Pole Fishing the Bridgewater Canal and Monster Pond Perch

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update i hope i find you all well and your nets wet.  I have to say from the outset these past few weeks getting back on the canals has really saw me having a great time on the bank.  I am not currently fishing the old haunts i fished as a kid but just being on the canal has brought back so many memories for me and at the moment the only thing that is missing is the sight of the bark black and bronze flanks of a big canal bream breaking the surface.  Hopefully i will experience this before the rivers open again.

This weeks blog update introduction See's me giving my thoughts on the lack of kids fishing on the canals and ponds and my thoughts behind what is to blame.  As a result of that i will be covering all aspects of my approach to fishing canals in the coming weeks and we finish the introduction with a little on the pike review going live.   The fishing this weeks See's me fishing on a private pond called Curlston mere where the swim dies and for once i find out why and the second trips sees a morning session on the Bridge water that i hope shows anyone reading who is fed up with the rat race that goes with commercials that the canals are a live and well and are great places to fish.

on to the update..

Bite A Chuck But The Banks Are Barren....

It is safe to say we are living in the Golden era of fishing, never before have fish grown to such large proportions, never before have our rivers and waterways been so clear and unpolluted and never before have we had such a wealth of places to fish with commercials dotted all over mixed with the lakes, canals and rivers we are literally spoilt for choice. 

That is the good news story of the times we live in but i also feel we are living and witnessing the demise of old school fishing as we know all remember it.  I first started to feel like this when i was fishing on the banks of the River Dee and noticed that i was by far the youngest angler on the bank.  Many excuses not to fish rivers are presented from rivers being muddy and dirty uncomfortable to people saying walking endless fields and lugging their gear was not up their street.  That may well have been the case but the river i was fishing was the River Dee at Farndon where you can park your car at the back of your peg and you fish off sturdy relatively clean EA pegs so this kind of blows that out of the water.  The simple fact is that the art of trotting a float and fishing rivers is dying, not all over the country but certainly in the areas i fish.

At the time i thought it was just rivers that where quiet but the past few weeks fishing on the canal and local ponds has genuinely shocked me.  I would say i have been fishing 5-6 times on canals and ponds the past few weeks and i think i have seen 4 anglers in that time, not counting the same ones on different visits.  The fishing on all the trips has been steady with regular bites and some nice fish to boot yet on most trips i have not seen a single angler wetting a line.  I drive along miles of the canal to get to where i fish and pass it every day on my commute to work and see the empty banks.

As a kid growing up i remember the sights of 100-200 pegged matches on the canal and the local ponds where always a rate race to get their before your mates to get a peg.  I now think the canal and the local ponds sit below rivers in the pecking order.  Are we slowly losing canals and ponds as a place where young anglers are born and skills are learnt? I don't fish commercials regular but have there fish filled commercial ponds now become the place to go because you are guaranteed to catch something?  or is it that kids growing up are no longer in love with angling as we where as kids and we are facing a gap in years to come of new anglers coming through?  I am a Strong believer that if you can fish a canal you can fish anywhere as the refined skills you learn fishing a canal and feeding truly wild fish that don't need our baits to survive are being lost for the generic 5lb line to 4lb hook length attached to a pole and a pellet on the end fishing for a carp a chuck?.

It is also possible that with the rise in popularity of carp fishing that we are facing a scenario where dads have only ever carp fished so then their children are naturally shown carp fishing so you are left with anglers that may only know one way to fish.  Either way i hope the tables turn and the canals and ponds are discovered by youths its such a crying shame that the banks are so empty and i will be trying to include as much as i can about canal fishing in my blogs in the coming weeks to try and help as much as i can for people wanting to try it but now knowing how.

Where To Fish On A Canal...

Canals are very similar to rivers in the way that they can be quite long in length and location plays such an important key in catching fish.  When i am looking for places to fish on both rivers and canals i always start off at my computer screen with a A4 pad of paper and slowly work along the length of canal to find certain features and areas that require further investigation.

Initially i am looking for any type of features that provide cover for the fish such as reed beds, bridges supports that come across the canal and wides in the canal where the canal is naturally wider.  On google maps you can sometimes even see the stretch before you visit as you can view it from the street view where roads go over the canal or along side so Google Maps is the place where i start and pin point a few key areas.

While on the Internet its also worth doing some searches on the canal you are going to fish as you can guarantee someone will have posted some kind of report from a session on the Internet somewhere.  Don't always read these as gospel as they may be a few years old but use them as a pointer to what the canal can hold.  Another good avenue is to look for where the club that owns your canal fishing has matches and the type of weights that are winning them, chances are these people have fished matches for years and invariably hold matches in the good spots on the canal.

All said and done though there is no substitute for getting out there on the canal yourself and looking at the canal first hand.  Summer is a great time to get on the canal as in the blistering heat you can count on the fish to be up on top showing themselves and this is where you find out where on the canal your better fish like bream and carp are holding up as in the blistering heat you are bound to come across this sight.

Once you have a fair idea where the fish are make a note of the amount of boat traffic your canal has, blistering hot days are great for this as you see how many boats use the canal at peak time.  Most canals will have some form of boat traffic and you should never as an angler see these as totally bad as although the canals do pollute the waterways they also impart movement and colour into the water that the fish need to feed and also get used too.  The canal i fish on the Bridge water does have a bit of boat traffic so if this is the case you need to take this into account when picking a swim.

So you are stood there on the canal and it all looks the same and picking where to fish can be a hard task.  The boats on the canal will all normally follow a same line so what i look for in a swim is an area where i can feed away from this main boat line where i know my bait will not be disturbed.  I walked the local canal after work today and these are the features i would fish on one section of canal.

Up the side of the bridge will no doubt be shallow as no boats will have been able to go though there and as such the silt will have built up.  This area is a great area for fishing as you know any feed going over there will not be disturbed by the boats.  The stone work also offers a feature that species like roach and perch love. 

Reeds are fantastic areas of canal and the places i always head too as they offer you so many options.  Up the front of the reeds will be deep for you early line and up the ride of the reeds offers a line again where you can feed and not be disturbed by boats.  Reeds are naturally areas where fish come to spawn in the warmer months and the very nature of the reeds attracts all manner of insects and invertebrates which in turn attract the fish that feed on them a great natural area to find fish on a canal.

On this picture you can see the canal widens slightly, no boat is ever going to go over there naturally as it moves along the canal and any fish following the far bank wall will also be pushed into your swim as they move along.  Great places for bream but be careful as areas like this are also prime areas for boats to turn round and believe me some will think nothing of turning round in front of you.

As a rule i generally avoid turning circles, marinas, boat yards and ends of canals for this very reason as although boats generally do not effect the fishing a barge turning round pumping its engine turning really does ruin the fishing and can do for a good hour or so.

So that is location covered in the next blog we i will look at where at baits i use on the canal and preparing your ground bait.

Pike Season Review Goes Live

Finally before we get into the meat and potatoes of this update this week the content of the "First Pike Season" went live.  This page documents the whole pike season through all the months of autumn and Winter.  I have tried to explain the journey as i saw it and the lessons i learnt along the way.  It was a season where there was certainly more highs than lows and in reflection it will be a season i will never forget. What an adventure it was as fish from 2lb to nearly 22lb made an appearance.  A link to the page is at the top of the blog or can be found on the following link.

My First Pike Season

Please take a second the read the blog as it did take me some time to put it together and feel free to share it on your pages.

on with the Fishing..

Morning Session on Curlston Mere...

With a day booked off work and no commitments till the afternoon i decided to give the canal a rest and head off to a little slice of fishing heaven called Curlston mere.  Its a old pond situated on farmers land that we have been aloud to fish for a number of years after my uncle did some work on his farm.  The pond is proper old school pond fishing and it contains a decent number of silvers as well as some really old looking wild carp that when you get on the bank are like bars of buttery gold.

On a recent trip in early Jan i think it was myself and my uncle has a surprise capture of a very nice perch, we should not have been so surprised as the amount of roach fry in this venue is more than enough for such a predator to grown to a nice size.  My plan for the session was simply to fish maggot in the margin while feeding up a 11 metre line hoping to latch onto some of the big roach i knew can show on this venue.

Feeding pinkie on my inside line i was soon getting regular bites and plenty of activity to suggest a few fish in the swim.  The main of the fish where only small roach like the one below.

The swim was ticking over nicely with the odd small perch also starting to show and then like a light switch going off the swim died.  I moved over to the far line and picked up the odd fish on the drop but holding out 11 metres of pole is never fun when your not getting a bite so it was back onto the near line.  Not a knock for a good half hour not even a knock and i was on the verge of calling it a day and heading home to get ready for the jobs i had planned when the float shot under and instantly blue hydro elastic was oozing from the top of the pole.

The fish bolted for the safety of the snags but with carp being around i had been prepared and had my extra sections to hand.  Quickly adding sections i obviously thought carp as i dipped the tip under the water to increase the drag on the fish.  At this point i was convinced carp and then the fish stopped and turned and it was not the normal actions of the carp that keep going till you get over them.  Getting the fish in the edge i saw it was a big perch and not a fish i wanted to lose.  Straight away i was praying don't come off and thankfully i slid the net under the green flanks of an immaculate perch that went 2lb 5oz on the scales and the scary part was it was spawned out.

The fish turned the session around for me and i headed off home with the songs in the car playing loud i was buzzing.

Bridgewater Canal Fishing on the Pole..

Saturday saw me back on the banks of the Bridgewater canal looking for some steady action on the pole.  Knowing from previous sessions the amount of fish in the area there was no rush setting up i took my time getting my gear sorted and peg comfortable.  I knew where in the peg i would be feeding so before i set up my gear i fed two balls of ground bait and pinkie on my middle line and fired over some maggot on the far bank line.

With the peg fed and already accumulating fish on them i plumed up the swims.  I will go more into different tactics in coming blogs but on this session i set the float so the my number 10 dropper was just touching bottom.  The swims plumed up and each top kit to hand i began to fish over my middle line on a single pinkie.  The time 6am and straight away soon as i put in the float slid away as the fish moved onto the ground bait and pinkie.

When canal fishing you have to be realistic about the fish you are going to catch, 85% of your bites if you are fishing like i do for everything that swims of any size are going to be canal sized fish like this up to around 5-6oz although if the session goes to plan they will not make up that percentage of the final weight as the better fish on the sesison should be between 6oz to 2lb. 

The middle line i always feed with the pole pot mixing the pinkie in with the ground bait.  The canal being so deep this ensures all the bait gets to the bottom and reduces the risk of the fish moving up in the water as this can lead to problems with the swim.  The far bank line was still being fed by the catapult with loose offerings and no ground bait.

As the middle swim develops and you catch a few of the early fish that have moved in on the bait it does eventually attract other fish in and that species is normally the perch and it was not long till the first billy of the sesison made an appearance.

At 8am the bites on the middle line dried up, this often happens on the canal but in my experience it happens a lot quicker on this canal and i think it can be attributed to a number of things, either i am not getting my feeding right and I'm underestimating the head of fish down the middle and feeding too much, bigger fish are moving in and i am not giving them long enough to fall for my bait or finally and i think this is the real reason the swim is dying, Mr pike moving in.   The pike on the canal often sit down the marginal shelves and this activity of fish feeding surely would not be going ignored.

Waiting 1`0 minutes without a bite down the middle i knew the time to go over the far side was coming so i fed a large pouch of maggots and concentrated on trying to get a bite down the middle.  Eventually one came but it was a tiny tiny gudgeon and i knew there and then it was time to move and the skimmers or perch where not around.

Fishing every week of the year i have learnt the hard way that its always best to have a pike rod with you whether it be summer winter or fall as although we associate these fish with winter these fish can be very active all year round.  I had a feeling Mr pike was about so before i went over the far side i had a little try for a pike.  Knowing if one was in ambush it would not take long i only gave the bait 2-3 minutes over my middle line before i pulled out my far bank top kit, obviously Mr pike was not about.

Straight over the far bank on maggot the first bite was instant as the float fished over depth slid away and the elastic was showing that erratic action of the fight of a roach.  In my head i thought "well if my pike is about this might be it for this roach"  Thankfully no such brutality happened and my palm was graced with a silver anglers delight of a nice canal roach, i am sure there are better to be had but it was nice to see these around.

My confidence was up after this as i knew from experience that fish of a similar size on canals seem to shoal together.  It is very noticeable when you fish a swim from scratch, first of all the small fish are there and then once the better fish move in they all seem to be of a similar size.  This hunch was proven correct as a few plump roach followed this fish into the onion sack.

The early morning fishing down the middle is as much to keep myself occupied while this far bank line attracts fish as the far bank is where the better fish feel comfortable to feed with plenty of cover and away from any noise on the tow path so i knew this part of the session would be where my main weight would come from and after a hour or so fishing catching roach and the odd better skimmer i knew i was putting a few pound together.

I don't really feed in a tight pattern on my far bank line as i find with bigger fish like bream and roach its best to keep them spread over an area and set your float so its over depth at the back of the swim and dead depth closer in.  This way you can move all over the swim picking up bites and i don't think you spook the fish as much.  The skimmer above was picked up doing this as was a few of his brothers and sisters who were showing signs of getting ready for spawning.   These fish for me on the canal are certainly the bonus fish along with the big dark bronze bream but these can be very very hard to track down/

The session coming to a close a few better bream moved in amongst the fish and it literally was a bite a chuck.  The over cast conditions kept the fish feeding all morning and it was great fishing on the canal.

The time to call it a day came and i was literally gutted to pack in.  The final net went just under 12.5lb.

Well that it is for this weeks blog i hope you enjoyed reading it and if you have any questions around fishing canals or fishing in general or you want to share your canal fishing pictures feel free to contact me.

till next time

Tight lines

Danny

River Dee Piking And Big Month Ahead

A warm welcome to this week's blog update and i have noticed that the past few blog introductions have not been as positive as i normally write and i kind of want to apologise for that but also at the same time say to remember that i am quite passionate about certain things and as much as my passion for angling comes out in my blogs for positive stuff the negative stuff will evoke just as much and even more so if it involves my family as they after all are the dearest thing to myself.  So this week i am going all out to fill the introduction with positivity and hopefully it will even out the negativity of the past few weeks.

Firstly i would like to give a big shout out to two guys on Twitter caller Richard Penny @Richspur and Lee Power @power_mr who are aiming to raise money for the Stacey Mowle Appeal and are looking to hold a Carp anglers social get together on the 13th to the 15th of September and it will be held at Barston Lakes in the West Midlands. The price of a ticket for the weekend is £45 and the owner is only charging for the first 20 anglers so any they get over the 20 the whole £45 will go to the appeal.  This is certainly a great cause and good luck to the guys in raising as much cash as possible and i hope this plug goes some way to helping you guys out.

The Angling Gazette has again shown its links with the community by already running this story on their website so full details on how to enter or donate money is available on the following link:  Angling Gazette Barston Charity

Moving on to news closer to home for myself and looking forward to the next few weeks and it is looking like it is going to be a really busy September for me with a few days away with my family to kick it off followed by a few things relating to the blog that will certainly be occupying my time on my return. Some of the things i cant go into much detail on now as the date for them has not been set in stone but needless to say i am really excited for one of them that relates to what i have been writing on my blog and i see it as kind of recognition for the effort i put into writing my blog to a certain standard every week so i am super excited for that is September.

The second thing i cant go into much detail either only to say i was contacted in the past week by a company to do a product review for them.  This year i have had quite a few companies contact me with regards reviewing their products, some i have accepted and others i have declined and it all comes down to a strict criteria i set on my part in 1) is it something i would generally use and this would be able to give a honest review on and 2) is it something that actually grabs my attention and something that i think the readers of my blog would find interesting.  The past year i have turned down a few opportunities because they have not met this criteria, some would say that is silly and you should take all you can for free but i feel it is important to be honest to the company who are going out of the way to give you something if you cant give it the honesty it deserves.

The company who contacted me this past week are looking for me to review a cool looking gadget that is yet to go on general sale to the public.  The power point presentation they sent me was professional and the product looks really interesting in its concept and i cant wait to test it out and give it a review on the blog, more on this review during September if it all goes through smoothly.

So with a small get away coming up it will mean a week with no blog, or does it?  I have a little idea of a update i could write from my phone as a bit of a fun update from our trip and if it comes off lets just say it will certainly be different to anything you will have seen on my blog before.   All in all i am really excited for the coming few weeks for the bog and i hope you all like what is in store.

On to this weeks angling adventure:

Being Adaptable Puts A Few Fish On The Bank

The past weeks we have have gone with the formula of fishing a river in the morning and dropping back on a still water on the way home for a few hours and to be honest at this time of year with the fish stocks on the river being spread far and wide its a formula that i can see us adopting a few more times this year till the first proper frost arrive.  Its fair to say me and my uncle do more fishing than the average angler and with that comes a certain amount of planning, there has to be, some of that planning is based on past years experience such as time of year, weather, wind conditions and this week tides.  The tides on the dee that brought the dolphin up around Chester last week where still hanging around this week and we knew that this would mean the fishing at the destination we planned to visit would die off around midday when the tide hit so we made a plan to fish the River Dee till midday and then drop back for an investigatory visit on our local Bridgewater Canal.

We arrived on the majestic River Dee just as it was getting light and was greeted with the sight of a river in fine fettle she looked as beautiful as i have ever seen her, she was flowing through at a steady pace and had a tinge of colour that was not enough to stop you seeing the bottom in the margins but enough for me to know we should be in for a few fish.  I have to say i never get out of my car on the banks of the river Dee and am not taken back by the beauty of this river, having fished her for a few years now its like a second home for me of a weekend any after the pollution events of yesteryear's i cherish every moment i spend on her

I started off on the stick float and decided to fish it right under my rod tip as the swim i was in was a slack behind a tree.  I knew from experience that i would have to  build the swim from scratch which normally means a fair few gudgeon but sticking with it can produce some nice roach and if i was really lucky a nice perch.  As normal it was a maggot and hemp approach and straight away i was into the gudgeon which gave me a great deal of confidence as although its a fish that is never going to fill your net when you catch a gudgeon with a few maggots in its mouth it lets you know your doing it right as your bait is going down the same line as your free offerings.  The endless line of gudgeon was followed eventually by some better fish in some small perch and one or two small roach and dace so in my eyes the swim was building nicely for me and i was expectant of a steady mornings sport.

None of these fish where the better fish i was expecting to turn up but in all honesty given what was about to happen it was never ever going to be the case.  The plop of two roach hitting the keep net in quick succession marked the end of my silver fishing as from there on out i could not but a bite the swim died instantly where there was knocks on the float all the time form when it settle there was the eerie sight of a motionless float sliding through the swim.  A few more trots down and still nothing, deep inside i began to feel that sense on inevitability that was only compounded by the dimpling of the water in my keep net where all its inhabitants had come to the top then a small shoal of roach shimmered close in tightly knit like sheep marshalled by a farmer's collie, all the signs where there and this week my senses where honed into the river and i instinctively had set up a pike rod the previous evening.

The float rod was retired for the day and i decided there and then with the clarity of the water and the presence of what i thought was a number of jack pike i was going to have some fun trying for a late summer pike or two for the remainder of the session.  A small roach bait will always be my go to bait for pike as i think the light shimmers better of the fish and they are a bite i have real confidence in and that confidence was boosted even further as no more than 5 minutes after introducing the bait i was locked in battle with a really hard fighting pike that tried all the tricks in the book to escape from trying to spit the barbless treble hooks to tail walking and when that failed it made long hard runs for the tree to my left.

A year or so ago i was given some really sound advice from a fellow dee pike angler who pointed me i the right direction for what strength line and rod i should be using so i was more that equipped to deal with this pike that i estimated as still being in the "jack" category and knowing how hard these fish fight in summer i began to exert some pressure on the fish the reduce the length of the battle as there is a fine line between having fun catching the pike and prolonging the battle so long it endangers the pikes ability to recover later on.  I quickly got the pike in and the hooks being barbless came out really easy, it was then quickly placed on the scales for a reference point for the rest of the season and a few pictures taken before i took it a few swims down and rested the pike in the margins in the landing net till it was holding itself upright and showing me some of that tigerish attitude it had demonstrated in the fight.  At this time of year if you are fishing away from weirs or rapids the oxygen levels in the river are really low so it takes the fish a while to recover and we really do owe it to the fish to give it the respect it deserves and who knows that fish in 10 years time could be that 20lb fish of your dreams.

At 6.5lb this fish has got some growing to do till its boxing in the heavyweight class but it certainly has every chance of making it in such a rich river.  The fish returned safely it was back to the pike fishing and i did not have to wait long for another take although this one certainly had eyes bigger than its belly as it hounded the bait before grabbing it across the flank.  In the water with its gills flared it looked a bigger fish but in reality on the bank it was a really small jack pike but goes to show that even at this young age they are more than equipped and the only thing on a pike this sizes mind is getting big enough so its not on a bigger pikes menu.

I returned this pike downstream just as the local church bell sounded out that it was 11.30 and it was time for us to think about packing away and making our way to our second venue but before we did broke camp i decided to have a cheeky try in my uncles swim for a pike as he had also had a period of inactivity from the silvers and with the pike obviously in the mood it was rude not to try for a third.  I have done a fair bit of pike fishing in my life on the local canal and on the river in the past few years and i can honestly say i have never seen a pike take a bait like i did on Saturday as the pike came up from beneath the fish grabbed it, came out of the water and turned in the air with the fish in its mouth it was breathtaking stuff to witness.

This pike was pretty much in the same bracket as the first one and at first i thought it maybe was the same but on closer inspection of the pictures they are separate fish.  The fish again gave a good account for itself but as with the first i tried to reduce the length of the fight as not to endanger the fish going back so it was quickly netted, had a picture taken, rested and returned and with as quick as the pike darted back into its lair we jumped into the car and headed back towards home.

The canal beckoned and although this venue is not normally prolific fishing it can have its days but what it offered us on Saturday was a nice easy fish only a small walk from the car.  We set up the customary 12 yards apart and both chose to fish the far side on the pole to avoid the heavy boat pressure, this was a bank holiday weekend after all.

The reed bed between us offered some structure that we hoped hold some fish and we was not disappointed as we both caught steady for the full two hours we were there and my uncle even got snapped by a rogue fish which had it snapped before he even had chance to ship back, a rogue carp or a tench where at the top of my betting sheet. As i mentioned we both caught steady for the few hours we where there and that showed in the combined final net.  I have promised myself to return before our holiday for a proper go at this canal with ground bait and pinkie.

well that's just about it for this week and i leave you with a tweet from twitter that made me chuckle this week.

"its 50 years since martin Luther king said that famous fishing phrase,I HAVE A BREAM!"

till next week its tight lines

Danny