It's early October now, the evenings are drawing in and the weather becoming interestingly unsettled. With this, I am finding fewer opportunities to get down to the South Devon coast, where most of my Lure and LRF fishing takes place and more time for short trips up to the canal after perch and pike.
With strong winds on the cards, I decided I'd try something slightly different to what I'm used to and head up to my nearest canal for a day session, figuring out the area for the colder freshwater predator months.
I arrived at 9 am on a completely new stretch to me and quickly set up using a Major Craft Finetail Eden Twitchbait although these small sinking lures were designed for trout fishing in the fast current I've found them to be ideal, fished quickly to cover as much ground as possible when searching for hungry Perch.
It's fair to say the trip started slow and I went without catching a fish for a couple of hours until I found this classic-looking Perch feature. All you could ask for, steep walls, plenty of shade, and overhanging bushes for the fish to hunt in.
Almost immediately a fish was hooked, only a wasp but a welcome sight and proof there were fish in the area. I quickly switched to a Keitech 2" Easy Shiner with a Tungsten Jig Head. I opted for a pink (bubblegum colour) hoping it would quickly be noticed in the murky water and sure enough I was getting hits straight away. For the next ten minutes, I was getting a fish a cast with a nice stamp of fish around the 8oz mark.
Whilst enjoying catching one fish after another, I couldn't help but think that surely there were some bigger fish lurking down there when I spotted a promising-looking pub garden just a hundred yards down from me.
I decided to stomp down there and fish one of my favourite combinations, a Decoy Rock-Bomb weedless jig head, paired with a slightly bigger 3" Easy Shiner.
The Decoy Rock-Bomb jig heads are as weedless as it gets, which allowed me to fish them tight to the bottom with a much-reduced chance of finding a snag and on my very first cast slowly twitching my lure along the bottom I felt a fish grab it, striking hard I quickly realized I was onto a better fish! :)
Not huge but a welcome sight! A slightly better fish :)
This greedy wasp took the lure as I was lifting it out of the water!!
I had fished for a couple of hours now and managed at least 30 fish from different spots on the canal.
After speaking to Will Birch, a good friend of mine he joined me and we decided to fish one last spot together hard after the bigger perch.
This spot is well known for producing fish of over 3lb each winter so we couldn't resist spending an hour or two fishing close to the lock gates after a big perch.
After a few micro Wasps, Will shouted "Get the net!!!" and after a frantic few seconds, the fish was safely landed!
Massive well-done mate quality fish, and a great finish to the day!
By now it was time to go home it had been a fantastic day's fishing and I had visited the new water with the bonus of catching some quality perch as well as testing out a new rod and getting in some exercise! Really looking forward to getting back down there again soon after some of the bigger fish in there.
Blog by Tom Baron -age 15
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