The barbel gear has been packed and readied for my trip to the River Severn this Saturday coming, it is a yearly affair with the family that that lasts the week and coincides not only with my daddy's birthday but also my parents wedding anniversary. Days out in oldy worldy towns,walks, pub grub complete with a few beers and hopefully a few barbel to look forward to so I'll keep you posted on that one.
My latest efforts have been just a couple of short trips back to the Grand Union canal in pursuit of its unknown roach potential, just how big could the silvers be in this dirty old strip of water?
As mentioned in a couple of earlier posts, I have had the odd dabble with punched bread but this time out I had decided to take out a gift that was given to me a couple of weeks ago in the shop by a customer.
"These are what you want for roach boy" as he placed a dusty old jam jar on my counter. "35 year old they are" I looked at him a little bewildered and proceeded to try and take the lid off! "elderberries" he said " give them a go and if you want anymore I have five more jars at the ready" .
Sunday and Monday past I decided to take my berries along with a jar of hemp just as feed to two different sections of the canal and had very promising results. Sunday was a family affair with Lady J and two of my boys complete with a picnic to the park in Berkhamstead which just happens to have canal on one of its banks so it'd of been rude not to throw a couple of rods in the truck, one for the boys to share and drown a few maggots and one for me to give the berries their first outing.
The boys sat there thrashing the water to a foam and pulling gudgeon and perch out on the maggot probably six fish to my one but as I kept telling them "its quality and not quantity lads, tortoise and hare, tortoise and hare". Pictured above seemed to be the average size of silver that was crossing my palm so I was more than happy with that.
Monday morning I headed to a section that is just a long jump from home, again just armed with hemp and berries and nothing else so I wasn't tempted to stray from the plan. The peg that I chose to park my bum consisted of quite deep water due to a run off sluice that was situated behind me so the water in front of me was roughly 4/5 feet deep. The sun was just breaking through and the cut was very still so after plumbing up and flicking a couple of small pinches of hemp out I carefully chose a berry for the hook.
It was probably twenty minutes or so before the pole float bobbed under and the first roach of the day came to the net. I was now content and over the next few hours a steady flow of roach were caught and were of a good average size of six to eight ounces or so, two fish stood out though, one fish of 15 ounces and an absolute mint conditioned 1lb 8oz corker that had me not only smiling from ear to ear but also gave me faith in my new found bait that will now be in my roaching armoury as another alternative. Please excuse another picture laid on the grass as due to me travelling light I have not been taking the camera and just using the phone for my shots, still it saves my ugly mug ruining the trophy shots eh?
1lb8oz Berry good
That's a big roach for any canal! On elderberry too. I might have to get to grips with hemp fishing myself then, might extend my canal roaching range. A local lad to me had an astonishing 40lb catch of roach on hemp and tares couple of years ago in the City of Coventry. Tried it myself but failed to work, maybe I didn't persist long enough?
ReplyDeleteI take it these elderberries are pickled the old way?
Hi Jeff,
ReplyDeleteI think a little later in the year and when the canals are not frozen the berries may stand a good chance of some better and unknown silvers that might just be lurking uncaught. It might take a while to get the bites going but with a little patience and hemp being fed little and often it might just have something in it. I'll certainly be using it more over the coming months ;-) .
until I googled it I didn't have a clue as to what it was used for to be honest but yes Formaldehyde