Canal Zander and Other Stuff

We do not have any zander in the local canals. I can say that with 99.99% certainty. No zander, zilch zeds, zero...well near zero. That missing 0.01% is due to a single rumour I heard of one being caught a couple of years ago.  So far from any established zander populations though, that, if the rumour be true, it must have been a fish introduced by a zander angler, and caught elsewhere.  Since that rumour, all has gone quiet.   I mention this because I have read elsewhere that the Canal and Rivers Trust are seeking £5000 or so in order to try and eradicate, (or at least reduce the numbers of) the

A Tiny Zander From the Coventry Canal

species from the Coventry Canal. The Coventry Canal has plenty of zander, I even caught a few myself during a couple of day trips last year.  Nothing big, but if I can catch several without having spent much time down there, then they are present in good numbers.    I had been shocked a year or two before, when I caught my first ever zander, on the Trent. Never seen one before and I had no idea they were present. Thirty odd years away from angling and the grapevine withers.  A subsequent trip to the river with the specific intent to try for a zander was successful. So the Trent is another river in which they must be present in considerable numbers.

There is an infinitesimally small chance that such eradication tactics will work in Coventry. The species is far too well established for any control efforts to work.  Short of draining the canal, and/or killing all its fish, they will remain.  Even if removed, they will soon return from elsewhere in the system.  There are too many connections between canals ( and other navigable waterways) for that not to be the case.  It is far too late.  When those 100 or so fish were first introduced into the Great Ouse Relief Channel back in 1963, the wide spread of zander was guaranteed by their first successful spawning. It was an inevitable consequence.  I remember an article in "fishing" magazine some forty five or fifty years or so ago, wherein pike livebaits were being retrieved with V shaped marks on their flanks and no-one knew why.  I think that was on the Forty Foot Drain.  Soon afterwards the first zander were being caught, and held responsible for the marks on the fish.   Reactions varied from wild panic to gratitude that another predatory fish was there to be enjoyed.   The authorities were not happy, and a cull was attempted back in about 1980/81 on the Middle Level.  It was felt that silver fish were suffering badly. They reduced the numbers of both pike and zander, stocked roach, thus reducing the ratio of predators to prey, It worked for a while, but subsequently good breeding years allowed numbers of predators to once again rise.  An experiment doomed to fail long term, as will any new attempt to control the species.   I have no idea why the decision was first made to stock those 100 fish into an unenclosed water.   Looking back there must be those that have regrets.   The EA, the Canal Trust and others must regret that first introduction into the Channel.  The human race is unlikely ever to learn.   Cane toads, American crayfish, mink, balsam, hogweed, knotweed, wels catfish, topmouth gudgeon, ide, carp,  goldfish, all are chapters in a book that should be compulsory reading for anyone bringing any species into an alien environment.  And yes, I did say carp then.

We do not have zander in the local canals....but they sure as hell are on their way.  And as has happened with carp over the last forty years or so, anglers will be in the forefront of helping zander to spread. I don't approve of such behaviour, but the natural spread is unstoppable, and it matters little whether  I approve of that or not.   Uphill lock flights may help to delay the spread, but sooner or later, even these obstacles will be passed.    I once caught a flounder in the Shropshire Union canal.  It had come up from the River Dee, working its way uphill and through a number of locks in the process, probably quite difficult for a bottom living fish.   In a few years zander will find their way back down that same set of locks that the flounder had negotiated. And once here I will fish for them locally, and as with perch and pike, I shall return them alive.   It makes little sense not to.

Of course, zander are not the only thing that has happened to our canals over the last 50 years or so. My first serious fishing, from probably the age of twelve, was on a local canal.  It was very clear, and a hard water to fish.   Its clarity meant that you could watch maggots sinking.  Throw in a handful with your hookbait and you could see the roach and perch rush in, taking every maggot but one.   But I learned to catch those fish, and the canal in turn taught me how to be an angler. I mainly fished for the roach, catching many a fish between eight and twelve ounces.   Pound fish were rare, despite the bailiff claiming that he caught many a two pounder, and several over three.  My friends and I never believed him, never saw him fishing, never saw a photograph.  Had such fish been present we would have caught at least the occasional one.   But over several years I only had three fish over a pound, and was well pleased with the best at 1-6.   The bailiff sold the day tickets, probably on a commission basis.  Make of that what you will. I neither saw nor caught a perch of a pound or more: they just did not seem to be there.   

 

Another change is that much of our canal banking is now protected by metal shuttering driven into the banks.  It helps prevent erosion caused by the wash of boats.  I assume it is due to boat speed rather than numbers.  When the barges were horse drawn canals never seemed to need the metal shutters.  I feel that these metal edgings have contributed to the demise of the water voles: animals which I used to see daily.  There is no longer the bankside mass of reeds and rushes along both banks.  There is probably less food for the fish in consequence. The voles have nowhere to hide, little to feed on and no way of migrating along the canal system any more.  Mink may have had an effect, but I am sure they are not wholly to blame.

 There are now far more boats.  Fifty years ago "my" canal had about half a dozen boats clustered around a small boatyard. Last week I counted well over a hundred narrowboats and canal cruisers in the same spot.  A short distance away is another boatyard, one of several new ones that have been built.  As I fished last week, I admired the skill of one bargee, who turned his 60 foot long narrowboat through 135 degrees into his regular mooring.  He used minimal speed, few engine revs, but great control and slid in alongside his jetty beautifully. I was impressed.   Later a much shorter boat attempted the same process and made a right old signal crayfish of it.  The "captain" collided with other boats and jetties, surged to and fro, and gunned the engine at maximum revs for minutes before completing the task.  In doing so he churned the canal, or more specifically my swim, into large whirlpools, turning the water into a horrible black mess as the bottom silt was stirred and shaken. I moved.   But the end result of so many boats is that the canal is always a muddy brown colour, even in winter.     I used to see one or two boats pass by me during a summer weekend, now I see a dozen or so, even on a cold February day.  It must become unfishable during the summer months.

But is that muddy colour entirely a bad thing?         Maybe not:  over the last three years or so I have

A Canal Perch of About Two and a Half Pounds

fished five different canals nearby, none for  more than four or five trips.  Each of those canals has produced perch of two pounds or more to my rod, together with numbers of others over the pound mark.     My canal used to feel and look good, yet never produced perch of those sizes whilst the water was clear.  I understand many carp filled commercial lakes, churned muddy by the activities of those carp, also produce very big perch.   Can it be mere coincidence, or does muddy water allow perch to better ambush their prey, and hence grow much

Chunky Canal Roach

bigger?  I even had a roach of 1-4 from my canal this week!



Noisy Canal Nuthatch

All those local canals also hold plenty of ruffe, a species I never caught from them years ago. Ruffe must have used the canal system as a highway, and spread into my area of the country over the decades. One angler I know suggested that having ruffe in my canal was a sure sign there were no zander.  Another bemoaned the lack of gudgeon in the Coventry Canal.  Are zander predating so efficiently as to be eliminating these minor species form the waters?  The zander are now using the same highways as did those ruffe. Are my local mini species going to get a rough, sorry, bad deal in the future?  


I hear pike are less common in canals with zander. Is that competition between predators for limited food fish?  Or is it that young pike are also getting snaffled for a zander's brekkie?

Canals are indeed changing, but they are still greatly underrated as fisheries these days, and regardless of their mix of species, will probably always produce some worthwhile sport for those willing to spend time on the towpath. But apart from the odd lure angler, I see no-one on the banks.

A Canal Treat and a Mystery Solved.

I have never been in any way artistically skilled. I cannot paint, nor draw anything that might be recognised by others for what it was meant to be.   I am not musical, and am in fact banned from singing for life.  A punishment made by my music teacher on my first day at grammar school, after I had stood immediately behind him as he played the organ during school assembly.   But I can appreciate those who are artistically gifted. OK, OK, I am insanely jealous!   The gay community always seems to produce a high proportion of artists, but it also seems to have some good comedians and wits.   Those who do not live near Manchester will not realise why I have titled this article so.    The gay village in Manchester is centred around one pedestrianized road: Canal Street.  The locals there often modify the cast iron street sign, even though it is some 12 or fifteen feet above ground level.   "Street"  is modified to  read "treet", by the addition of some white paint.      The local council consider it rather unfortunate that the first word gets similarly emasculated,   ( work it out for yourself),  and hence the sign gets frequently repainted by the council too.  The sign see-saws between its two incarnations.    I was also amused to be told that one year Liverpool Gay Festival had been entitled "Fairies 'Cross the Mersey" by the participants. I suspect that Gerry Marsden would have been quite pleased.

So the title of this post is part in homage to those witty individuals who live and love in and around the Manchester gay village.   The street runs alongside the Rochdale Canal, right in the city centre, a canal which these days does hold fish, and which has a set of subterranean lock gates, beneath one of Manchester's main thoroughfares: Oxford Road, although I have yet to be brave enough to go fishing there.  And were I brave enough, to fish there would probably have a negative effect on business for a number of young local ladies. So I steer well clear. 

Today I returned to the Llangollen Canal.  I would not be defeated by this water, and sought revenge for the blank session it gave me a few days ago.     Armed again with lobworms and a "big 'ook", I drove down there in the early morning and the first frost for some time.   It had created ice coverings on all the many ponds and puddles that the recent rains had left on the roads.  The towpath grass was white as I sat down at first light.  The weather was initially fine and still, no wind at all.   But it was not long before the first drops of rain began to fall.   They continued to fall until lunchtime, interspersed with the occasional bout of sleet.  All in all, with the cold it would have been a most unpleasant day on which to blank.   And by the time the rain stopped, I was still blanking.  This surprised me, for, from the moment I first cast in, my float was continually bobbing and running a few inches to the left, or to the right. It would not keep still for a moment.   Something was certainly interested in the lobworm.   But there was nothing I could strike at, and although I tried, apart from losing half the worm sometimes, no fish were to be hooked.  Maybe there were crayfish attacking the worm?  But none got tangled up in the line and as far as I knew, with a water temperature of just 3 degrees, any crayfish present would be inactive.  But, just as I was losing hope amid the rising frustration, a very good bite. And to quote many an angling TV journalist:

Rod, Pole and two Pound Perch.

 "Fish on".   The fish rapidly rose and splashed on the surface in the shallow water. It was indeed a perch, my target species, and at exactly two pounds a nice "canal treat" for me. The fish bristled its fins defiantly the whole time it was on the bank. Usually they refuse to raise their fins for me to photograph. A short while later another bite, which resulted in a bream of about a pound and a half.  So  maybe all the the bobs and bobbles were from small bream?   Both fish were quite pale, especially the bream, a result of living in water permanently brown and muddied by the passage of canal barges.  Nevertheless the stripes on the perch were quite clearly defined, if not intensely black, and some nice red in the lower fins.  A while later a second perch, of maybe 10 or 12 ounces gave himself up too.   

Daddy Ruffe

The itches and twitches on the float continued apace though, curiouser and curiouser, and at about 3 o'clock I decided to set up a second rod, and throw a couple of maggots at the canal bed.   Mystery quickly solved. It was not long before I reeled in a small ruffe,  the first I have caught for about 45 years.  Indeed, it was quite a pleasure to catch it. Nine or ten more ruffe were to follow in quick succession. That is probably more than I have caught in total during my entire previous angling career.  Ruffe were always very rare in my area.  This handful of ruffe came together with about three gudgeon and a rather sickly looking roach of two or three ounces, a fish which had a large open wound near the dorsal fin.   Cormorant? No. After some thought I concluded that the roach had instead most probably been attached to someone's snap tackle in the recent past. As I snatched the tiddlers a local guy passed by.  A canal angler himself he professed never to have heard of ruffe.  After describing one verbally to him, I managed, just a minute or so later, to catch  another and was thus able to show him exactly what the fish looked like.   Another name for the ruffe is the pope, no-one ever really calls them that though,  but as kids were always called them  "daddy ruffe".  I have no idea why such a big nickname should apply to a fish which never usually grows more than an ounce or two.  I have also heard the term "Tommy ruffe".  I just consulted the British record fish list and the biggest ruffe on record is a little over 5 ounces.   Whilst on the site I also noted that the British record stickleback is 0-0-4.  Just 4 drams.   I KNOW that, as I kid, I had one much bigger than that: a very gravid female that was about 4 or 5 inches long.  And I kid you not! The small reservoir from which that came has long been filled in and built on, else I might have nipped back to see if the fish was still there.  It would only have been about 55 years old by now. but could I ever have overcome the embarrassment of claiming a record stickleback?

But the mystery of the niggling little bites was solved, and in, I must admit, a most pleasant way.  It was good to catch some ruffe, a fish that I have not seen for so very many years.   As I sat there, for the final hour or so, I began thinking.  maybe I could make good use of the prolific ruffe in the canal.    I re-tackled, and set up a new arrangement of end tackle:   float,  line down to that "big 'ook" and more line down to a couple of BB shot.  Very much like a cross between a drop-shot rig and a paternoster.   The paternoster dropper being of zero length.  The idea was that the ruffe would probably continue to molest the lobworm, now suspended six inches above the canal floor, causing lots of movement and vibration in the coloured water.  Then maybe, just maybe, the perch would notice all the commotion and saunter along to investigate.  I cannot be sure whether the theory worked in the way I planned, but the next 30 minutes, shortly before dark, did lead to two more perch being landed, one small, the other of a pound and a half.  So maybe it did work.

During the day I had seen no fish rise at all,  the only rings on the bright water had proved to be the droppings from woodpigeons in the trees above.   But oddly, as I drove across the canal to leave, a glance to the left showed a fair fish splashing on the surface.   I of course, had fished to the right.  But in very cold conditions to catch about twenty fish of four different species had made the trip worthwhile.