SOAKING DEAD FISH

     I really do like to make things hard for myself. A more sensible angler in pursuit of canal Zander would probably fish evenings ( I prefer fishing dawn rather than dusk), stake out a promising area (probably already identified inadvertently or otherwise by somebody else) and most likely fish it on the lead but my priorities are not that specific. That, immediately, makes things harder than they perhaps need to be. If I'm going to use deads, then I have to fish them on the float because there is nothing in angling as exciting as watching a gaudy float that has been mind-numbingly static for five hours come to life. I detest trebles so it's size 2 singles for me. Another of those 'make life harder for yourself' features of my kind of angling.

I fished the North Oxford last week and caught nothing. The float did stab under once, banging the rod tip as it did so but it was back up again before I could move; another disappointing blank in this spot. A promising area in miles of an apparently predator desert that has produced the odd decent fish in the past. I should maybe have fished with the bail arm open but had opted for an over confident reliance on reflexes I no longer possess.

Today would be better, surely. A Grand Union lock with plenty of structure and past form back in our lure fishing days for numbers if not size. It was a shitty day, pouring with rain and with a wind that howled and moaned in the treetops. On the plus side it was mild and light levels were low; conditions that might, just might, tempt an early morning Zander or two to grace me with their presence. It so nearly did.

Generally speaking, I am not the kind of angler that can sit there doing bugger all while I wait for a specimen fish to wander by. I'd rather take up golf and I can't abide golf but at least I'd get a walk out of it. Deadbaiting is perceived to be a dull static pursuit but I do like to work at it more than most. I'm not claiming that moving the bait every ten minutes is a more productive method but I can point to the fact that, in the past, the very few takes I have had, have invariably come within five minutes of casting. My modus operandi then is two rods, Smelt on one, small Roach on the other; moved a few feet every ten minutes or so and 'leap-frogged' through my area of interest.

There seems to be a generally accepted truth that Zander don't eat sea fish deadbaits but that certainly does not apply to Smelt. I don't catch many Zander, it's true. but I always fish them on one rod and Roach on the other. In the quest for Zander attention, Smelt are winning comfortably.

For variety and as an experiment, I started with the small Roach hooked through the nose and the Smelt hooked similarly but on a on a hair rig. I tried injecting them with air and they popped up nicely until they thawed out and went soft so that was a failure straight off the bat. It all seemed to go so well. Thirty minutes in and the Roach was away. I wound down and a decent weight was boring away somewhere near the bottom. I've no idea what that was but it had some weight; a three pound Zander maybe. Of course it fell off and, as usual, the expected string of takes (as everybody knows that Zander hunt in ravenous packs stripping our waters of prime silver fish) never materialised.

For four hours then, through sheets of driven rain, I cast, moved and replenished my baits up and down the lock pool. Tight in the side, up against the structure and out in the open water; nothing, but nothing made any difference. Not a flicker of interest. At least there were no boats. In fact I was so desperate that I began to wish for one. It might stir the pool up when their occupants opened the gates and at least I'd have somebody to say hello to.

Maybe if I went back to the road bridge a fish might show up; it is structure after all. I set off but as I got close to some permanent moorings I began to wonder if there might be a fish or two under them. There was a big old tree opposite as well with a huge tangle of roots growing into the water; my mind was made up. The Smelt could go over by the roots, the tiny roach up against the boat.

Inevitably having left the pool, the canal began to tow; a boat was coming. I waited until it had passed and put the baits back out. This pound is not a long one and when the locks are worked, water sloshes this way and that for a good while after the boats have gone so I was not surprised to see the farthest float drifting. It took me a moment to realise the all the leaves and my other float weren't moving at all. In fact the Smelt had set off at an increasing rate of knots. It was time to set the hook.

 
I was very excited for a while. The fish bored around the swim and if this was a Zander it was going to be a heavy one. It wasn't; it was a half decent pike and now I was sweating over my Fluorocarbon hooklength. Fortunately the hair rig had left the hook in the scissors but it's lesson learned. It is the first canal Pike to have taken one of my Zander baits but I would have been gutted if it had bitten me off for host of welfare reasons and not least because it saved me from a second tedious, five hour blank in a week.

So that was it; off to see Pete, making plans for wire traces and new places to try. From total despondency to making plans and looking for gaps in the diary in less than 5 minutes; the unresolvable puzzle that means I'm still fishing more than half a century after I first picked up a rod.