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.