There comes a point in every working man’s life when retirement stops being some distant fantasy involving garden centres, sensible cardigans and a mild interest in bird tables. It becomes something far more important. A target. A finish line. A desperate crawl toward freedom whilst sat in a design studio pretending that I'm enjoying working on rugged Indian SUV's.
By half three my brain had liquified somewhere between a client email and a discussion about steering wheel ride-down conflict to the CAS surfaces, so naturally the only sensible course of action was to head for the canal and attempt to catch zander. Because if there’s one thing anglers excel at, it’s replacing one form of disappointment with another.
Now this particular stretch had been ridiculously good for zander over the last couple of years. Of course, as happens with all good fishing spots, word spread quicker than a scandal in a village pub. You only have to casually mention “had a few zander” within earshot of another angler and suddenly there’s more blokes in camouflage hanging around than a surplus army warehouse.
Nic from Avon Angling soon decided to get involved after hearing about my recent captures, only by then the fish had vanished into thin air. Typical canal zander behaviour. One day they’re stacked up in numbers like shoppers outside Aldi at Christmas, the next day the place resembles an abandoned bathtub. Poor Nic blanked completely, which is the fishing equivalent of turning up to a birthday party after everyone’s gone home and the balloons are being deflated.
Still, despite all available evidence suggesting otherwise, I fancied my chances this evening. Anglers possess the memory retention of goldfish when it comes to bad sessions. We conveniently remember the magical evenings whilst mentally deleting the six-hour blanks in sideways rain where we considered selling all our tackle and taking up bowls.
Before reaching the canal I stopped off at Sainsbury’s Local for supplies and immediately experienced the modern British condition of laughing bitterly at the price of basic bread. Warburtons now sits on the shelf like some luxury artisan product for hedge fund managers and Premier League footballers. I picked up a loaf, checked the price and genuinely considered whether I’d need finance options.
Fortunately salvation appeared in the reduced section in the form of toastie loafs marked down to forty pence. Forty pence! I nearly applauded. At that price I considered buying the entire basket and opening a small independent bakery out the back of my car. Perfect for river season too because chub absolutely adore floating bread.
Frankly, some of those river chub probably eat better than most families now. Somewhere under an overhanging willow there’s a six-pound fish refusing budget crusts like some sort of underwater food critic. “Hmm yes… disappointing texture… insufficient fermentation on the crumb…” Cheap bread in hand and optimism restored, I headed toward the canal feeling oddly victorious despite technically celebrating discounted carbohydrates.
Conditions looked absolutely spot on when I arrived. Slight tinge of colour in the water, warm evening, low light and that lovely stillness canals get where everything feels fishy even when it absolutely isn’t. The kind of atmosphere that convinces you every cast could produce a personal best or at the very least justify ignoring responsibilities at home.
I started at the exact stretch where I’d caught before, already mentally rehearsing how I’d casually describe my captures later as though this sort of thing happened all the time. First cast, nothing. Second cast, nothing. Third cast resulted in snagging what I believe was either a submerged bicycle or the last remaining fragments of British manufacturing.
An hour later I’d worked every inch of that fifty-yard stretch with absolutely nothing to show for it. No follows, no knocks, not even a tiny perch stupid enough to save my dignity. You know things are getting desperate when you begin convincing yourself that random twitches in the line are bites. Every tiny tap suddenly becomes evidence the fish are “just being finicky tonight.”
No Mick, they aren’t being finicky. There simply aren’t any fish there. I stood staring into the canal trying to project confidence whilst internally unravelling like a pension fund during a market crash. Eventually boredom overcame stubbornness and I decided to move up toward the proper hotspot where the fish had been stacked previously.
Now this is where the dangerous optimism kicks back in. Every angler knows the feeling. The second you approach an area with previous form, your confidence returns despite overwhelming historical proof that fish operate entirely outside the laws of logic. I started fan-casting every likely feature. Lock mouths, reed lines, dark shadows beneath moored boats where shopping trolleys and human ambition go to die. Everything looked absolutely textbook.
The sort of spots magazine articles point at with arrows and captions saying “prime predator holding area.” Yet once again, absolutely nothing happened. It was deader than a town centre on a Monday morning. Even the ducks looked bored.
Then a boat came through and churned the canal bottom up beautifully. Normally that’s prime time. Zander often switch on after disturbance and begin hunting in the coloured water, so naturally my confidence shot through the roof again for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I stood there clutching the rod with renewed anticipation, already imagining that float off at any moment.
But no. Not a sniff. The only thing that came alive after the boat passed was my lower back and a sudden awareness that I’m no longer physically designed for standing on uneven towpaths for four consecutive hours. At one point I made a noise getting up off my tackle bag that sounded like somebody slowly crushing a packet of crisps.
Eventually I admitted defeat and decided to call it a day. Sometimes canal fishing feels less like a hobby and more like a prolonged psychological experiment designed to test how much rejection one human can tolerate before taking up gardening instead.
Yet weirdly, despite the blank, despite the disappearing fish and despite the increasing certainty that retirement cannot come soon enough, I still enjoyed it. For a few hours I forgot about politics, taxes, inflation and the general depressing circus that modern life has become. I wasn’t thinking about energy bills, work emails or whether I can justify buying branded bread anymore. It was just me, the canal and several thousand pounds worth of fish completely ignoring my existence in peaceful silence.
And honestly, that’s probably why we keep going back. It isn’t entirely about catching fish, although obviously that helps enormously. It’s the escape from all the nonsense. The quiet wander along the towpath . The ridiculous optimism that maybe this session will be the night everything comes together again. Of course next time I’ll probably blank once more and spend the drive home muttering darkly about deadbaits and boat traffic like some unhinged conspiracy theorist. But I’ll still return. Because somewhere in that murky canal there’s a zander waiting to completely ruin my evening in exactly the right way.
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