Back out on the big roach canal hunt then, because apparently I don’t learn. The rivers, having spent most of the winter impersonating runaway fire hoses, finally closed in a sulk, leaving me stood in the garage staring at my trotting rods like an abandoned Victorian orphan. Weeks on end they were up, angry, brown, and absolutely uninterested in my dreams of gliding floats and thick-set chub. Every time the level dropped a fraction and hope dared to raise its head, bang more rain, more floodwater, and more footage of fields doing a convincing impression of freshwater aquariums.
Trotting? Not a chance. Smaller streams? Forget it. I’d barely finished tying a stick float rig before the Environment Agency website looked like a graph of my blood pressure during Christmas dinner and the post port and cheese.
And so, like many anglers, I could have packed it in. Hung the rods up. Pretended I enjoy “other hobbies”. But no. Needs must. And needs, in this case, look suspiciously like turbid Warwickshire canals and a deep-seated refusal to sit indoors being productive.
I’m quite lucky really. There are canals everywhere near me, slithering through the countryside like forgotten shoelaces. Some are five minutes away, others half an hour if the traffic gods smile upon me. Last closed season I stayed fairly local, which sounds sensible and mature until you realise the results were… let’s say inconsistent.
Yes, I had a PB roach from a short drive away a moment of glory that I will dine out on until at least 2037 but for every success there were long, soul-searching blanks punctuated only by the sound of distant engines and closer digestive activity from dogs.
Usually, I’d be off like a shot the moment narrowboats started moving “in anger”. There’s something about a 70-foot floating shed grinding past your float that tests even the calmest angler. But this year is different.
This year there is a challenge. And when there’s a challenge, you adapt. Or at least you bring more rods and convince yourself it’s a strategy.
So the main approach will be bread under a float (Drennan discontinued Glow Tip Antenna's no less) , fished with a centrepin, because I enjoy watching things move slowly and pretending it’s all very traditional and skillful.
There’s something deeply satisfying about a centrepin the gentle spin, the soft purr, the way it makes you feel superior to absolutely nobody. Bread, too, is a wonderful bait. It catches everything, nothing, and sometimes your own expectations all at once.
But because the canals I fish are often the colour of old gravy, I’ll also from time to time try a quivertip rod with, a Cadence Wand, no less, which sounds like something you’d use to summon fish rather than catch them.
On the end of that will be a humble worm, because if you can’t see your bait, you might as well offer something that looks like it’s alive and vaguely panicking.
In theory, the worm might single out a bigger fish. In practice, it will sit there nobly while I stare at the tip, mentally willing it to move. The quivertip will twitch. Or maybe it won’t. Either way, I’ll convince myself something nearly happened.
Naturally and I say this like it’s perfectly reasonable I’ll also have a sleeper zander rod with me. Because canal zander are brilliant, and because hope springs eternal.
There is always the possibility that a big, toothy predator will appear out of nowhere and validate the extra effort of carrying yet another rod along a towpath designed in 1793.
Speaking of towpaths, it’s time once again to tread the dog poo-riddled ribbon of despair that runs alongside our nation’s canals. These paths are a minefield. Every step is a moral choice. Is that mud? Is that goose muck? Or is that something deposited by a dog that’s been raised on raw meat and unresolved anger?
You develop a special walk. A sort of cautious, mincing shuffle that says, “I am alert, but I am also resigned.” Your eyes flick between the water, your rods, and the ground like a paranoid meerkat. Somewhere behind you, a cyclist is judging you.
Still, there’s something oddly comforting about it all. The murky water. The graffiti that appears to have been written mid-argument. The sound of a narrowboat approaching just as you’ve finally settled into a swim. You’ll hear it before you see it a low mechanical rumble that sends your float drifting sideways and your optimism into early retirement.
And yet… you wait. You watch. You convince yourself the float lifted half a millimetre. You strike, miss everything, and nod thoughtfully as if that was all part of the plan. You adjust the depth by a fraction, because doing something feels better than admitting the fish have unionised against you.
Then, occasionally, gloriously, it happens. The float slides away or lifts out of the water with purpose. The centrepin spins. The rod bends. And into the net comes a proper canal roach slabby, broad, and utterly unimpressed by your excitement. For a moment, everything makes sense. The floods, the closed rivers, the dog poo, the extra rods, all of it.
So yes, while others wait patiently for June, I’ll be out there. Bread under a float. Worm on a quivertip. Zander rod brooding quietly. Back on the canals, chasing big roach in water that looks like soup, along towpaths that test both balance and faith.
Because this is fishing. And frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Now then.
That float definitely moved that time.
Didn’t it?
Late afternoon, the sort of time when optimism goes fishing and reality brings a chair, I found myself watching a float that had all the enthusiasm of a civil servant on a Friday. Earlier, mind you, things had briefly threatened competence a Zander had a go, charged about like it owned the canal, and turned the swim into something resembling a budget white-water course. Naturally, this rendered my carefully laid plans about as useful as a chocolate keepnet. I sat, I waited, I questioned my life choices.
Eventually, the tow died down and with it my patience, so out came the bread—classic, dependable, the angler’s equivalent of “this will definitely work.” I’d seen fish topping here days before, rolling about like they were auditioning for a nature documentary. Today, however, they’d clearly been tipped off. Two hours passed. Not a tremor, not a dimple, not even a courtesy nibble. The float remained as still as a Starmer under questioning.
In a move born of desperation (and mild delusion), I trudged fifteen minutes to another swim, convinced this one would be different. Of course it would. New water, new luck, new me. Half an hour later—BANG the float didn’t just lift a nadger, it attempted orbit. I struck with the confidence of a man who absolutely knew what was on the end.
And yes, I did know. That slow, stubborn, wet-sock resistance… the unmistakable charisma vacuum of a bream. A proper “Sean from Snagged Bro special,” as tradition dictates. Not so much a fight as a prolonged disagreement. Still, I landed it, admired it in the way one admires a tax bill, and pretended this was all part of the plan.
I carried on until the float vanished into the gloom, less from fish activity and more from the sun giving up. A session that promised much, delivered little, and yet somehow still felt like fishing—glorious, baffling, mildly infuriating fishing. On to the next one, where I fully expect the fish to continue their campaign of psychological warfare.
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