MARGINAL GAINS
It's always difficult to prove whether any changes we make to our rigs or our tactics are actually working or not, certainly not in the short term and certainly not for me anyway. Improved results may well be due to fishing closer in or with worms rather than bread but equally on any given day the fish may just be feeding harder. I have to say, however, that my current approach on the canals is beginning to show promise.
For a start the 'sixpenny' pole has been a revelation. It is so much easier and more comfortable to use than even my best Thames or Lea poles that I can't help wondering why they were and still are treated with such disdain. Is it a case of 'more expensive must be better'? Maybe more attractive and more complicated must be better. Maybe it was just the ' not invented here', Johnny foreigner thing that the English have always suffered from. Whatever, whichever, I like mine for canal fishing so that is one personal discovery I am happy with.
Over the last three years, I have been canal fishing specifically for perch using worms during the autumn and winter. In that time, I have caught no more than a couple of other silvers as by-catch but this year the number has been eye-opening. Likely this has been due to the quantity of chop that I have fed and the extended feeding spells that fishing close in appears to have promoted.
On Saturday I crept down to the Ashby at dawn and baited two lines on the same arc, one at 15 feet from the bank and one at around five. By setting my two dust shot a foot from the hook, I could fish with them just off bottom farther out and just on closer to the side. Five minutes on each spot, alternately, would tell me where the bites would come from. Initially I had three bream of around the pound, pound and a quarter mark and lost one fishing the near edge of the channel, but once the morning's one and only boat went through, that spot produced just one more bite from a really nice perch of 1-2.
The margin, however had produced no bites until the boat passed and after that it picked up. Mostly the fish were smaller, a couple more small perch, a roach, a rudd, a hybrid and two tiny zander all around four to six ounces. Earlier on I had seen some signs of larger fish moving water right by my feet, probably bream or hybrids but the only decent fish I was to catch there was another perch of 1-1. If nothing else, fishing close in had extended my opportunities to catch. Unfortunately it also doubles the amount of worms required and they are not cheap.
A couple of days later I would get the chance to try again, this time on the Oxford in an area that has produced many good perch for us in recent years. I stuck with my approach alternating between the margin and the nearside of the channel while Pete opted to fish the latter with rod and line. The difference between our results was marked in that I had all my fish but one from the margin while Pete's results were pretty much the dead opposite. The boat traffic was horrendous there as it usually is until the depths of winter. Fifteen passed us, eleven more than we had to suffer at Rowington a week ago.
Interestingly Pete had the biggest fish, a super perch of 1-10 while my best was my only fish from the channel a quality roach of 15.5 ounces. My margin swim produced seven more fish and I was the busier once the boats got going. Clearly margin fishing extends my fishing once the boats start, but there is a trend forming which puts most of the good fish coming from the deeper water before that. I need to be looking to the far bank margin really and for that I need to turn to the lead or maybe even the feeder. In the meantime, I shall press on with my current approach and see how it develops.
For a start the 'sixpenny' pole has been a revelation. It is so much easier and more comfortable to use than even my best Thames or Lea poles that I can't help wondering why they were and still are treated with such disdain. Is it a case of 'more expensive must be better'? Maybe more attractive and more complicated must be better. Maybe it was just the ' not invented here', Johnny foreigner thing that the English have always suffered from. Whatever, whichever, I like mine for canal fishing so that is one personal discovery I am happy with.
Over the last three years, I have been canal fishing specifically for perch using worms during the autumn and winter. In that time, I have caught no more than a couple of other silvers as by-catch but this year the number has been eye-opening. Likely this has been due to the quantity of chop that I have fed and the extended feeding spells that fishing close in appears to have promoted.
On Saturday I crept down to the Ashby at dawn and baited two lines on the same arc, one at 15 feet from the bank and one at around five. By setting my two dust shot a foot from the hook, I could fish with them just off bottom farther out and just on closer to the side. Five minutes on each spot, alternately, would tell me where the bites would come from. Initially I had three bream of around the pound, pound and a quarter mark and lost one fishing the near edge of the channel, but once the morning's one and only boat went through, that spot produced just one more bite from a really nice perch of 1-2.
The margin, however had produced no bites until the boat passed and after that it picked up. Mostly the fish were smaller, a couple more small perch, a roach, a rudd, a hybrid and two tiny zander all around four to six ounces. Earlier on I had seen some signs of larger fish moving water right by my feet, probably bream or hybrids but the only decent fish I was to catch there was another perch of 1-1. If nothing else, fishing close in had extended my opportunities to catch. Unfortunately it also doubles the amount of worms required and they are not cheap.
Interestingly Pete had the biggest fish, a super perch of 1-10 while my best was my only fish from the channel a quality roach of 15.5 ounces. My margin swim produced seven more fish and I was the busier once the boats got going. Clearly margin fishing extends my fishing once the boats start, but there is a trend forming which puts most of the good fish coming from the deeper water before that. I need to be looking to the far bank margin really and for that I need to turn to the lead or maybe even the feeder. In the meantime, I shall press on with my current approach and see how it develops.
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