Canal Roach: Trapped in a Sisyphean Loop - Pt.16

A friend at work asked me the other day why I still fish canals when I’m not exactly emptying a keepnet after every session. Fair question really. Modern anglers seem to judge success entirely by whether they need a forklift truck to get the fish back into the water, not by completing a quest to catch a stone loach like I did, or how many likes on Instagram they get. Take good mate Nic from Avon Angling for instance who caught a cracking four-pound crucian the other day. Absolute belter. Fish of a lifetime for many anglers. Each to their own though, whatever floats you're boat, and what works for you.

Now I told Nic straight afterwards his next move should be buying a lottery ticket because luck like that only comes round once every Halley’s Comet, well unless you're Nic, because it does seem to happen quite a lot for him.

Problem is, now the venue which was busy anyway now resembles the evacuation scene from Dunkirk. Word gets around, doesn’t it? One decent fish appears on Facebook, YouTube or the dreaded Instagram and suddenly every “specimen hunter” within a fifty-mile radius arrives armed like they’re invading a small country. Pot hunters and all that. 

Rod pods, bite alarms, three-rod set-ups, buckets of pellets and more electronic equipment than NASA had during the moon landing. You can practically hear the crucians underwater. “Oh no. Not those method feeders again.” The poor fish must feel like they’re trapped in a never-ending episode of Groundhog Day. Every five minutes another golf-ball-sized lump of fishmeal crashes into the lake bed while some bloke in camouflage mutters about “building a swim”.

Building a swim? It’s a fishing peg, not an extension on a semi-detached in Wolverhampton. But Nic  and this is where experience matters ignored all that fashionable nonsense. Didn’t sit there behind two motionless rods staring at bobbing'less bobbins like a pensioner waiting for the kettle to boil.

No, he fished properly. A float. A couple of maggots. Watching the water. Old school. And the crucians probably thought, “Hang on lads, this one’s feeding us actual food instead of compressed hedgehog pellets.” Then one of them wandered over all curious-like. “Ooh look Barry, two lovely red maggots.” Five seconds later: “Barry… I’ve made a terrible mistake, damn it !!”

That’s the thing with modern fishing. Everyone follows trends like frightened sheep in waterproofs. One bloke catches on a feeder and suddenly nobody under the age of forty remembers floats exist. I'm guilty of it from time to time, and to be honest there is no getting away from it.

I'm tempted to turn up with a centrepin reel however the other anglers would likely report me to the Angling Trust as some sort of historical reenactor.

Which brings me neatly to canals. I moan about canals as you know, but there are positives because most anglers avoid them like tax audits and family karaoke nights. There’s peace from other rod wavers on the canals. Solitude. Proper atmosphere. 

Often just me, the towpath, a few suspicious ducks and occasionally a dog walker, jogger, biker or gongoozler looking at my landing net resting a fish as though I’m illegally farming minnows. I don’t want anglers either side of me. I don’t want four blokes opposite discussing politics at the volume of an RAF flypast. I don’t want bite alarms sounding every eleven seconds like a reversing lorry convention. And I definitely don’t want to hear somebody explain cryptocurrency while spodding half a tonne of hemp into a lake.

Apparently this makes me a misanthrope, because I probably am. Now that word gets thrown around a lot these days. People assume a misanthrope hates humanity. Not true at all. I don’t hate people, I'm one of those ravers to the grave after all (Next gig in two weeks is Leftfield). Hate takes energy and frankly most people aren’t worth the calories. I simply prefer avoiding humanity where possible. 😁 (I Jest !!)

I’m perfectly polite. I’ll help somebody if they’re struggling. I’ll say hello. I’ll even untangle someone’s disastrous bird’s nest of line while silently judging every life decision that led them there. A professor once described misanthropy beautifully: “To a misanthrope, most people are about as interesting as a really good sandwich.”

 You know the sort. Bloke turns up. “Any out?” No mate, the fish collectively decided to observe Ramadan. Then there’s the tactical genius who asks what bait you’re using immediately after you catch one. 

As if revealing “double maggot” unlocks some ancient mystical code hidden by the Knights Templar. No, Bob. The bait isn’t the issue. 

The issue is you’ve cast twelve times in four minutes and frightened everything except the shopping trolley in the margins. Still, perhaps I’m what you’d call an optimistic misanthrope.

I like people best when they’re over there somewhere. Ideally several postcodes away.

Which is why canals suit me in the closed season I suppose. No bivvies. No glowing tents. No twenty-four-hour carp syndicate veterans discussing bait protein levels like sports scientists. 

Just quiet water and small fish with proper manners. And truth be told, there’s something wonderfully honest about canal roach fishing. 

No glamour. No sponsorship deals. Nobody making dramatic YouTube thumbnails with their mouth hanging open like they’ve just witnessed the Second Coming. Just manky mongrels in the main with the odd gem, delicate floats and occasional existential despair.

Perfect really. So yes, this optimistic misanthrope fancies some fishing again. The canal awaits. Roach are once more on the agenda. Somewhere out there beneath the murky water swims a fish roughly the size of a digestive biscuit that’s about to ruin my entire afternoon. I'd been watching the weather forecast like a bookmaker watches a favourite in the last furlong. 

With the tackle still in the car after the weekend's outing and a handful of maggots left over, I was desperately hoping the rain would give me a couple of hours on the stretch after work where I'd recently lost what I still claim was a carp. Mind you, anglers have been promoting lost fish ever since the first one got away, so it may well have been a particularly ambitious bream.

The last session had been one of those maddening affairs where bites came thick and fast but fish seemed determined to avoid any formal introduction. Fishing large pieces of bread, I had enough float movements to keep my hopes alive, but precious little attached to the end of the line when I struck. 

This time I had maggots. Not many, but enough to convince myself that they were the missing piece of the puzzle. Anglers are wonderfully optimistic creatures. Give us half a pint of maggots and we'll happily overlook the fact that the fish ignored us completely only three days earlier.

Would the maggots do better than the bread? I had no idea. But they couldn't do much worse, unless they climbed off the hook and swam away themselves.

Now there was rain predicted on the drive home from work. "Light rain," they said. A mere inconvenience. A gentle shower. A slight moistening of the atmosphere. Well, a few miles from the spot that "light rain" transformed itself into the sort of biblical downpour that had old blokes checking for pairs of animals walking past. The windscreen wipers were waving the white flag and visibility had reduced to approximately three inches. Damn it.

Naturally, being a man of sound judgement and impeccable decision-making, I carried on regardless. Arriving at the canal, I sat in the car waiting for the rain to ease and ventured out for a quick gander. At that precise moment a boat emerged from nowhere and ploughed straight through the swim I'd planned to fish. Not content with that, it was already heading for the next lock. It was 5pm after all. What did you expect, Mick? A deserted canal and fish queuing up to jump into the landing net?

Thankfully the rain eased off, so I got set up. Maggots, liquidised bread and a bit of groundbait were introduced to proceedings while I plonked the float in the middle track where the canal is all of three feet deep. 

To my astonishment, within ten minutes the float lifted in a manner that screamed "strike now, you fool!" Naturally, I missed it. Fortunately the fish were feeling charitable and another bite followed shortly afterwards. This time the float slid away to the left and I connected with a fish. A small perch emerged from water the colour of builder's tea. Quite how it saw the bait remains one of life's great mysteries.

The float went back out and soon disappeared again. This fish put up a proper scrap and I convinced myself I'd hooked a decent hybrid. As usual, I was wrong. It was a slab of a bream, fully equipped with enough slime to lubricate a medium-sized tractor. The landing net may never recover.

Then disaster struck. The unmistakable sound of a lock being opened somewhere up the cut signalled the arrival of every canal angler's favourite event. Within minutes the canal transformed from a peaceful waterway into the lower reaches of the River Amazon. The float was charging downstream like it had somewhere important to be and, right on cue, a boat appeared. It thundered through the swim without so much as lifting the throttle. Cheers mate. Much appreciated.

Plan B was required. I fed a margin swim to my left which remained vaguely fishable while the rest of the canal resembled a flood relief channel. Twenty minutes passed waiting for the lock to shut and the water to calm down. Unsurprisingly the main line was now deader than my hopes of an uninterrupted evening's fishing.

With curfew approaching and two hours gone, I dropped the float into the margin as a last throw of the dice. Instantly a bite on the drop. Naturally I missed it, although I did manage to briefly inconvenience the fish with the hook point. Lowering the rig back into the two feet of water, I waited. A few minutes later the float buried itself and this time I connected with a proper swinger that rounded the session off nicely.

Was it worth driving through monsoon conditions, watching boats destroy the swim, enduring canal turbulence usually associated with shipping lanes and spending half the session waiting for water to settle? Most definitely. The rain stayed away, the fish fed despite the chocolate-coloured water and, for once, the canal allowed me to leave with a smile rather than a fresh collection of excuses. 

No roach though, I might be wasting my time here !!

Canal Roach: Trapped in a Sisyphean Loop - Pt.15

“They Will Kill You” doesn’t so much begin as stagger drunkenly through the fire exit clutching a meat cleaver and screaming obscenities at the concierge. 

Asia Reaves takes what appears to be a straightforward housekeeping job in one of those vast New York apartment blocks where everybody looks fabulously wealthy yet somehow faintly embalmed, as though they’ve all been preserved in artisan vinegar by a Scandinavian undertaker.

Naturally the building turns out to be riddled with disappearances, Satanic shenanigans, homicidal residents and enough occult nonsense to make the average village medium fling her crystals into the canal and take up accountancy instead. 

Before long the entire affair detonates into a glorious cavalcade of axes, katanas, severed limbs and shrieking maniacs hurtling down corridors like middle-aged bargain hunters charging the reduced bakery shelf at Lidl five minutes before closing.

Zazie Beetz storms through the carnage wearing the expression of a woman who’s discovered somebody’s microwaved haddock in the staff kitchen for the third consecutive afternoon and has finally decided murder is a proportionate response. Patricia Arquette appears to be having the time of her life amid the blood geysers and demonic carry-on, while Tom Felton prowls about looking like a man who absolutely knows where several bodies are hidden but is enjoying the suspense too much to say anything. There is also, for reasons best known to the Devil himself, a talking pig’s head on a stick which arrives like something dreamt up after eating suspicious cheese during a thunderstorm.

The whole thing plays like “Kill Bill” after twelve pints of industrial cider, a knock to the temple from a snooker cue and an ill-advised séance conducted in the toilets of a provincial Wetherspoons. It is gloriously excessive, magnificently stupid and sprays claret around with the sort of enthusiasm usually reserved for Formula One podium celebrations.

Perhaps that explains why, after watching it before bed and drifting happily into thoughts of finally getting back onto the rivers in a fortnight or so rod quiver slung over shoulder, landing net still faintly smelling of last season’s optimism, flask of tea capable of stripping yacht varnish I somehow slept clean through a thunderstorm of Biblical savagery.

The Almighty himself could probably have been hurling wheelie bins through conservatories while roof tiles cartwheeled over the chimney pots like frightened pheasants, and I’d still have been snoring peacefully away dreaming of crease swims, wagtails bobbing along the far bank, damp grass soaking through the knees of me trousers and that first glorious savage yank on the float after far too long away from the water.

Proper Piscatorial Quagswagging bliss.

Anyway enough of that, to the fishing !! Tramp Alley Again

Which is unlike another trip to Tramp Alley where, of late, it’s about the only stretch of canal I’ve managed to locate a few obliging roach that don’t appear to possess the survival instincts of Cold War spies. Everywhere else has been deader than a taxidermist’s workshop after an electrical fire, so naturally I found myself back there again at first light armed with maggots, and the sort of weary resignation normally associated with men queueing at council offices clutching damp paperwork.

The morning itself already had the feel of one of those oppressive summer days where the heat sits on your shoulders and even the pigeons looked exhausted. Still, a maggot approach had worked previously and there seemed little point attempting anything more sophisticated given the fish in this canal generally behave as though they’ve signed a collective non-aggression pact against anglers. A couple of balls of groundbait were introduced with all the hopefulness of a man scattering flower petals onto the M25 in an attempt to improve the scenery.

And then came the waiting.

Not peaceful waiting either. The sort of waiting where you begin by watching the float attentively before gradually descending into a semi-conscious trance of existential collapse, idly wondering whether your knees have finally packed up for good and whether anybody has ever actually enjoyed sitting behind a wheelie bin factory listening to distant scooters and somebody shouting “KEV!” repeatedly across a towpath. It can take 30 minutes for the first bite Mick, "oh yeah I should have remembered that !!"

Truth be told I’ve not really been feeling it lately. The weather simply hasn’t been conducive to fishing now has it. It’s been hotter than Satan’s slow cooker during the week and when you spend all day trapped at work slowly liquefying under overly white LED lighting, the thought of trudging to the canal afterwards versus sitting in the garden beside a barbecue with a cold beer becomes less a difficult decision and more a matter of basic human survival instinct.

There’s only so much enthusiasm a man can muster for staring into murky canal water while perspiration rolls down the crack of his backside like a frightened slug. Particularly when your neighbours are at home flipping sausages, drinking lager and listening to dreadful music from a Bluetooth speaker the size of a tumble dryer. (sorry neighbours) But it's a natural venue with some gems to ne had, always on the canals there are the positives !!

Now it was one of those bright, clear mornings that anglers pretend to enjoy whilst secretly muttering dark things about sunlight. The canal had settled overnight, but there was still a bit of colour in the water, which at least stopped me turning around and going back to bed. A delicate mist clung to the surface, giving the whole place an air of mystery and promise. Naturally, the fish hadn't received the memo.

I settled into the first swim armed with a simple plan: a couple of maggots on a small hook, some liquidised bread, and a bucket of groundbait slop that looked suspiciously like something excavated from a Victorian drain. Confidence was high. The fish, however, remained unconvinced.

Forty minutes later the float finally twitched. It wasn't so much a bite as a fish breathing heavily in the general direction of the bait. I struck at what was probably one of the tiny fish topping when I arrived, but whatever it was had already made its escape and was no doubt laughing with its mates.

Boredom eventually defeated optimism, so I moved swims. Another forty minutes passed with all the excitement of a tax return. Undeterred, I shifted again, settling halfway between the two previous swims. As I dragged the rig into position a tiny perch hurled itself at the maggots like a starving crocodile. It wasn't exactly specimen fishing, but at least it prevented the dreaded blank. Thank you, little perch. Your services will not be forgotten.

This latest move proved more productive. After only ten minutes the float dipped properly and I connected with a fish that actually intended to stay attached. A spirited scrap followed before a lovely roach emerged from the depths. Not a monster, but a very welcome sight. At last, evidence that the canal contained something larger than my hook.

The float barely settled again before disappearing. I struck and immediately found myself connected to something that felt like a submerged wardrobe. It moved with determination but in a most peculiar manner, seemingly attempting to swim backwards. My first thought was a decent eel. The warm water made it possible and several huge boils erupted on the surface, which only strengthened the theory.

The rod was bent into a shape normally associated with longbows, yet I was slowly gaining line. Then the mystery was solved. A tail broke the surface. Then another bit. Then the whole fish appeared. It was a sizeable bream, foul-hooked firmly in the tail. No wonder the thing had been fighting like it was trying to reverse park a caravan. The poor creature looked as surprised as I did.

I feared I'd ruined the swim, but the fish clearly hadn't read the angling textbooks. Bite followed bite. Roach hybrids, perch and assorted canal residents queued up to inspect the maggots. For a glorious period everything worked exactly as it should. The float danced, fish arrived regularly and I briefly entertained dreams of actually knowing what I was doing.

Then came the distant rumble of doom.

A boat.

Not just any boat, but one descending the flight of locks. Slowly the peaceful canal transformed into a raging torrent. The carefully nurtured swim became a hydraulic experiment. Groundbait headed for the next county and the float began travelling faster than some of the local buses.

Eight o'clock in the morning.

Honestly, don't these people have a bacon sandwich to eat? A jigsaw puzzle to finish? A nice lie-in perhaps? Apparently not. Apparently their mission in life was to steam directly through my swim at precisely the moment things were going well.

Still, such is canal fishing. One minute you're contemplating greatness, the next you're watching your float disappear towards Birmingham. Yet despite the interruptions, the backwards-swimming bream, and the fish that took forty minutes to blink at the bait, it was another thoroughly enjoyable session, especially when the half a pint of maggots were gifted to me by Martyn from Stratford Fishing and Outdoors, top-man. 

Best of all, there wasn't another angler in sight AGAIN !!. Just me, the fish, the mist, and a boat skipper who will probably never know how close he came to becoming the subject of a strongly worded letter.

One final lesson emerged from the morning's adventures. Maggots on an size 18 hook produced far fewer missed bites than previous experiments. Sometimes angling breakthroughs arrive not with fanfare and celebration, but quietly, hidden amongst foul-hooked bream and muttered complaints about boat traffic.

That'll do nicely.

Canal Roach: Trapped in a Sisyphean Loop - Pt.14

The alarm went off at some ungodly hour that even foxes would complain about, and there I was once again dragging my carcass towards the cut like a man heading for a medieval punishment rather than a morning’s fishing. Still, that’s canal fishing for you. Nobody ever skips down the towpath whistling like they’re in a toothpaste advert. You stagger there half awake, clutching enough tackle to invade Belgium, all because somewhere in that murky trench there might be a roach willing to ruin your morning slightly less than the others.

Now Mongrel Mile had been kind to me recently if your definition of “kind” includes catching fish that look like they’ve been assembled from spare parts behind a pub. Hard-fighting they were, mind. Proper scrappers. But what I wanted was a roach. A proper roach. Not these suspicious hybrids that look as though two species got drunk at a Christmas disco and made regrettable life choices behind the reed bed. Some of these fish had more mixed heritage than a family tree drawn by a Labrador.

The trouble with canals is they make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Rivers at least pretend to have logic. Lakes occasionally offer clues. Canals though? Total anarchy. One hundred yards can hold nothing but perch and old shopping trolleys, then another twenty yards down you’re suddenly into skimmers, perch and enough hybrids to qualify as a genetic experiment. You could fish one peg for three hours and conclude the canal is dead, then move six feet and discover somebody’s secretly stocked the place overnight.

Fortunately for me, somebody had already done the gardening. I arrived to find not one but two ready-made swims cut into the jungle. Happy days indeed. There’s nothing better than finding a peg someone else has hacked out while you stroll in pretending you’re some hardened pioneer of the waterways. I stood there nodding thoughtfully at the swim as if I’d personally crafted it with a machete and determination, when in reality another poor soul had already sacrificed half his blood supply to nettles three days earlier.

The weather, however, can get in the bin.

Yesterday upstairs in the house felt like sleeping inside an air fryer. Unbearable despite a few gins taking the edge off. I spent most of the night rotating like a distressed rotisserie chicken trying to locate a cool patch on the bedsheet that no longer existed. Whoever says they enjoy thirty-degree heat wants investigating. Mid twenties is plenty for me. Once temperatures creep higher than that I begin to wilt like reduced-price coriander.

This morning though? Perfection.

Six o’clock on the towpath in just a t-shirt. No blazing sun yet. No cyclists shouting “MORNING!” with terrifying enthusiasm. Just still water, bird song and the distant mechanical grumble of somebody starting a narrowboat engine badly. That’s proper fishing weather. The sort that convinces you life is actually rather wonderful until twenty minutes later when a mosquito lands directly inside your ear.

Anyway, enough romantic nonsense. Time to fish.

Out came the lift float set-up centrepin and 14ft float rod . Simple gear. Piece of bread on the hook and some liquidised bread slop fed into the swim. Lovely stuff, bread. Fish absolutely adore it and it also has the added advantage of making your hands smell like a damp bakery all day. Canal fishing with bread always feels gloriously old school as though at any moment some bloke in flared trousers and sideburns might appear beside you carrying a keepnet the size of a submarine.

Now anybody who fishes canals knows patience is crucial. Fish don’t exactly queue up like shoppers at a supermarket opening. Often it takes half an hour before anything arrives. You sit there staring at a float while your brain slowly starts inventing ridiculous theories.

“Maybe the fish have moved.”

“Maybe there are no fish.”

“Maybe I’ve accidentally lowered the float into another dimension.”

Then at last — a bite.

Missed it completely.

Naturally.

Second bite resulted in briefly hooking something before it charged off like it owed money and vanished. Standard canal nonsense. Third time though, finally, I connected properly and in came the first fish of the morning.

A hybrid.

Of course it was.

Not even a glamorous hybrid either. This thing looked rough. One eye missing, scales wonky, and smelling so bad I nearly checked whether something had died underneath my seat box. Honestly, if canal fish could smoke twenty Benson & Hedges a day and survive entirely on kebab meat, this would be the result.

Still, fish is fish.

No blank.

And once that first one arrives your optimism returns immediately. Suddenly you’re convinced the swim contains twenty roach of a pound each and possibly a forgotten canal record. Fishing does this to people. It turns otherwise rational adults into delusional gamblers with bait boxes.

In the end I managed four fish altogether. Not exactly the sort of haul requiring a commemorative plaque, but enough to keep things interesting. A couple fought well too, darting about under the rod tip as if auditioning for River Monsters despite barely being bigger than a digestive biscuit.

Then came disaster.

Mr Heron.

You always hear them before you see them. That prehistoric flapping sound like somebody shaking an old bedsheet aggressively. Down it came gliding across the canal with all the grace of a tax inspector entering a pub. The fish instantly vanished. Gone. Finished. Might as well have lowered a hand grenade into the swim.

As if that wasn’t enough, he then opened the lock above me and sent half the canal charging downstream. Wonderful. The float began travelling sideways at thirty miles an hour while bits of weed, twigs and what looked suspiciously like a traffic cone floated past.

That’s canal fishing for you. One minute tranquillity, next minute the entire ecosystem has been reorganised by a retired couple named Keith and Sandra steering seventy feet of floating cottage toward Birmingham.

I decided on a change of scenery after that and headed back towards the swim from last weekend where I’d managed one fish and a missed bite. Canal anglers are strange creatures because we’ll happily revisit a peg based entirely on vague emotional memories.

“Yes I only caught one fish there…”

“But it felt fishy.”

What does that even mean?

Nobody knows.

The morning still felt lovely though so I wandered off afterwards for a reconnaissance mission at another stretch I fancied trying. A few weeks ago it had been emptier than my bank account after visiting a tackle shop, but thankfully there was now water in it again which is usually considered beneficial for fishing.

Beautiful looking stretch too.

Quiet.

Reedy.

Proper atmosphere.

Of course being May half term there were also holiday boats everywhere. Nothing destroys the illusion of wilderness quite like hearing somebody on a hire boat shouting:

“DON’T PANIC DEREK JUST TURN THE WHEEL!”

followed by a loud crunching noise.

Still, that’s the charm of canals really. They’re chaotic, unpredictable and occasionally smell faintly of old soup, but there’s nowhere quite like them. One morning you blank completely and question your life choices. The next you’re sat watching a float tremble in perfect dawn light convinced there’s nowhere else on Earth you’d rather be.

Even if the fish do look slightly inbred.