By Tom Legge | No Comments
Last updated: Wednesday, January 16, 2008

At a time of year when bites can be hard to come by on Commercials, some anglers are returning to canals and enjoying busy sport. But up on Hertfordshire’s Grand Union, photo/journalist Fred Davies spent a day with two – Lol Breach and Phil Speakman – who never went away in the first place!

In an effort to stay ahead of the game, practice is vital if you want to be competitive in matches. In an era of high quality tackle and easy to obtain advice, a good standard can be achieved by most anglers in most disciplines. However, what gives some that little bit extra? It can’t just be attention to detail, surely? What separates the Prima Donna’s from those that actually cut the mustard? Its okay to talk the talk, but it’s walking the walk that truly matters!

Both today’s anglers believe hard work on the bank will get you much further than chatting in the tackle shop. That’s not to decry sociable discussions which can be very informative. However, most good match anglers also put in the legwork and get a feel for the venue they fish. Knowing a venue’s many moods can be critical if you are to reap the rewards in the shape of netfuls of fish plus cash-filled brown envelopes!

Lol Breach of the Colmic Gerrards Cross squad has always been a canal nut. Last year he finished top individual in the Luton League, a title he achieved in his second year of fishing the league, having won various canal team events such as the Wey Navigation league and the Division Three National.

Phil Speakman of Oakwood Eurobaits is another well known towpath angler, with many individual match wins and placings to his credit. He’s taken several next-peg scalps from the mighty Van Den Eynde Essex County side along the way, his most cherished being the man he regards as the canal master, Pete Vasey.

Cold Comfort In Coloured Water

To say the weather on the morning of the feature was raw would be an understatement, and I couldn’t believe the pegs which these the lads had opted for on the Sainsbury’s stretch in Hemel Hempstead. No comfortable 13 metre features to fish to, but purely open water with a cold wind howling down the canal.

A really tough session looked on the cards, but what better conditions to watch a practice in? I have always been an advocate of watching other anglers, though I don’t recommend copying anyone’s style. However, you can always incorporate different techniques into your own way of fishing.

Not only was it brass monkey weather, but the canal had become very coloured due to the rain-swollen River Gade which flows in and out of the canal through most of these Hertfordshire pounds. The only comforting feature I could see was a cafe a few yards past the houses that these lads were sitting in front of. A cuppa beckoned while they got set up.

Rigged And Ready

Lol unveiled a variety of baits including bread punch, pinkies, squatts, maggots, casters and chopped worms, and seemed to be targeting everything that had fins. That said, he feared the punch may be less productive than in clearer water. His main attack would to be chopped worm, squatt and big maggot over loose fed squatts.

A close inspection of his rigs revealed Lol is obviously a big fan of Mick Bassett floats. The first of his three top kits carried an MB chopped worm float, whose long cane bristle allows worm hook baits to be ‘worked’ by lifting and dropping. A small shot was placed on the line at the top of the bristle to aid control, while the main shotting pattern consisted of a bulk of No.9 shot with 2 x 10 droppers.

The other two rigs both carried MB London squatt floats. The larger 4×16 version for presenting maggot had a bulk of No.9 shot with 4 x 13 Stotz as droppers, while a lighter 4×12 had a spaced out bulk plus again the Stotz droppers to give a gentler fall for fishing lighter baits like squatt and pinkie. A shot had been placed directly under their wire stems to boost stability in the choppy conditions, plus double up as a depth marker. All Lol’s rigs were made up using Ultima’s high tec XT7 line.

Phil wanted to learn whether concentrating on caster as his main bait would give him an edge over the course of the session, even though he acknowledged a slower start would be likely. He set up two rigs – both with Tubertini Delta floats but in different sizes – to cater for this.

Deltas have a cane tip and wire stem so offer very good stability, and Phil’s the first rig was an extremely light 4 x10 shotted with a strung out shotting pattern of No.10 shot. His second rig had slightly larger shot spread around an inch and half apart. Line was Preston Precision in 0.10mm main line with a three inch 0.07mm hook length. A size 20 Kamasan B511 or a Colmic S2001 were his chosen irons.

Feeding The Swims

In a surprisingly bold opening gambit, Lol fed three large balls of groundbait (a 50/50 mix of Sensas Gudgeon Black and Matchblend) containing squatts, casters and hemp at 11metres. His second line at 13 metres was fed with chopped worm, casters and a few red maggots. However, he couldn’t resist a quick look closer in on the punch and this accounted for a few small roach on the lighter squatt rig before dying fairly quickly as the water seemed to suddenly intensify.

Moving to his main line and feeding regular pouches of squatts to build the peg, he was soon back into fish. However, he had to switch to the heavier rig as the canal was flowing more than he had anticipated in what was the main channel.

Phil’s caster-based attack at 13 metres saw him cup in one ball of dark groundbait, a 50/50 mix of Van den Eynde Supermatch and Supercup, with very little feed content. Loose feeding a few casters over the top, he explained that the groundbait was purely an attractor to pull fish without over feeding them. “Groundbait in coloured water can be very effective. I need to gauge how the fish are responding without the risk of putting too much feed into the peg,” he asserted.

As predicted, starting with caster on the hook was a slow burner. Even on his super-stretchy latex Phil was bumping too many fish which he reasoned were very small roach. However, a hook change was also needed just in case the point had lost some of its edge. Trotting the lighter rig through overdepth, his catch rate began to increase and some better stamp fish interspersed the smaller ones. The race was on!

Soft Elastics And Steady Shipping

As both anglers got into their stride, it was apparent how well their elastic systems were working on all their pole top kits.

Both anglers had cut these well back and opted for soft elastics – Phil using 0.8 diameter Latex whilst Lol favoured more coloured elastics in various grades from 2 to 4 to suit the rig. Their fish-playing styles also varied slightly, although neither man was ever rushed. The whole process of shipping back onto rollers, swinging or netting the fish, unhooking, rebaiting and shipping back out was clearly born out through hours of practice.

Phil admitted that he had upped his feed rate slightly once the fish had arrived. He tried hooking the caster though the top instead of burying the hook inside, and once he found this made no difference to his bite ratio he stuck with this slightly faster arrangement for the rest of the session.

Eventually Lol switched to his 13 metre line which had been initially fed with chopped worms, caster and a few red maggots via a small bait dropper. He felt cupping in would spread the feed too much in this flow and was looking to keep things tight within the peg. Regular visits and smaller top-up feeds eventually saw the arrival of some handy skimmers.

Hooking the worm segment through the head was Lol’s preferred method and it was obviously working as he drew clear again. But suddenly he hooked a leviathan, and as we all sat guessing the culprit’s identity a pike surfaced and promptly bit through the hook length. Bites slowed, then Lol hooked another pike (or maybe the same one?) later in the practice.

The arrival of one or two skimmers on Phil’s still-strong caster line brought a smile back to the Hayes, Middlesex angler’s face. Then, within seconds of one another, another hitherto-unseen species entered the equation as both anglers connected with big perch. Pristine 1lb-plus fish with bright red fins were soon safely netted – a tribute to both men’s soft elastics and steady playing styles.

Honours Even

With the winds worsening and the catches seemingly too close to call, it was agreed to call it a day after only four hours instead of the usual five.

Nets were pulled from the water and photographed, proving that quality roach, perch, skimmer bream plus the ever-welcome gudgeon – a species every true cut man loves to see – that the Grand Union at Hemel is indeed a winter wonderland. Phil included a dace, and the pair were surprised not to catch a chub or at least a chublet as this species appears to be on the increase here.

Over 15lb of silvers apiece demonstrates that there is no conundrum between canals and commercials for these lads. Without weighing in, the result was declared an honourable draw.

Already good mates and top canal anglers, Lol and Phil had each done us proud by showing two different styles of fishing in dire conditions. Both agreed that practise fishing sessions amongst anglers of equal ability were vital in their own development within the sport, to stay competitive and keep them on their toes.

As a footnote, on passing a pleasure angler who had been fishing all day, I asked him what he had caught. He replied: “Just one perch”. Although not a match angler, this shows how hard the fishing really was.

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