have been foregone for two or three hours' bird watching as I only enjoyed the occasion tap on the tip trying all four swims with the now customary large cube of rubbery crust on the hook in search of the target - a first ever 4lb river chub. The inclusion of the word 'river' is a bit of a giveaway clue here to the fact that, yes, I once managed an incredibly flukey Oxford Canal chub of 4.3.0 with 12 minutes of a match to go back in 1994 (on carp gear just after I'd fortuitously lost my light caster rig on a snag!) which was accompanied in the keepnet by a small shoal of very nervous gobies huddled in a corner

The final gambit was to revisit the first swim which I most fancied for the compulsory bite as the chill of dusk descended. Having neatly located a submerged branch in a deeper channel by trying to remove it from the river bed on my first visit to the swim I moved upstream a little on my return having introduced (a ladle of) more mashed bread above my previous baiting as I departed earlier to try the other swims

I was just silently and simultaneously bemoaning the fact that I'd left my head torch in the car, enjoying the clear loud hooting of the invisible resident tawny owl just 15 metres in front of me and listening to my bat detector hissing its disapproval of the low evening temperature keeping bats in their roosts when the experience from my first small river session just four trips ago must have occurred again as I instinctively struck into a savage bite and relied on the Avon to get the fish away from any snags and into the net...in the dark

So everything went to plan with the chub's capture except the missing SD card still in my laptop from my last post meaning I had to delete an image to get this 'record shot', as birders would say as an excuse for a worse than useless photograph, of the fish

I have to say, as soon as I saw the fish in the net I could be sure the target was going to be safe until next season. It was noticeably larger than the fish I had four trips back and the scales confirmed the discrepancy to be 10ozs as they settled at 2.15.0. Nevertheless my biggest since that chance encounter 18 years ago and this time actually an intentional capture, albeit on the last possible cast of the season. As the fat lady was clearing her throat I packed away by Braille and gazed across the meadow into the waist-deep blanket of mist before walking back across the spongey pasture considering the lessons of the preceding month with a hint of satisfaction but this was more to do with 'being out there' and the last minute avoidance of a blank than the actual catch, nice though it was. So neither death (thankfully), nor glory (sadly) but a satisfactory conclusion to perhaps the last bastion of common sense in the coarse fishing calendar - the river season

My baptism has been into a different world; different approach, tactics, method...skills even; different everything, but those aspects worth remembering are noted and next season we'll give it another go, without doubt

Meanwhile I was tempted to try the same tactic on a peg on the North Oxford Canal at Rugby on Sunday where chub used to be found but without success, so next week it will be back to the canals, properly and in earnest, in pursuit of their slightly larger inhabitants and seeking to make direct comparisons to the '80's & '90's. Another interesting little episode to come, of that I'm certain