VARIATION ON A THEME
It was broad daylight when I left home at 4.30 on Sunday morning. That's the best thing about canal fishing in June; four hours before the earliest boats come chugging along muddying the waters. It might mean more time for fishing, that's the good bit but the down side is that it means less time for the mud to settle overnight so it wasn't the cleanest to start with.
I have resigned myself to never catching a Roach much over a pound and a half from the Ashby but I keep trying anyway because I have the slightly more realistic hope of a four pound Roach/Bream hybrid. An upper three is as close as I have come so far but I'm sure there are, or were, bigger lurking in these turgid waters.
Hybrids are great fish to catch anywhere. They have the weight of a bream, the more substantial build of a Roach and for some reason, some of the fighting abilities of the Tench. Don't ask, I don't know why either; hybrid vigour? Who knows, who in fact cares; I just like catching them, especially in canals. In canals, light gear is entirely adequate even for the larger specimens. I like a float rod and centrepin bearing 2.6 lbs line or a very light quivertip rod with maybe 4lbs line on an Ambidex. 1.3 or 2lbs hooklinks and 14 hooks are just fine most of the time.
I had a newly restored rod to try on this trip; a ten and a half foot version of my favourite 12 foot float rod, a Robert Sealey Match winner. I'd matched it with a small Flick'em picked up for peanuts in a junk, sorry antique, emporium. It was a resounding success too by the way, its shorter length opening up swims beneath overhanging trees in which I dare not risk a longer rod.
Bites began after about half an hour and were eminently hittable which was particularly pleasing because I was fishing a different float set up than the one I usually use with the lift method. Up until now I've been using antenna floats in one form or another, usually either a small onion or inverted crowquill. These have been ok but suffer badly when there is any surface drift as there is no buoyancy at the top of the float to resist being dragged under. The obvious solution is to employ one with a more buoyant tip but that too has its drawbacks. Maybe I have been wandering off course with my choice of float. Rather than revert to the time-honoured, buoyant throughout its length, peacock quill, what would happen if I use a float that was buoyant only at the tip?
Last Friday whilst fishing for Crucians on the club lake, I tried using a standard crowquill fished top and bottom but that too suffered, albeit to a lesser extent, once the surface drift put a bow in the line. Of the half dozen fish that I caught that morning, a third of them gave decent lift bites but it was also affected directly by surface debris building up on the line. I'm not complaining; I caught a few Tench, a small Common and a beautiful Crucian. I also caught a couple of man-made carpy crossbreeds but they were a poor and pointless imitation of the real thing.
Rather than turning this into a rant about the dumbing down of modern angling, I tried to concentrate on refining the method; what if I fished the standard quill bottom end only, surely that would give me the best chance? Well it worked pretty well actually; the most buoyant part of the float above the surface resisted drag much better and the less buoyant part of the quill meant that lift bites were much more evident. I've not had the opportunity to find out yet but I suspect that while resisting drift much better, I don't think it will resist current in the same way. In that case, I suspect that returning to fishing with the quill fixed top and bottom may still be the most effective way to go.
As for fish caught this morning, well I didn't catch many but my 'popped up' bread flake did fool my first two pound plus hybrid for a while and Ashby hybrids are particularly pleasing, the longer anal fin often being all that distinguishes them from true Roach. Sadly I lost my first fish; a lightning fast bite, the float flashing under, triggering a wildly over enthusiastic response against a good fish moving rapidly in the opposite direction inevitably leading to immediate failure of the two pound hooklength. I can't help myself no matter how hard I try; rapid bites invariably provoke a hair-trigger, violent, response; always have, always will I guess.
I have resigned myself to never catching a Roach much over a pound and a half from the Ashby but I keep trying anyway because I have the slightly more realistic hope of a four pound Roach/Bream hybrid. An upper three is as close as I have come so far but I'm sure there are, or were, bigger lurking in these turgid waters.
Hybrids are great fish to catch anywhere. They have the weight of a bream, the more substantial build of a Roach and for some reason, some of the fighting abilities of the Tench. Don't ask, I don't know why either; hybrid vigour? Who knows, who in fact cares; I just like catching them, especially in canals. In canals, light gear is entirely adequate even for the larger specimens. I like a float rod and centrepin bearing 2.6 lbs line or a very light quivertip rod with maybe 4lbs line on an Ambidex. 1.3 or 2lbs hooklinks and 14 hooks are just fine most of the time.
I had a newly restored rod to try on this trip; a ten and a half foot version of my favourite 12 foot float rod, a Robert Sealey Match winner. I'd matched it with a small Flick'em picked up for peanuts in a junk, sorry antique, emporium. It was a resounding success too by the way, its shorter length opening up swims beneath overhanging trees in which I dare not risk a longer rod.
Bites began after about half an hour and were eminently hittable which was particularly pleasing because I was fishing a different float set up than the one I usually use with the lift method. Up until now I've been using antenna floats in one form or another, usually either a small onion or inverted crowquill. These have been ok but suffer badly when there is any surface drift as there is no buoyancy at the top of the float to resist being dragged under. The obvious solution is to employ one with a more buoyant tip but that too has its drawbacks. Maybe I have been wandering off course with my choice of float. Rather than revert to the time-honoured, buoyant throughout its length, peacock quill, what would happen if I use a float that was buoyant only at the tip?
Last Friday whilst fishing for Crucians on the club lake, I tried using a standard crowquill fished top and bottom but that too suffered, albeit to a lesser extent, once the surface drift put a bow in the line. Of the half dozen fish that I caught that morning, a third of them gave decent lift bites but it was also affected directly by surface debris building up on the line. I'm not complaining; I caught a few Tench, a small Common and a beautiful Crucian. I also caught a couple of man-made carpy crossbreeds but they were a poor and pointless imitation of the real thing.
Man-made...
...or the real thing?
Rather than turning this into a rant about the dumbing down of modern angling, I tried to concentrate on refining the method; what if I fished the standard quill bottom end only, surely that would give me the best chance? Well it worked pretty well actually; the most buoyant part of the float above the surface resisted drag much better and the less buoyant part of the quill meant that lift bites were much more evident. I've not had the opportunity to find out yet but I suspect that while resisting drift much better, I don't think it will resist current in the same way. In that case, I suspect that returning to fishing with the quill fixed top and bottom may still be the most effective way to go.
As for fish caught this morning, well I didn't catch many but my 'popped up' bread flake did fool my first two pound plus hybrid for a while and Ashby hybrids are particularly pleasing, the longer anal fin often being all that distinguishes them from true Roach. Sadly I lost my first fish; a lightning fast bite, the float flashing under, triggering a wildly over enthusiastic response against a good fish moving rapidly in the opposite direction inevitably leading to immediate failure of the two pound hooklength. I can't help myself no matter how hard I try; rapid bites invariably provoke a hair-trigger, violent, response; always have, always will I guess.
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