Too Many Boats, Not Enough Bites

Canal fishing brings back alot of childhood memories for me, I remember on one icy winters morning being overjoyed to catch a single tiny perch from the stretch by Tusses bridge, one of the very first fish I ever caught, I also remember a match on the Ashby Canal when my Dad was the clear winner with a bag of tench, the rest of us returning modest catches of small roach.
As we grew up Phil and I caught lots of fish from the canal, his Mum and Dad owned a narrow boat and we had access to a dead arm where we could catch roach to a pound and a half, bream and some good sized perch with relative ease. Occasionally we would take the boat out for a few days, fishing whenever we stopped, wherever we moored for the night there was fish to be caught, the numerous ruffe, gudgeon and perch were always obliging and there were shoals of quality roach in every stretch.
I remember a day when Phil and I caught roach after roach, fin perfect and all between 6oz and a pound, wonderful fishing.
The cut saved the day many a time when the going was hard at Napton Reservoir and on one memorable occasion Phil landed a 4lb tench which he foul hooked in the tail with a size 24 hook.

Dad and I had decided to have a bash at the Grand Union Canal on Thursday, fishing near the Boat Inn. The weather was lovely as forcast and the surroundings were very pleasant too, I looked forward to catching a nice mixed bag of fish.

For October the boat traffic was horrendous, in between the boats the pull from the locks made presentation tricky but it wasn't too long before each of us caught a small skimmer bream then Dad caught two more and I had a reasonable roach slip the hook.

And that was that, the steady stream of boats kept up, the sun continued to shine and no more bites were to be had. Where were those obliging ruffe, the gudgeon and the small perch ?

Of course we'd heard the rumours before we decided on fishing the cut, the rumours of a wasteland, a zander ridden, silver fish devoid canal network. While it would be extremely harsh to dismiss canal fishing as useless on the basis of one short trip, there really didn't seem to be many fish where we fished on Thursday.
One cheerful boater told us we were the only anglers they had seen in a weeks cruising !

If it is the case (and I'm not saying that it is neccesarily the case) that the ruthless zander has decimated the canals it's a great shame as there was previously some great fishing to be had, although I realise that canal fishing in general was already in steep decline with the advent of the boom in commercial fisheries it is probably fair to say that this has bailed the Environment Agency out to some degree with regard the zander issue.

Nature, over a period of time, creates a balance and so it will in the canal system, although it is likely we will never see matches won with 6 and 8lb of gudgeon again it could well be the case that our canals are the specimen roach, bream and perch fisheries of the future.