Grand Union Canal (Again)

Had a look at the local rivers today....Pants! Although slowly improving, fancied my chances of a few fish on the GUC instead of slogging it out on a discoloured, partially flooded river. The Weather was around 6 degrees and cloudy, pretty good conditions for Pike.


"It was Misty, too misty?

The minute I got there a big shoal of fry leaping at the surface caught my eye...The Perch were on the feed, this will be easy I thought! I Cockily Whacked on a 2" White Shad, no joy, 5 minutes later the Perch were still forcing fry up to the surface. Put on a tiny Blue fox spinner, nobody home... Next I tried a few U/L plugs to no avail, then back to various small shads and grubs, still nothing.

After 10 minutes of frenzied casting and churning up the water the smirk was well and truly wiped off my face when a large canal barge killed the action when it decided to perform a U turn where I was fishing $A&T#R:! "Caught anything mate?", "No not with you churning the water to S@I£"!



Walked down a stretch I hadn't fished before for an hour or so, which was poo, literally the path was covered in dog S@~T, not stepping on poo became my number one priority, which I failed several times! The fishing wasn't good either and being located next to a council estate the scenery couldn't lift my spirits.

Went back to the spot where my mate caught a 2lb 4oz Perch a few weeks back, put on a Cabela "Jointed suspending shad rap" in chartreuse colour and Bang, well TUG, not the most explosive take I've had but none the less a fish, few minutes later it was on the unhooking mat and came in at 10lb 6oz, Boo Yeah. Even on U/L gear it didn't put up much of a fight.





The pike fell to this baby, which has quite an awesome action and also has the added advantage of suspending, meaning I could vary the speed of retrieve without the lure floating to the surface or gettng snagged on the bottom.

When unhooking her an old woman passing by said "Are you going to put that back", "Yes of course" I replied, her reply was "But it will eat all the other fish wont it"!!!

Fished a couple of nice, new areas for a while but decided to call it a day when I got a birds nest on my U/L reel.



That was it as far as landing fish went, no perch, one nice double figured Pike and one happy fisherman!!!