Canal Roach: Trapped in a Sisyphean Loop - Pt.8

I arrived at Tramp Alley armed with a noble ambition: to experience the tranquil dignity of the South Stratford Canal. This lasted approximately eleven seconds, or until I slipped on something that may once have been either duck-related or philosophical in origin. Thus began my immersive historical re-enactmentless “Industrial Revolution transport artery,” more “man mildly at odds with mud.” 

The canal itself lounged beside me in that deeply unimpressed way only water can manage. One could almost hear it muttering, “I was completed in 1816, you know,” as if this justified the presence of suspiciously wobbly towpath edges and a duck with the moral authority of a parish councillor. I nodded respectfully, as one does when being silently judged by infrastructure. 

Tramp Alley, I am told, was once a place of spa-going refinement, where genteel visitors sipped mineral waters and discussed ailments with enthusiasm bordering on performance art. I too sampled the local atmosphere, though my intake consisted primarily of midges and regret. It felt authentic. Possibly too authentic. There is something delightfully absurd about canals. Built with grand visions of commerce and empire, they now host slow-moving boats piloted by people named Clive who wave as if they’ve just conquered something. 

History, I reflected, is less about progress and more about who manages to stay upright the longest. As I continued along the towpath, I considered the heroic restoration efforts of the 1960s. Brave souls dredged, rebuilt, and resurrected this waterway from near oblivion. Meanwhile, I struggled to resurrect my dignity after misjudging a puddle of deceptive depth. Their legacy lives on; mine will likely be absorbed into the silt.

I set off for the roach with the kind of misplaced optimism usually reserved for lottery tickets and “quick five-minute jobs” that somehow consume entire afternoons. The air had that crisp, early-morning enthusiasm about it, the sort that suggests great things are about to happen, or at the very least something mildly competent. Naturally, I took this as a sign that today would be a triumphant return to angling glory. Rods packed, bait prepared, dignity loosely attached I marched toward the towpath like a man about to be gently but firmly corrected by reality.

It’s always the same with canals they sit there like retired generals, full of stories, completely unimpressed by your presence, and faintly amused by your inevitable mistakes. I found my first swim, settled in, and within minutes had two small roach. “Ah,” I thought, with dangerous confidence, “today is the day.” This, as it turns out, was the exact moment the universe decided I’d had quite enough encouragement for one morning.

What followed can only be described as an extended masterclass in not catching fish. I moved swims with the optimism of a man rearranging deckchairs on a very uncooperative Titanic. Each new spot looked promising—“That’s got to hold something,” I muttered, as though the fish were listening and considering my proposal. They were not. The canal, meanwhile, maintained its serene composure, as if to say, “You may continue if you wish, but I wouldn’t expect much.”

There is a particular kind of silence that descends when the fish have collectively decided to ignore you. It’s not peaceful it’s pointed. Every ripple feels like a private joke you’re not in on. A duck drifted past at one stage and gave me a look that can only be described as professionally judgmental. If it had a clipboard, I’m certain it would have made a note: “Angler—enthusiastic, but ultimately ineffective.” I considered asking it for advice, but I suspected it would suggest bread and a different career path.

By the second swim, I had entered what experts might call “hope management mode.” This involves lowering expectations in carefully measured increments until success is redefined as “not actively falling into the water.” Bites? Optional. Fish? A luxury. Remaining upright and relatively dry? Now we’re talking. I cast out with renewed determination, which the canal acknowledged by doing absolutely nothing whatsoever.

The third swim was less a strategic decision and more a reluctant acceptance that I had run out of convincing places to blame. “This one,” I told myself, “this is the one.” It wasn’t. At this point, even the midges seemed to lose interest in me, which felt like a new low. When insects that normally regard you as an all-you-can-eat buffet decide you’re not worth the effort, it’s time to reassess your situation.

Still, there’s something wonderfully absurd about it all. Fishing, particularly on canals, has a way of humbling you with surgical precision. One day you’re pulling in fish like a seasoned pro, nodding knowingly at passersby as if you’ve unlocked some ancient aquatic secret. The next, you’re staring at a motionless float, questioning your life choices and wondering if the fish have all relocated to a different postcode out of sheer spite.

I couldn’t help but admire the stubborn charm of the place, though. The canal doesn’t change for anyone. It doesn’t care about your previous success, your carefully chosen bait, or your optimistic early start. It simply exists quietly, persistently, and with just enough unpredictability to keep you coming back. It’s less a hobby and more a long-term negotiation with something that has no intention of meeting you halfway.

Eventually, I packed up with the slow, deliberate movements of a man who has accepted defeat but would prefer not to draw attention to it. Two small roach to show for the effort not exactly headline material, but technically not a blank, which in angling terms is the equivalent of a moral victory. A very small, slightly damp moral victory, but a victory nonetheless. As I trudged back along the towpath, boots carrying more canal than they started with, I reflected on the morning’s events. 

It had been cold, unproductive, mildly humiliating—and oddly enjoyable. Because that’s the thing about fishing: even when it’s terrible, it’s still somehow good. The promise of the next trip, the next cast, the next “this might be the one” moment keeps you hooked far more effectively than any fish ever could. So yes, a short session, a tough morning, and a canal that firmly put me in my place. But give it a day or two and I’ll be back, full of confidence, entirely convinced that this time it will be different. It won’t be, of course—but that’s never really the point, is it?

Canal Roach: Trapped in a Sisyphean Loop - Pt.7

Now there is, if you spend any time among river anglers of a certain persuasion (usually slightly damp, faintly bearded, and carrying at least one item of tackle older than their knees), a particular look that appears when the coarse close season rolls around. 

It is not quite grief, not quite boredom, but something in between like being told your favourite pub has shut for renovations and will reopen as a vape shop. 

This, blog readers, is the moment when the suggestion inevitably arises: “Why not try a lake or even a commercial?” And at this point, a silence falls. A deep, meaningful, slightly horrified silence.

Because to many river anglers, fishing a stillwater in the close season feels less like fishing and more like attending a very damp, mildly competitive picnic where the sandwiches occasionally scream and pull back.

Now, this is not to say stillwaters or commercials, for that matter do not have their place. They do. 

They are, objectively, full of fish. Obscenely full of fish. Fish that appear to have been raised on a strict diet of protein pellets and low self-esteem, willing to fling themselves at anything that vaguely resembles food. 

There is a certain efficiency to it all. You arrive, you sit down, and within minutes something is tugging at your line with all the subtlety of a daily deposit specialist encountering a sausage.

But for the river angler, accustomed to the slow, contemplative rhythm of flowing water, this can feel… unsettling.

On a river in April, during the close season, there is a stillness that borders on the sacred. The banks are empty. The swims lie untouched. 

The only sounds are wind through reeds, the occasional plop of something unseen, and your own thoughts usually revolving around how big that chub definitely was last winter. 

You walk the bank not to fish, but to look, to imagine, to quietly conspire with the water about future plans. It is solitude in its purest form, a kind of gentle conspiracy between angler and river.

Compare this to a stillwater in the same period.

You arrive to a car park already hosting a small festival. There are voices. Many voices. Laughter, shouting, the unmistakable beep-beep-beeeeeep of bite alarms going off with the urgency of a reversing lorry in a supermarket car park. Pegs are lined with bivvies resembling a nylon housing estate. Someone is frying something. Someone else is explaining, at volume, how they “had one over twenty yesterday, mate, absolute unit.”

You sit down, carefully threading your way between keepnets, bait buckets, and a gentleman who appears to have brought his entire garage. You cast out. Within moments BEEEEEEP. A fish. Efficient. Immediate. Undeniable.

And yet…

There is no mystery.

On a river, a bite is a question. On a stillwater, it is more of a notification.

Canals, meanwhile, occupy a peculiar middle ground. They promise something of the old world towpaths, narrowboats, a hint of industrial nostalgia but during the close season they often inherit the same crowded enthusiasm as lakes, gravel pits and commercials. Dog walkers and poop peddlers, cyclists, joggers, entire families of ducks and swans with no regard for personal space. The water itself sits there, straight and slightly suspicious, as if it knows it is not quite a river but would very much like you not to mention it.

Fishing a canal can feel like trying to read a book in a corridor.

The scenery, too, plays its part in this quiet rebellion against “soulless holes.” A river is never the same twice. Light changes it, rain reshapes it, seasons repaint it entirely. One bend might hold deep, shadowed secrets; the next, a shallow glide sparkling like something out of a dream you forgot upon waking. You are not just fishing you are participating in something alive, something that existed long before you and will continue long after you’ve lost your favourite float in a tree.

A stillwater, by contrast, is often… consistent. Reassuringly, relentlessly consistent. The same pegs, the same margins, the same islands placed with geometric certainty. The same fish, too, though perhaps that’s unkind they are individuals, each with their own hopes, dreams, and alarming willingness to eat bright orange spheres. But the setting rarely surprises you. It is designed not to.

And that is, perhaps, the crux of it.

River anglers are, at heart, romantics. Slightly impractical, occasionally muddy romantics. They do not just want to catch fish they want to feel something while doing it. They want the uncertainty, the waiting, the quiet triumph of decoding a stretch of water that initially gave them nothing but suspicion and a nettle sting. They want the story.

On a stillwater, you often get the ending first.

Of course, there are those who happily fish both worlds, slipping between river and lake with admirable flexibility, enjoying each for what it offers. And they are probably healthier, both mentally and in terms of catch rates. But for the dyed-in-the-wool river angler, the close season presents a peculiar kind of exile.

So they walk the banks instead.

They peer into swims like archaeologists of their own past successes. They nod knowingly at overhanging branches. They mutter things like “that’ll do in September” to nobody in particular. And somewhere, in the distance, a bite alarm echoes faintly across a lake, a mechanical birdsong of efficiency. 

The river angler pauses, listens for a moment, and then carries on walking content, slightly smug, and absolutely certain that whatever that noise represents, it is not quite fishing as they understand it.
Anyway to the canal forthwith where I arrived at the stretch with all the optimism of a man who has absolutely no evidence things will go well, but a stubborn belief that today—today—the roach would queue like civilised humans, not feral pigeons. 

The canal lay there motionless, looking less like a thriving waterway and more like someone had spilled a very long puddle and forgotten to mop it up. Still, this was hallowed ground. Legends had been made here, not only decent Zander but there are carp here to be caught as well. Well, one legend. Mine. And I intended to remind the fish of that fact.

The ghosts of past glories were hard to ignore. That old zander the nine-pounder that I caught many moons ago turned into a proper canal heifer had clearly spent its days hoovering up the unfortunate descendants of those 20,000 silver fish that were stocked when maggot peddler Martyn who owns the local tackle shop used to lease the stretch. 

It must have waddled about down there like a chubby underwater landlord. And then of course came the near twelve-pounder from the Hallowed 20 miles away, which I like to think of as the canal’s way of apologising for everything else it’s ever done to me. So naturally, with that sort of history, I fully expected either a record roach or a carp with delusions of grandeur to turn up within minutes.

Tactics, as always, were flawless in theory. A gentle introduction of liquidised bread went in clouding the water like I’d just tipped in a bag of canal-flavoured milkshake followed by maggots under a lift-method float. Classic, elegant, deadly… in magazines. Alongside that, the sleeper rod sat poised with a boilie, alarm set, looking far more professional than anything else in my setup. It’s always nice to have at least one rod that suggests you know what you’re doing, even if the rest of the scene screams otherwise.

Anyway to cut a long story short I arrived at the bank armed with optimism, maggots, and the vague athleticism required to squat down for a couple of hours, only to discover the fish were already in a cooperative mood—either that or they pitied me. Before the first boat rudely announced the concept of “morning traffic” at 8:30, I’d amassed a respectable tally of bites, several of which I gallantly declined to convert into actual fish, purely to keep things sporting. 

The highlight was a plucky hybrid that fought like it had something to prove—unfortunately not its identity as a roach, which would have seen my personal best shattered and my ego inflated to dangerous levels. Still, clear skies and blazing sunshine conspired to suggest fishing should have been dreadful, yet by the ancient and noble technique of “chucking a maggot somewhere vaguely promising,” I managed to prove otherwise. 

The real spectacle, however, was the parade of humanity: six joggers pretending to enjoy themselves, five cyclists dressed like escaped highlighters, and two dog walkers being dragged by creatures with far more purpose than their owners. All in all, not a bad morning—fish caught, dignity mostly intact, and only minimal resentment toward passing boats. Oh and nought on the sleeper rod. 

Transient Towpath Trudging - Pt.145 (Canal Zander)

I rewatched Altered States the other night and was reminded that long before any of us were overthinking a canal float, John C. Lilly was busy climbing into isolation tanks, experimenting with things like LSD and ketamine, and asking his brain what it fancied doing without the inconvenience of reality. Dolphins, tanks, chemicals proper commitment to the idea that consciousness might be more elastic than a length of worn-out pole elastic. And watching it, I couldn’t help thinking: this is just roach fishing taken to its logical extreme.

 Because when you’re after a proper canal two-pounder, you’re not that far off yourself. Sit still long enough, stare hard enough at a motionless float, and eventually something shifts not in the water, but in you. Time stretches, thoughts wander, and you start to suspect the roach are operating on a level you’ve yet to access.

Then the float lifts. Just slightly. Enough.

No tank required. No dolphins either. Just you, the canal, and a brief glimpse into something deeper about two pounds of it, if you’re lucky.

Now getting back on track there are moments in life when a man must confront two unavoidable truths: firstly, that his body is no longer the finely tuned angling machine it once was and my back and knee are still not 100%, and secondly, that sometimes the fish have simply formed a union and voted unanimously against being caught. 

The past few canal sessions had delivered precisely that sort of democratic resistance floats motionless, maggots unmolested, and me sat there like an unpaid extra in a very dull documentary about still water. So, being forcibly removed from the bankside for a few days was, in hindsight, less a tragedy and more a state-sponsored recovery programme for a creaking carcass that had begun to sound like a bag of snapped twigs every time I lifted the landing net.

Of course, the reason for this enforced sabbatical was 16 year old Ben, who required entertaining and looking after whilst the better half and Sam were away gallivanting in Chester with what I can only assume involved excessive chatter, laughter, and absolutely no appreciation for the delicate art of float watching. 

Now, experience has taught me that dragging a youngster along to the canal in the vague hope he’ll share your enthusiasm is a risky strategy. Last time resulted in approximately seven minutes of interest, followed by an hour of existential boredom and in Ben's different mind most likely a critique of why fishing is “basically just sitting.” So this time, I pivoted. Parks, snacks, mild chaos anything but subjecting him to the hypnotic non-event that had become my recent fishing trips.

By the time everyone reconvened for a curry the Saturday evening an event which, incidentally, required far more stamina than any canal session I was already plotting. Because Sunday morning loomed large, and with it, opportunity. The rods practically hummed in anticipation, or possibly that was just me trying to stand up after the aforementioned curry. Either way, the decision was made: back to the towpath, back to familiar territory, back to the scene of previous roach-based encouragement.

The alarm did its duty at 5:30am, but as I peeled myself out of bed and shuffled downstairs, the world outside looked less like promise and more like punishment. A proper hoolie still tearing through, though the sky mockingly was crystal clear. I gave it a long enough stare to convince myself I’d made the effort, muttered the inevitable “not today,” and retreated to the sanctuary of a couple of over-generous pillows. Sensible? Perhaps. Honest? Definitely.

Truth be told, the canals still haven’t got under my skin this close season. I’ve given them a fair crack, but there’s a certain lifelessness about it all at the minute hard to put your finger on, but you know it when you feel it. This morning’s frost won’t have helped either; just another little nudge in the wrong direction when you’re already struggling to muster enthusiasm.

Sunday, then, became what Sundays sometimes ought to be—unhurried. A wander for a bit of fresh air, pale sunshine doing its best to pass as spring, followed by a proper beef dinner that did far more for morale than any blank session could. By the time the plates were cleared and the light began to soften, the itch returned quietly, but persistently.

So the Zander gear was dusted off and readied. No grand expectations, no heroic notions just that familiar pull to be near the water again after work. Because for all the false starts, frosty mornings, and fleeting enthusiasm, the truth remains: it only takes one bite to put everything back into perspective.

And that’s usually reason enough.

 Anyway I set off with the kind of optimism only a close-season angler can muster the delusional belief that today, finally, everything would go exactly to plan. 

Of course, within minutes it became clear that the only thing going exactly to plan was the local dog population’s coordinated effort to carpet the entire stretch in what can only be described as tactical deposits. It wasn’t a path, it was an assault course. 

A brown minefield. One wrong step and you’re carrying eau de Labrador all the way home. Still, with the grace of a bomb disposal expert and the foresight of a man armed with pink marker paint, I negotiated the worst of it and lived to cast another day.

Now, this particular bit of cover and I use the word “cover” loosely, because it’s about as deep as a puddle in a car park has always intrigued me.

 It’s barely a couple of feet deep, yet the Zander seem to treat it like a five-star retreat. Why? No idea. Perhaps they enjoy the thrill. Perhaps they’re just showing off. 

Either way, last season it produced a 6 and a 7, which in angling terms is enough evidence to convince you it’s basically the Amazon. So naturally, I was back, creeping along like a hopeful burglar, laying traps.

Ten minutes. That’s all it took. Ten minutes of smug self-satisfaction before the right-hand float suddenly sprang into life like it had seen a ghost. Off it went, darting under the cover with purpose. I tightened into the circle hook, felt that glorious resistance… and then chaos. 

The fish bolted right like it had remembered an urgent appointment, the rod finally hooped over and ping. Gone. Just a swirl, a disturbance, and me stood there blinking like I’d just been mugged by a fish. “Damn it,” I muttered, in the understated way of a man absolutely fuming inside.

Undeterred (translation: stubborn beyond reason), I got the bait back out. And apparently, the culprit hadn’t read the “once bitten, twice shy” handbook, because within five minutes the left float did exactly the same dance. This time I was ready. Tightened in, rod bends, and yes — we’re attached. A proper scrap ensued, none of this polite nibbling nonsense. After a spirited tussle and a few muttered negotiations, a Zander slid into the net. Not a monster, no, but in that moment it might as well have been a record-breaker. A blank saver. A morale booster. A fish that said, “Alright, you’re not completely useless.”

The plan had only ever been a couple of hours, and to be honest, the conditions weren’t exactly rolling out a red carpet. A bit of chop on the water, some tow dragging everything sideways, and enough floating debris to start a small island forming around my line. It was less “precision fishing” and more “ongoing battle with nature.” I worked my way down the stretch, probing each bit of sparse cover, but aside from the earlier excitement, it all went a bit quiet. No more takes, no more drama  just me, the wind, and the ever-present threat of stepping in something regrettable.

And that was that. Rods packed away, boots (miraculously) still clean, and the fishing itch well and truly scratched. No monsters, no heroics, but a tale to tell and dignity mostly intact  which, given the circumstances, feels like a win.