Transient Towpath Trudging - Pt.13

With the waters now warming up nicely I decided to venture over to a stretch of canal where I've seen some carp milling around from time to time.

They are hard to spot because they tend to tuck themselves away among some of the cover but there was one area where they always showed and that was a 30 yard section of reeds. 

Obviously I'd have a Zander rod out as well but it was the carp I came for really. I got bankside quite early and after hotfooting it to the reeds there was signs of fish before even putting some bait in.

Not sure they were carp though, they could well have been bream but at least I knew something was milling around the swim. An hour and a half in with the bread bomb on the surface and also slow sinking not a sausage let alone a carp or a likely bream. I also fed some riser pellet to hopefully tempt any hiding carp to show themselves, but they were suspicious in their absence. 

The deadbait rod also was untouched but this is a canal after all so I went to find some fish. A 10 minute stroll there is a nice section of thick cover where I've caught Zander before and it didn't take long to get a bite either.

The float shooting down the canal at a rate of knots and usually there is only one culprit and that culprit is a schoolie Zander. This stretch always throws up some of the smallest Zander I catch on deadbait but still after a few blank sessions at least it was a fish. 

Another one came 10 minutes after and I thought I'd stumbled upon a group of them, but no those two fish were the only ones I managed to catch.

The carp were no where to be seen either and after the group of 9 cyclists went by as well as quite a few dog walkers and gongoozlers it was time for the off as I just wasn't enjoying it. I'll be back though because not far away is an area I've spotted carp as recently as a couple of weeks ago. 

Transient Towpath Trudging - Pt.12

For some reason I wasn't invited to the shindig down to London where the Wife and kids and her friend Rachel and her kids would be visiting the Natural History Museum, Hyde Park and I'm sure some other Big Smoke delights that no doubt I'd be kept informed throughout their day trip

So a rare full day to myself, where to go, what to do !!!!

I'd not been to the syndicate stretch for ones bailiff duties, so after a once over which is now made easier as the slippery slope of death is no more. Some materials obtained, some steps created, the elderly syndicate members no longer having to refamiliarise themselves with their life insurances.

What a fantastic spring day and it just got hotter and hotter and reached the dizzy heights of 21 degrees where oddly my brother who lives in North Devon it was only 13 degrees there, around the temperature of the water at the minute.

The Zander are certainly going to be thinking about spawning and that can often mean the struggle for bites. I had to get out for a few hours so I headed to nearest bit of canal to me where I knew it would be coloured. 

The problem was every Tom, Dick and Harry had the same idea and the towpath was like a circus with boat after boats, walker after walker.

Even John made the trip out and whilst I was nattering with him he'd caught a couple of bootlace eels on maggots. One was foul hooked in the belly and the other in the scissors. 

I was on the rove with two deadbaits rod after the Zander and a bite within ten minutes that I missed I thought I might well be on for a decent session.

That never materialised though because that was the only interest I got. Some of the boats were on full power which meant that on this very shallow canal the fish I'd imagine are keeping away from the carnage. 

I just couldn't find the fish, it was even quiet in the banker swim which invariably throws up a bite or two but not this short session it didn't.

So another blank to add to the collection !!!!

....To be honest not unexpected but odd for this stretch because if there is any of the areas I fish that I'd recommend to catch your first Zander it is this place. Oh well at least the weather was fantastic, it's amazing what some nice weather does to the wellbeing 😎

So on to the next one, this time I'll have some bread, some floating pellets and my carp set-up. 

A few tips where to find some canal carp was well received, this time though I'll be venturing out in the morning where hopefully the footfall and the boats will be few and far between !!

Transient Towpath Trudging - Pt.11

So this (just shy of) 400 metre containment where the canal '17 lber' was caught the big question is, is it still swimming these shallow and relatively turbid waters ? I'm not convinced myself because apart from the 11lb 8oz fish I caught that I know has been out a few times in and around the same area for a lucky few, the bigger ones I've caught >7lber I've never seen again despite fishing the same swims let alone the same area. 

But this is Zander fishing canal style, there are no hard and fast rules having been fishing for them for many a year now. 

Zander are certainly scavengers there is no doubt about that and they readily pick up static deadbaits when often lures have been ignored when chucked in the same swim by me. 

Both techniques have merit in their own right but for me having used both techniques it was deadbait fishing under a float that tended to pick up the larger Zander. 

After some issues with his phone the kind lure angler managed to get the picture over to me and after arriving at the canal I'd found the exact swim quite easily because a house in the background had a distinctive boarded up window and shallow pitch of its roof. 

To be fair a bit of a disappointment where it was caught from as I've fished here plenty of times, but then as I mentioned earlier this is canal fishing it can throw up decent fish when you least expect it. 20lb Pike anyone ? yeap I've got an exact pound number for that too (aren't I lucky)

This certain quest concluder (if it wasn't already over) was caught on a creature bait which got my eyebrows raising and my interest up once again, because a canal double on a lure, would certainly be a nice icing on the cake over my preference which is a roach or smelt deadbait. 

I prefer to fish my own way than follow the crowd and having seen the some the size of the lures they were using the weekend when they shared the information with me.

I'm sure I've harvested bigger items up my nose and if they saw using they'd be phoning for help and a straight jacket. 

Maybe this lump of a fish though liked something moving though so I dusted off the reel eel and fitted it to the lure primed for some action. 

Now this rather large lure has caught me some nice Zander and Pike in the past and in the water it just looks like it would provoke a reaction and switch that trigger we all know predators have. 

The canal here is very shallow indeed and something like this crawling along the bottom or midwater could well be the change that I needed to try and find out if the scales needed calibrating, or the capture was bang on the money.

It certainly looked a good fish and with it now holding another 1lb or so of spawn potentially this would be another fish worthy of the Angling Times. 

Now oddly unlike where I caught my own canal double this area is not known for the large biomass of silvers in-fact unlike the 'hallowed stretch' dangle a maggot here you could be waiting longer than I have for a well deserved break from work. 

Lucky a delivery from the very dependable online baits of some cheapo Zander packs meant that on the deadbait rod I'd have some 2-3" snack sized roach, and I've done well on these whole fish head turners, it can bring bites when larger roach sections have been ignored. 

The water temperature had increased to 11.8 degrees from being in the 7's and the canal looked great for a bite. The levels on this 400 metre stretch though had certainly dropped and a few chucks of the lure you get to realised just how shallow it is.

You could walk from one side to the other without issue and where the heck would a big fish like this reside. I fished near cover and also near a few moored boats but there was nothing doing whatsoever. 

The lure was getting the most interest, two proper hard bites where I assume a schoolie grabbed the tail of the eel lure. I often use a stinger but couldn't find them but I don't think the bites came from bigger fish.

The last hour in to dusk I left the deadbait longer than I usually do but sadly no bites materialised and left me wondering what the heck I was doing wrong especially when I did fish a lock swim beyond the containment where I rarely blank. Odd very odd, still at least the water is getting warm and the carp may well be removing their winter jackets.