A quickie on the Stroudwater canal

I managed to get out for 3 hours on the Stroudwater canal after some roach or perch, which ever decided it was hungry! I started off below Ryeford lock with a big worm suspended just off bottom under a small bobber float. Without any joy after about 15 minutes I decided to move above the lock and have a crack at some roach using bread for bait. I managed 3 fish in about 2 hours, for a total weight of about 5 ounces, not exactly my best session, but at least I wasn't blanking! With about half an hour to go before sunset I decided to give up on the roach as they weren't really having it, and head down to a bridge which is usually good for a perch or two.

I hooked the biggest worm I had in my tub and cast it to the far bank just out from under the bridge. After a couple of minutes I gave it a bit of a twitch to try and coax any nearby stripy's to attack the worm, and almost instantly the float twitched a little, or at least I thought it did! I gave it another little tug to see if I had imagined it, but sure enough almost straight after it twitched back towards the far bank. I struck into the fish expecting to feel the usual jaggedy scrap from a small perch, but instead it pulled back, quite hard! I only had 2lb line, so I backed the drag off as this was a fish I didn't want to lose! After about 3 minutes playing it up and down the bank, it finally surfaced... But it wasn't the monster perch I was hoping for, it was a pike of about 3lb! After 1 more final dash for freedom I managed to get it in the net, at which point I realised I didn't have any forceps on me. I figured I must have hooked it in the scissors anyway as it didn't bite through the line, and on closer inspection I had indeed hooked it... at the very back of its throat, brilliant! He seemed to be pretty well behaved, so I carefully slid my fingers into his mouth, avoiding the rows of teeth and set about removing the hook. It was at this point he decided being well behaved was boring, and that thrashing his head around was a much better lifestyle choice. Needless to say he got me, and bit through the line, and ended up back in the canal! With my rig ruined, and my leaking finger, I decided to call it a day and head for home.

All I had to show for my efforts was a leaking finger.

Fishy Fingerz Match

My peg at the final whistle.

Well, I did my first match in over 20 years with the Fishy Fingerz boys at Fishponds in Colwall. I didn't have the best luck in the world for various reasons, but can't grumble about my result. It was a good day out though which is all that matters at the end of the day.

My run of bad luck started with me smashing, and possibly breaking my little toe while getting my kit ready the night before, rendering me barely able to walk and worried I wouldn't be able to get a shoe on in the morning and would have to drop out. Thankfully that wasn't the case...

We arrived at 8am to be greeted by the owner with a cup of tea and a bacon butty for the bargain price of £2. I didn't catch his name but he seemed like a decent down to earth guy and offered some advice for those of us that had never been there before. Once everyone had arrived and been fed, the pegs were drawn. Naturally my name was picked last, so I was only left with 1 peg to "pick at random" from the bag, which was peg 21. We all hauled our gear around the lake to our pegs and got set up ready for the start at 10am.

As promised, I took my feeder rod that I'd won over 20 years earlier in the only other match I've ever entered, but I also took a float rod just in case I needed to get a bait higher up in the water. For baits, my main approach was going to be maggot to try and target the chub and ide which hopefully would build me up a good bag of fish, with a tin of hemp and a few pellets to maybe entice some of the lakes carp into my area. I guessed most people would go the maggot approach, so I decided to gamble on flavouring mine with some sonubaits tiger fish just to be a little different from everyone else.

The "secret sauce" for my maggots

When the clock struck 10, the "all in" call was made, and the match was underway! I'd decided to fish in a shady area under some trees on an island to my left, and on my 3rd or 4th cast about 15 minutes in my rod tip whacked round without any warning and I was into my first fish. After a short fight it was ready for the net, a nice chub of around 2lb. My run of bad luck had other thoughts though, so obviously as I was shipping the net out, the hook pulled. I rather comically threw my rod to the side and used 2 hands to try and scoop it with my net, but it was just a couple of inches too far and with a little "F**k you!" flick of its tail, it returned to the murky depths. Still, from what I could tell no-one else had even had a bite yet let alone a fish, so I wasn't too disheartened, if anything I was feeling more confident.

I kept recasting every 4 or 5 minutes for the first half hour to get some bait down on the deck, filling my small feeder with a 50/50 mix of maggots and hemp each time. Then my bad luck decided to strike again, and I managed to catch my finger on my tin of hemp while loading the feeder, which resulted in my hemp now becoming blood flavoured as a small stream of the red stuff trickled down my finger and into the tin from a rather deep cut. I had no choice but to reel in and go clean it up in the toilets and fashion a makeshift bandage out of toilet paper. I managed to get back to the lake just as the clock struck 11, at which point we all reeled in for a minutes silence for Remembrance Sunday to pay our respects to those that lost their lives to enable us to live ours the way we do.

The match resumed and it'd be fair to say everyone was struggling. By dinner time I'd managed to net 2 ide of about 12 oz, and I hadn't seen or heard anyone else catch anything! Early afternoon my spot seemed to dry up, I hadn't had even the slightest knock on the tip for 2 or 3 casts, and my neighbours had both had a couple of fish out each, so I switched to my second spot in the middle of the channel to my left, which I'd baited with some hemp and pellet at the start of the match. It didn't take long before the tip whacked round again, and I had a nice ide probably pushing 2lb to add to my tally. That was all the spot had to offer though, and by 1pm I decided to switch back to my first spot.

I was instantly getting indications, but just tiny taps on the tip, where as every bite I'd had so far had been a rod wrenching whack, so I figured that a shoal of small fish had moved in over the bait while the spot had rested. As things were slow going I decided to target them, after all a small fish is better than no fish. I set the feeder rod to one side and broke out the float rod, which I'd set up with the tiniest float I could get away with for targeting the ide if they came up in the water, but as luck would have it it'd be ideal for the small silvers too. First cast and the float didn't even settle before it was dragged under by a small roach of maybe 2oz tops, it looked like my thoughts about a shoal of small silvers moving in were correct...

They weren't! I gave it another 10 minutes, but didn't get even the slightest of twitches on the float. I gave it a further 10 minutes or so after, trickle feeding maggots 2 or 3 at a time, in the hope I could find some ide fishing on the drop like I did when I caught my first one during my quest for a big roach. It wasn't happening however, and time was running out. The guys closest to me had had a few more fish out each, and I knew I was lagging and needed to get a couple more in the net if I was to have a chance of winning. I spent the last hour and half back on the feeder and frustratingly missed a couple of big bites. They were so few and far between that it was impossible to keep up the concentration needed to hit the lightning fast takes. I did manage another fish about 15 minutes from the end, another ide of about half a pound, but as the end of the match was called I knew I hadn't done enough to win, but had I done enough to place in the top 6 and win a prize?

I was going to walk round and watch the weighing, as I knew roughly what I had in my net, but then bad luck #4 struck, and the heavens opened with a freak downpour of a mixture of rain and hail, so instead I tried (and failed) to get my kit packed up and out of the rain so it didn't all get soaked through. My bag was weighed last, and came in at 4lb, which was enough to land me 4th place! The winner was Steve with a whopping 8lb, who'd arranged the match (fix!) and had been one of my neighbours I was battling during the match, with my other neighbour coming 2nd with 7lb. My prize for 4th place was a free 48h on a local(ish) carp water kindly donated by one of the groups members, which really does look quite nice... But I don't drive, and thus can't get there unless I can blag a friend into paying full whack to come and join me, so I guess you could call my prize bad luck #5!

All in all it was a fun day despite breaking my foot and almost cutting my finger off, and would like to thank Steve for arranging it and the rest of the fishy fingerz boys who joined in. Hopefully I'll get the chance to have a rematch next year when the fish are a little more hungry and the gods aren't out to get me! I may have lost my 22 year old 100% match win record, but I do still have a 100% match placing record to maintain...

Quest for a big roach on the Stroudwater Navigation

For a few years now while chasing perch and jack pike with light spinning gear in the clear waters of the local canal, I've noticed amongst the shoals of small roach and rudd there lurks the occasional red finned behemoth that even dwarfs some of the resident tench. Having spotted a rather sizable specimen in the same area on a number of occasions I thought it high time I dusted off the light float gear and had a crack at catching the beast, which I'd estimated at being in excess of 2lb.

Some of the smaller red finned residents of the local canal.

My approach was to be a simple float rig consisting of a size 18 hook tied to a 2.5lb hook link and a fine tipped 4BB float on a 3lb mainline. I didn't want to go any lighter as there are a number of tench in the canal which in the summer gets quite weedy and I wanted to use tackle that could deal with them should they take the bait. As for bait, I decided on maggots and worms.

I arrived at my chosen spot at around 6pm for a few hours fishing after work. I could see a few small fish of a few ounces, but the monster roach was nowhere to be seen. While I set my kit up, I periodically threw a pinch of maggots into the swim to try and get the fish feeding confidently and competing for the food, and also to try and lure any bigger fish out from their hiding places. I plumbed up to fish just on top of the weed which covered most of the bottom and I was ready to start my quest!

A nice sized perch from the canal.

I opted to fish just over half way across, so I had room to sink the line and because from my spinning adventures I knew the far bank could be quite weedy. First cast with a maggot hook bait and the float barely had time to settle before being dragged violently into the depths. I knew straight away that it was no roach, and sure enough a short time later the stripy culprit was in the net. Despite fishing for them for the last 4 or 5 years, I'd completely forgotten to take into account the large perch population when making my bait choices, bugger!

I knew the roach weren't going to get a look in while the perch were around, so the only sensible(?) solution I could think of was to target the perch until the bites dried up, so I shallowed up and switched to a worm hook bait. After about half an hour and many, many perch later I'd managed to work my way through most of the shoal and the bites had pretty much dried up, it appeared my somewhat hopeful solution was actually working, so I reset the depth and switched back to a maggot hook bait. I caught a few small roach and rudd and the fish were starting to take the bait on the drop as the "little and often" baiting strategy had got them competing with each other for the food higher up in the water. On feeding one of my regular pinches of maggot, a sizable swirl distorted the waters surface, followed by a large flash of silver as my target fish had decided to come to the dinner table. Game on!

I stopped fishing for a few minutes while flicking a constant stream of maggots into the swim to try and get my target fish feeding confidently. My plan seemed to work flawlessly as sure enough, after a few minutes, every time I flicked a few maggots into the swim the red finned leviathan bullied all the smaller fish out of its way as it darted about the swim picking off virtually every single maggot before they'd sank more than a couple of inches. This was going to be easy I thought...

How wrong I was! Every time I cast out, I flicked out a few maggots around the float, which promptly got gobbled up by the marauding fish, but it avoided my hook bait like the plague. I conducted a little test in the edge of the canal to see if my hook bait was behaving differently to the freebies. It seemed to be sinking at about the same rate, in fact everything seemed to be working as intended, so I concluded the fish must be able to see either the hook or the line. I had a rummage around in my minimalistic tackle box and found an old pack of size 20 hooks. I didn't have any lighter line, so I tied a size 20 to my hook link and hoped the smaller hook would be enough to fool the fish into taking the bait.

Looking down the Stroudwater Navigation.

I flicked out a few more freebies and promptly cast my float into the area. As usual my target fish zipped about the swim hoovering up the free offerings, only this time it took my hook bait too! Unfortunately, no sooner had it sucked it in, it had spat it back out. The water was clear enough to see my bait sink most of the way to the bottom, if it wasn't I'd never even have known I'd had a bite as the float didn't even twitch. The fish took my hook bait about 1 in every 5 casts, and every time it ejected it in less time than it takes to blink. Out of frustration I even tried striking as the fish was about to take the bait to try and time the point at which the hook moved to coincide with the split second it was inside the fishes mouth. Needless to say this tactic didn't work and only helped to frustrate me further. I knew my problem was it could feel the hook or line against its lips, and I had no way of scaling down my tackle any further. My only option was to keep trying with what I had and hope that as the sun sank behind the horizon and the light faded, the fish would lose some of its inhibitions and make a mistake. Sadly this wasn't to be. The weather took a turn for the worse and a heavy downpour seemed to drive all of the fish into hiding. I stuck it out for another 20 minutes or so, but with only 1 bite from a small greedy perch and the canopy of the trees failing to act as an adequate umbrella I decided to admit defeat and head home.

After a few days of unsettled weather, I decided to have another go, this time armed with the lightest tackle my local shop had to offer. I set up in the same spot, again in the evening after work, but this time with a size 22 hook pre-tied to a 1lb 10oz hook link, hanging under a tiny 2 x no.1 float dotted right down to almost the level of the water. I applied the same tactics of feeding just a few maggots every few minutes, but the big fish was nowhere to be seen. I caught plenty of small roach, rudd and perch during the first hour or so, and then came the sight I'd been waiting for. The big redfin was back, so again I stopped fishing while I trickle fed a stream of maggots until the fish was once again pillaging every single morsel that entered the water before any of the other fish had a chance. I cast a double maggot hook bait into the midst of the frenzied feeding, and to my surprise the fish took my hook bait almost instantly and the float shot across the surface of the canal. I struck and felt the light rod bend into the fish, and then disaster, the hook didn't take hold! My line catapulted out of the fishes mouth into a nearby bush, and the fish dashed off back to safety. I'd blown it.

I retrieved my rig from the bush, but the hook link was badly kinked from the inevitable tangle. I almost called it a day and went home, but it was still early and I had nothing better to do, so I tied on a new hook link and decided to fish on for the smaller residents and wait for dusk when I might be able to pick up a tench or two. No sooner had I started feeding the swim again, the big fish was back! Sir Izaak himself must have been smiling down upon me that day. I regained it's confidence by once again feeding without fishing, and after a few casts it slipped up again, taking my hook bait and dragging the float under the surface. I struck and this time the fish was on. It made a beeline for the far bank reeds but I managed to stop it and turn it back to open water. A few more dashes for freedom later and a heart stopping moment when it managed to get around a lone lily pad, I'd managed to draw the fish over the lip of the net, she was mine!

I weighed her in at 2lb exactly and took a cheeky selfie as there was no-one around to take a photo for me and I didn't have anywhere suitable to rest my camera to use the self timer function. I was one happy chappy, despite looking somewhat miserable in the picture! There was however, a twist to this tale, as those of you who know your fish may have noticed. My monster roach wasn't a roach! It didn't look right, it was too long, the scales looked too small and the eye was the wrong colour. It wasn't a rudd or a chub, it was too big for a dace and the fins were all wrong anyway, it didn't look remotely "breamy" in anyway either so that ruled out hybrids... So what was it? After a quick google when I got home and a lateral line scale count of 58 from the photos, the most likely candidate was an ide, a species I'd never caught before (apart from the ornamental orfe variety at anglers paradise in Devon) and a species that wasn't even meant to be present in the canal. I guess it must have found its way there during the floods of recent years, or maybe it outgrew someones fish tank, or perhaps they've been in there for years and everyone has just assumed they were roach just as I did. Either way it doesn't really matter, I enjoyed the time spent chasing the scale perfect creature, which of course was safely returned to its watery home. It did lead me to wonder, however, was it the only ide in there, or were most, even all the big "roach" I had seen over the years actually ide as well? This is a question I may try and set out to answer in the future...