Canal Fishing Tips | Should you loosefeed over groundbait? - Matt Godfrey
On the deep shipping canals of Yorkshire that I fish, loosefeeding over the top of groundbait actually defeats the point of what I’m trying to achieve. I want the fish to be firmly on the bottom, feeding on the groundbait and giving me a focal point over which to put my rig.
Firing in casters or maggots runs the risk of spreading the fish over a wider area and even coming off bottom, so I wouldn’t use a catapult at all. Instead, I’ll cup in two to four balls of groundbait, the amount depending on how many fish I feel are in the area and how good the peg is, topping up with a ball the size of a large walnut when bites fade or I begin to catch small fish.
On deep canals a groundbait only approach is the way
Pole Fishing Tips | Six feeding tips for silvers on natural venues - Josh Newman
Little-and-often is a tried and tested way of feeding for silverfish, but there are occasions in summer when a bolder approach is required.
Be bold with your feeding for summer silvers and you will catch more
Feed heavily to start
At the start I’ll throw in 14 large balls of the groundbait and leam mix. This sounds a lot, but I won’t be feeding any more of this mix, so I need a good amount to try and keep the fish in the peg.
Kick off the swim by balling it in
Top-up with more
When I think the effect of the cloud from balling in has finished, it’s time to add more feed with a pot. This is a mix of damp leam and grey leam (half a bag of damp to just 25ml of grey), plus particles.
Top-up with more feed when you think the initial balls have had their effect
Keep loosefeeding
Loosefeeding hemp is important. It not only gives me the chance to catch on it late in the day, but it also keeps on drawing fish into the swim by having something falling through the water all the time.
Steady feeding with hemp will keep fish interested
Set up Multiple rigs
Because of the cloud, I can catch fish 6ins off bottom and then switch to the deck later. One rig won’t do both jobs, so I set a couple up. Both are Sensas Avon floats with a 0.8g for fishing off deck and then a 1.25g pattern for down below.
Multiple rigs will ensure you can catch fish at all layers
Dot your float down
The less float bristle you have on show, the more bites you will hit. Trying to shot a float with small split shot is tricky, so I use micro styls. I’ll shot the float as normal, then add four or five tiny styls to leave just a speck showing.
Dot your float right down to hit sensitive bites
Try ‘Short’ elastics
In deep pegs of over 10ft, you need a strong elastic to set the hook. Running elastic through a top kit would require around a No6, which is too heavy. My solution is to use a length of No4 elastic through just the tip section of the kit.
A light elastic through just the tip section will land you more fish
A cracking net of natural water silvers
Match Fishing Tips | 5 tips to catch more canal silvers in summer
We all like to catch bonus fish, but on canals it’s small fish that are your weight-building summer bankers. Here are five tips to help you fill a net with silvers…
Avoid deep water
You can rule out catching well from the central boat channel of a canal in summer. There will be too much disturbance from narrowboats, even though the water is deep. On the whole, roach prefer shallower water anyway, and a classic spot to find them is on top of the far-bank shelf where the deep water merges into the shallows. Typically this area can be found around 11m or 12m out, a comfortable range for feeding and shipping the rig out. Depth is unimportant – it’s more about finding the point where the peg just begins to deepen into the channel.
Find the point where the peg deepens into the channel
Create a slow-falling rig
Because you’re loosefeeding, the rig needs to allow you to catch fish through the water, anywhere from a few inches under the surface down to the bottom. Firing in pinkies and squatts will naturally bring roach off bottom, so gear up with rigs taking light floats and shotting patterns that have small No11 shot strung as a bulk around an inch apart, stopping 12ins from the hook, finishing off with a couple of dropper shot between bulk and hook.
Light floats and strung out shotting will help the bait fall slowly through the water
Get on hemp
Don’t think you’re only going to catch small roach on the canal – they also hold plenty of big fish that can make a difference in a match! Casters are a well-known bait for quality roach, but hemp is just as good and almost always means a bigger fish each time the float goes under. Pick a spot close to any far-bank cover with a couple of feet of water, well away from where you’re fishing squatts, and fire in a dozen grains every 10 minutes, aiming to try hemp on the hook in the second half of the match.
Hemp is a fantastic roach bait
GO easy on the groundbait
As much as roach love groundbait, it comes into play on shallow canals as a way of kicking the swim off before loosefeeding takes over, or for feeding when a boat has gone through the peg and you need to settle the fish back down. One large ball fed at the start is ample, feeding again with the same size of ball when a boat has done its damage.
Try not to fill the fish up with groundbait
Pick up your catty and start feeding!
As soon as you’ve fed that groundbait at the start, pick up the catapult and start firing in squatts or pinkies. Twenty to 25 squatts at a time is not too much, and the feeding needs to be very regular, every 40 seconds or so, to leave a constant stream of bait falling through the water and keep the fish hunting around. On the hook, a single squatt matches the hatch, but you can change to a fluoro pinkie to try for a slightly bigger fish.
Regular loose feeding will keep the fish in the peg!
Canal Fishing Tips | Target the wides for canal bream with Alan Donnelly
Canals are generally narrow, with not much more than 13m of water to go at. But dotted along the length of most of them are wider parts.
These are turning points for boats or, in some cases, they were widened out when the canals were first dug back in the 1800s. From a fishing point of view, these wides act as a magnet to fish and anglers.
Boats don’t have too much of an impact on the waggler line because it’s tucked well away from the boat channel
Some wides can have 30m-plus of water while others can be incredibly shallow and are not all that they seem. Given a good depth and some cover, though, they’re brilliant and the ideal sort of swim to banish any thoughts that canals are all about tiny fish and battles with barges and mountain bikes.
Bream, especially, like these wider sections, but there’s a problem. Often the pole won’t be long enough to get to the fish. The answer is very much old-school, ditching the pole for rod and line tactics with a little waggler. This approach was the norm on canals back in the 1970s before the pole took over. We’re talking short rods, stumpy light floats and loosefeeding – a lovely way to catch fish.
Bream love to hang around in wide sections
My local Grand Union Canal around Tring has plenty of wides and they’re all home to bream that can be caught on the float. It’s easy to find a wide swim. The hard work is in deciding where to fish in the peg and how best to approach it. Groundbait can play a part, but loosefeeding can be better on some days.
The waggler is a great option to get the best out of a wide peg, letting you fish places you can’t reach with the pole and catch the fish that may have backed off to the other side of the canal.
I use specially-made floats by Graham Welton
It’s also a lot easier to fish than the long pole. Not everyone can manage 16m of pole, especially if the wind is blowing, then there’s the hassle of unshipping back on to narrow towpaths with bikes, joggers and dog walkers filing past.
The waggler does away with all of that. It’s an efficient method too, in fact when you’re catching well on it, it’s miles faster than fishing the pole.
Tackle doesn’t need to be specialised, you may well already have a lot of what’s needed in the shed. Base your attack around short, light floats, small hooks and minimal shotting down the line. A good through-actioned match rod is just the job. Add a few pints of casters as bait and a catapult and you’re more or less there!
An 11ft rod gives you the control for relatively short casts and is easier to use than a 13ft model. I use an 11ft Drennan Ultralight Matchpro.