Just a heads up - this might be an uneventful entry on the ‘catches’ front but it just might be quite important for the trajectory of this blog and my angling over the course of the next few months.
I’ve mentioned it before but I am currently struggling to visit my local waters with any regularity as I have no access to a car. Recently however I came up with a idea - why not kill two birds with one stone. As a counter to the recent breakup and some struggles with depression, I’m trying to open myself up to people in general, to let life start moving in wider circles. This combined with angling birthed a curious plan - let’s hitchhike! Maybe I could send a message in a bottle on my angling club’s Facebook page, asking if there’s anyone out there willing to carpool or looking for some company. It wasn’t met with a great deal of interest but functionally all I needed was just one generous person who’s open to the idea. That one person did turn up in my messages and lo and behold a few days later we were casting together at the local beat of Caldon Canal around Endon, Staffordshire.
In the traditional angling fashion we exchanged a ton of tales from our respective corners of the fishing universe - mine from Poland, 1000 miles away. In exchange I got to listen to stories of looking for wild pike living in remote lochs of Scottish Highlands and all the adventures that come with it. This reminded me why I instantly felt at home in the UK and what really drove me to stay here - getting to meet people from 1001 different walks of life, cultures and places. Let’s just say that back home things are a bit more ‘uniform’ and I’m a hopeless sucker for variety.
This time around I managed to actually catch something - a humble little perch, a wasp as some people call them. It was tempted in the margins with a 5cm shad on a 5g jighead. It really was the saving grace that day - we tried everything for around 6 hours. Lures small and big, dark and bright, dropshotting, straight retrieves fast and slow. Locks, margins, straight sections, bridges, barges - all the hallmarks of looking for canal perch. Sometimes you just can’t win with slow bites. I also somehow managed to wipe my camera’s memory card before I copied all the photos to the PC so no visuals with this article. That’s another lesson right there. Finger’s crossed there are many more of these little adventures ahead - feel free to subscribe if you want to stay up to date.
Seb