Coarse surprises for spring

I’ve enjoyed some really interesting sessions this past couple of weeks, despite much of my free time being squeezed, crunched or written off. This is definitely a huge benefit of lure or fly fishing though; you can be packed and ready to fish in seconds. Nor is a lack of time my problem solely- it’s the same for loads of my friends who lead equally busy lives and seldom manage to get a full day in. I strongly suspect this is part of the reason why the fishing world is changing, and light, mobile methods are the in thing at the moment.

Sometimes, admittedly, it can take me a good hour to forget my to do list and all the shit rattling around in my brain. But I know of no better place to throw it all into the depths than a little estate lake I’ve been frequenting for about a year now. Not the cheapest, for a skinflint such as I, but very pretty and very rich in insect life. A handful of others fish for the carp with bait, but I just love wandering about with the fly rod. I tend to take two set ups: a four weight for rudd and hybrids, plus a nine weight for the carp, which really take some stopping. On those days when nobody else is around to bother, I also sometimes take a little boat out.


Perhaps the dry, hot days this spring are the culprit, but it hasn’t been all plain sailing due to quite coloured water- and the same goes for the canals. This makes spotting the fish harder, and also makes it harder for them to spot your flies. Bigger spiders have worked though (up to a size 12) along with red or claret buzzers with a little flash. Sometimes a tag team of two is better than one also, if only to double your chances in coloured water. If nothing else the rudd have obliged:



Funny fish these. Shy, too, where they don’t see a lot of humans. Make a shit cast and they flee like a gun has gone off. Land it right, with the flies settling gently where they can see them and they’ll take with zero hesitation, making you wonder why you ever found it difficult ten minutes ago. I’ve yet to spy a really big one, but there are loads in the 6oz to 1lb class that kick very pleasantly on light gear- in fact, not even the lightest match rod gives a better buzz.

Other, stranger things are also stirring. I think they’re rudd bream or roach bream hybrids. I pick my words carefully because I’m not sure and I’ve never seen a true bream in this little lake. They do like forming a squadron a foot or two under the surface though, sometimes mixing with the better rudd. Sink a fly to one stealthily and they’ll often take at the first time of asking. Although a lot of anglers see them as not entirely desirable, they do tend to fight harder per pound than either rudd or bream. This one took a claret buzzer:


The beauty of a natural, mixed fishery is that you're never quite sure what you'll encounter next. For some coarse fish, such as bream and tench, I rarely go all out for them but will usually fish for bites with an easier species like roach, rudd or perch, but always be prepared to have a cast at any bonuses that show up. The value of always being ready cannot be too keenly stressed either: when that surprise fish comes into view, you simply must be ready to make an instant delivery, rather than faff around trying to find the fly or untangle the fly line.

For the sake of my curiosity as much as anything else, I'm always scanning the water and dipping a net into the edge to see what I might be able to copy. Midges are a given, but there are also stacks of water boatmen, shrimp and -not to be confused- hog lice like this chap:



When it comes to the actual fishing though, provided you pick flies that look naturally edible and present them in the right way, you have a chance. Hare's Ears, Shrimps and dark spiders are all useful staples that will catch various coarse fish.
The other conspicuous customers on the last session were the carp, but these can be harder to tempt. I blew it with a couple of nice fish that I got too close to, but also elicited a take from a solid looking mirror carp. Had I delayed the strike, rather than lifting too early, I might have had much bigger end to the session.


In other news, I’ve also been mixing a bit of work with pleasure down on the edge of Cornwall. My day job is copywriting, but I also like to make the most of my photography skills to go with my words. The Jamaica Inn is one of those really quirky, genuinely different and historic places that I’ve been helping to promote. This particular photo shoot involved Murphy; not an Irishman, but a beautiful black and white-masked horse. Suitably gothic looking for one of the most haunted places in Cornwall.


You can read all about an interesting session on Colliford Lake on the new Turrall Flies blog, which also comes with a chance to win a selection of my favourite flies for the venue. All you have to do is follow us on Facebook or Twitter and share the post.

Postcard from a wandering drunk

One of the equally wonderful and irritating things about fishing is that, rather like football, everyone is allowed their own "expert" say in the matter. Certainly the case on urban bits of canal, where I met Seb Nowosiad for some fly fishing. If the above picture is a bit wobbly, it's probably because the bloke who took it was already on his third tin of super strength lager for the day. We humoured the chap anyway, before Seb left him a roll up cigarette and we went in the total opposite direction to where he was pointing and giving his expert fishing analysis. Nice.

The canal itself was about as clear as an alcoholic's brain too. Not as clear as we'd hoped, which suggested it could be a challenge to catch on the fly. The numbers of rudd and roach at the surface were a pleasant surprise though and given a good walk I was confident we might find some good ones. It might sound blinking obvious, but given murky water and flies it's sensible to use slightly bigger or more visible patterns than usual. A little beaded Tan Shrimp was commandeered by Seb and took several roach plus a skimmer, while I dug out a size 12 Black and Peacock spider, intrigued by local rumours of monster fish.
That's the trouble with rumours though; you almost willingly daydream and ignore the fact that
a) The general public often don't have a clue what they're looking at with fish.
b) Anglers, and especially the casual ones, will spectacularly overestimate what they've witnessed (notice how tactful I was there. I could have simply said "lie" or "deal in more fiction than Penguin Classics").
Anyhow, perhaps one or two rumours had a grain of truth, because you always have a chance of nice rudd on the Taunton to Bridgwater. If you can get to the buggers. It was especially educational for Seb, who is a relative fly novice. For a lure angler, it is all too tempting to retrieve the flies all the time- when for many coarse fish you want to just let them be to settle naturally, with virtually no interference. Too much drag or a clumsy cast and you can blow it. I still make a mess of it sometimes myself, but as well as the odd bush I had several decent fish from the pokiest swims imaginable, including this fish of 1lb 9oz:

After sweating it for months on the new "Canal Fishing" book, you might have thought I'd have had enough of them, but I've been doing more on the local cuts than the rivers so far. With it being light well into the evening I also had a blast on the Grand Western, where a whole troop of schoolboys were roaming. High on enthusiasm but low on knowhow, I felt duty bound to help one or two. After all, you don't catch many roach on 15lb line and three very dead maggots on a size 4 hook. They also kept wanting to borrow my polarising glasses to look at passing tench like this beauty:

A little later I then caught up with Russ Hilton for a spot of tench fishing, which proved ultimately frustrating. Well, for me at least. Russ did ok, while I managed to miss them, including one where my worm had skilfully obscured the hook point to render my strike totally duff. In typical style though, Hilton came good with a couple of nice fish. It's a good job I never make bets with him:

Other than that, I'm just getting over the inevitable demise of England at the world cup. At least as a half Swiss, I can follow a team that are the opposite to In-ger-land: underrated, under hyped and organised with that special efficiency that comes with having a German manager. In truth, I've still enjoyed the footy and even managed to combine it with some fishing, most notably at Stafford Moor, where Chris Lambert and me tried frantically via phone and radio to keep up with England's score. We may as well have stuck to the fishing in hindsight.

We had a plan to tempt a catfish on offal, to give you the backstory, but to no avail. Several carp fancied a chunk of liver, but perhaps a much larger or more disgusting morsel is required for catfish? Back to the drawing board I think. For the record, both Beatties and Joseph's Lake are both outstanding "runs" waters should you fancy a crack at summer carp in Devon- and there's no better or friendlier fishery boss than Andy Seery for putting you onto a big catch.

Spring Fly Fishing

Ah, spring. Don't you just love it? The sun has been up. The fish are rising and you can venture out with only a t-shirt on your back and possibly a fly rod. Not that spring fly fishing is always easy. I've had mixed fortunes, but some encouraging results for both coarse species and trout this week.


Aiming wet flies at rudd and roach was today's treat. My usual little spiders and "rudd bugs" came to the fore on the Grand Western Canal, but it was a case of walking and looking hard for the better shoals of fish. Only the really tiny ones seemed willing to touch flies on the surface, but by presenting slow sinking wets I had two net sized rudd in quick succession and even the smaller ones that followed were beautiful.

The roach wanted a fly presented rather deeper, and with the wind sometimes blowing smaller flies off course I opted for slightly heavier patterns to try and get amongst them. A size 16 Tan Shrimp or Roach Grub worked well for these, although the takes were sometimes really cute. The job was made much easier in the sunshine, as I could sight fish. I even had a crack at a surprise tench that wandered through the swim, but failed to get the grub fly directly into its path. Never mind, here's one of several roach that intercepted a falling nymph:

It hasn't been all plain sailing however. A trip to a different canal was more testing, with coloured water and debris making it tough to spot fish and cast to them unimpeded. What should the angler do if they can't easily spot the fly? An small indicator was the answer, to suspend small flies in the top two feet (and I prefer the foam, stick on kind, which you can even snip in half for a really cute little indicator). With fish hard to spot it was usually a case of scanning the water for rise forms and moving fish. They weren't big, but I had three species in order: rudd, roach and bleak.

The trout fishing has also steadily been improving on my travels too, and I had the great pleasure of a day on the River Rea with my publisher, Merlin Unwin. A pretty stream this one, lost somewhere in the Shropshire countryside and full of twists and turns. I was a bit muddy on our arrival and little was rising, so we went for nymphs.

A handful of pretty browns were hard won on the day, but I loved exploring this new river. There were lambs everywhere in the fields. We found otter tracks and there are even the ghostly remains of an old railway platform out here.
And it was great to hear some of Merlin's stories: of fishing with the Mr Crabtree author Bernard Venables, or the summer that Ludlow was flooded with mayflies. And we also celebrated the coming of my new book with a beer. Stocks of "Canal Fishing: A Complete Guide" will be in very soon.

Wild rivers are one thing, but the fish have been bigger in semi-urban locations recently. Not that the water quality is in any way lacking in many of our towns. Is there anything nicer than a shallow, stony river where you can sight fish for wild trout? We have free fishing in several Devon locations- (Theo Pike's book "Trout in Dirty Places" is a great resource).


A quick wander with a four weight was great fun. No dry fly takes on this occasion, and the trick was to get a nymph down to the fish. A hare's ear worked in the slightly deeper bits, or a PTN in some lovely shallow runs where trout were sitting in just a foot or so of water. This was the best of them, at 13" or so but very lean.

Bits vs Beasts

If ever a session illustrated the merit of having different lines of attack, it was my last canal fishing trip with Russ Hilton on the Taunton to Bridgwater. The subtext was getting a few more shots for my canal fishing book and some practice for the Tiverton Christmas match, but I was just looking forward to some fishing as opposed to merely writing or talking about it. At the start it looked like we might catch silver fish all day long on bread punch. And had we so desired, that would have been a distinct possibility, so stuffed was the venue with small rudd and roach. It didn't matter whether you went all cute and fine with a tiny piece, or switched to flake on a fourteen, the hordes descended.
Russ was definitely catching these quicker than I was, at a fierce old rate on the whip. Makes me think I should dig my old whip out again at some point. A four meter model, with pointless yellow decor on the handle, was the first ever fishing rod I could call my own as a small boy. But in terms of fish caught that crummy length of fibreglass probably represents the best value item of tackle I've ever owned. It was the downfall of many Thames roach, as well as bullheads and bootlace eels. Not quite as posh as this rather sexy Sensas model you'd have to say:

But I digress. Fun though it is bringing endless rudd to hand, it's always nice to put something bigger in the net too. And the trouble with small baits is that it can take an age to get through the bits and pieces. Luckily enough from my own, slightly disorganised perspective on this occasion, Hilton came up trumps with a ridiculous bag of worms and strict orders that he didn't want to take any of these home.
It's a plan that works so often on canals, but worth reiterating the value of a "feed and wait" line on the cut. A pole cup of chopped worm and caster went across to a tree on the far bank, which not only looked fishy but had good depth under it. Apart from a top up after an hour or so, this was left well alone while I kept out of mischief by pinching more rudd, roach and a solitary silver bream.

Slipping a redworm minus head onto a size 12 and heavier rig, I eventually made the switch across and the response was pretty instant. After a slightly better rudd, the next fish was a proper head shaker in the form of a much better one, a perch this time. Had it been a match I'd have been cursing because I managed to lose the next two, including what felt like quite a beastie. Meanwhile Russ was taken all over the canal by what we guessed was a carp, which actually turned out to be a rocket powered pike of about four pounds that picked up a worm. In fact we'd seen little fish scatter at the surface a few times and not all of these attacks screamed pike. After another top up and another crack at the rudd, the next fish from the sunken tree stayed hooked. A lovely perch of 1lb 14oz proved the best of the day- and just in the nick of time because I had to leg it back to Exeter.

In spite of my late, lucky perch Russ must have had the greater weight of fish, with a silly number of rudd and some better ones that showed later on the bread. I wouldn't put it past him to teach me a similar lesson in the Christmas match:

And on that note I'm really looking forward to a proper winter break, with no deadlines and no place to be on a cold morning. Other than the odd order I've done little fly tying lately, which I must put right. After giving talks to branches of the Fly Dressers Guild on tackling coarse species I definitely have the bit between my teeth. Especially so after seeing the collection of Chris Reeves, which included this rather baroque looking antique pike fly:

Tying is rather like fishing: always a new trick to learn and another direction to try. I am permanently making little notes and snaffling samples when in the company of fly tying enthusiasts. And at least the long, dark winter provides plenty of time to fill a box or two with new creations.

Miles Away

I've finally experienced it. Walked and cast it. Enjoyed that day of summer heat and rising fish I've waited so long for. The canals have been calling me back for lengthy walks and hours spent squinting at the clear water looking for fish. They might not be the most illustrious waters for big fish, but I find the whole process so utterly absorbing. You really never know what you'll see or catch next. Peter Higgins, who took the picture above, found this out by catching a chunky rudd on a small streamer aimed at perch. I almost returned the favour by catching a perch on a tiny wet fly. Dour weather doesn't make fly fishing impossible- but it becomes so much easier to spot the fish when it's bright. When the sun suddenly comes through the clouds, it's rather like someone flicking the light switch in a dim room. Fish start appearing everywhere and you can study them at leisure. The behaviours of roach and rudd are seldom written about in much detail, but I find them fascinating viewing. The fish in the above picture were hanging around clumps of floating debris and literally pulling it apart. They make great sucks and then twist backwards to tear off pieces to eat. One small fish in this scene went swimming off with a piece of weed it's own length. Undoubtedly they also devour any small creatures dislodged in this grazing activity- indeed sometimes there are little flurries of excitement as the fish spot something amidst the salad!- and a fly placed gently on the edge is often grabbed instantly. With the fish so high in the water, I simply had to try small dries- and a size 16 Beacon Beige proved successful. I caught several and missed several, walking for miles in the process and switching flies every so often. I'm easily distracted you might say. I tried and failed to hook a bream feeding right under my feet. I spotted what looked like a lovely 2-3lb hybrid only to strike too early and pull the fly out of its mouth. I might have just written a book on fly fishing for coarse species, but I'm still always learning whenever I stop to observe fish. The bigger roach can be especially challenging, as they hang deeper than their shoal mates. I've been picking out a few by using gold beaded flies- albeit 16s and 18s. One common roach behaviour is to see them tilted downwards at an angle, just hanging there. Are they dozing? Trying to look inconspicuous? They look apathetic, but if a tiny gold bead shrimp or similar tweaked gently on their eye level sometimes makes them snap out of their temporary slumber. This beautiful fish of a pound and a quarter did exactly that- unable to resist the sudden appearance of a wet fly teased past: