*** FOX RAGE TV ** SAM EDMONDS CANAL TACTICS

[Music] when the clothes season arrives I always really look forward to lure fishing on canals there are over two thousand miles of them that crisscross the country and you can cause fish on many of them throughout the close season and when the rivers are closed canals can be a great place to target Pike perch and Zander today we're fishing on the Grand Union canal which is the longest canal in the country it starts down in London and it works its way all the way through the Midlands and breaks up into various branches going off to Birmingham Leicester and other places as well and on this particular stretch we've got the chance of catching Pike perch and Zander so there's three different species that we're likely to catch today the two most common are perch and Zander but there's always the chance of a pike - the great thing about canals are that they're great places to try a lot of different tactics as well so today I'm going to really mix it up I'm going to try jigging drop-shotting crank baits as well and hopefully if I cover plenty of water and choose mother's correctly we should be able to put a few fish on the bank [Music] well I've got the first fish of the day in the net and it wasn't what I was expecting it to be actually it's actually turned out to be a little pike but it's the first bite of the day first fish in the net it took a mini fry in the fire tiger color rigged on a 3.5 gram jighead and I just made a a short cast along the margins it's quite deep just along the edge here and I just let the jig fall to the bottom gave it a couple of hops and then bang I actually thought it was a Zander at first but it came up to the surface and I got a bit of a shock actually because I've caught many pike along this section this is probably actually the hardest species to catch along here so it would be great if we could get Pike perch and Zander in the same day so I'm going to put this one back now and we're gonna keep on fishing well we've just moved down a few yards and where I caught the first fish of the day and I've just done some fan casting opposite that Barger over there and did a quick cast along the bank and add another hit and he's turned out to be another pike so yeah it's probably the most uncommon of the three predatory species you find in the canal along here but it's nice to get some action but hopefully we'll catch some Persians and a later off and make it a Grand Slam [Music] when lure fishing on small canals like this I'm not really out to catch big fish it's just more about having fun than getting a few bites really so I'm not using massive lures the biggest lures I tend to use on canals around 3 inches in length if I'm fishing a bigger canal than the Grand Union then I might go for something bigger but this is a very small narrow canal and generally I use quite small lures you can often end up walking quite a few miles in a day because the I mean the Grand Union especially is a really long canal so I like to travel really light and take a maximum of 2 rods really so the first of those rods will kind of be like the all-rounder so the one that can fish jigs crankbait spinners chatter baits and a lot of other different types of lures as well so for that I like to use the twitch and jig so it's 6 foot 11 and cast between 3 to 14 grams now most of the time I'm using lures that are lighter than 14 grams on canals like this one but I do like the extra length of this rod has because it helps get over Bankside vegetation but it's also got a really sensitive tip so it's ideal for detecting really finicky bites the second rod I'll have with me will be set up with the drop shot Creek so for that I like to use a rod with a much softer tip which will help me also detect really finicky bites but also allow me to fish a little bit slower as well and more delicately so for drop shotting I like to use the prison drop shot rod which is also 6 foot 11 which is a nice length for when I want to cast to the far bank and sort of drag the drop shot weight along the bottom and also is a nice length for fishing in the margins as well so what I like to do is stand back from the margins because if I'm standing really close to the bank then it's increasing the chance of me spooking fish so they're sitting right tight to the margins so I like to keep back as far as possible and have the tip of the rod almost touching the bank because I like to fish really light on these small canal's are matching the really light rods with fairly small reels as well so on the twitching jig I'm using a 2 500 sized prism which is spooled up with naught point thirteen millimeter jig silk and on my drop shutting outfit I've got a 1000 sized prison that's pulled up with naught point 10 millimeter jig silk one of my favorite tactics for searching for fishing canals is by jigging so using a soft bait such as a shad creature bait or curl tail and rigging that on a jig head and then casting out letting it fall to the bottom and then hopping it back along the bottom until it gets back to my feet it's a great tactic that works for all species Pike perch Zander even chub too well just as I was talking to you about how effective jigging is I actually just had a bite right in the margins so I've just made a quick cast back out there just to see if the fish will take again I'll have one more cast and then if not I'll change lure and change tactic as well and hopefully it might help me catch it I've already tried quite a few different nerves today but I've caught both Pike and also had a couple of other takes - on the mini fly which is seven centimeters it's a great lure cause it's got a big profile and it's also got a fairly thick paddle tail which creates a lot of movement and vibration in this colored water which is going to help the fish find the lure easier but I've had to tapes now where I've missed them I haven't hooked into the fish so I'm gonna have another change now I'm gonna scale down to something a little bit smaller something a little bit more bite-sized and hopefully the next bite I'll get I'll be able to get in the net another very effective type of lure that can be worth trying on the canals of crankbaits you don't tend to see so many people using crank baits on canals now mainly because you know there are other methods like jigging that can work very well especially when you're Texas rig soft baits that allow you to fish over snags without the fear of losing as much gear but in the right areas crank baits can be a really devastating tactic there are various different types of crank baits so you've got floating crank baits suspending ones and sinking models to the model I've got on at the moment is the samo rattling hornet which is a floating crank bait and it dives to around five or six foot so the way I'm fishing this is by cranking it down after I've cast out and after a few reel turns the lure will start bumping along the bottom now when it starts to do that I just pause it let it float up for two or three seconds and then continue my retrieve until it bumps the bottom again and basically you're almost fishing it a bit like a Jeep so it's almost got that sort of popping motion along the bottom the rattling horn it's a good choice for fishing in colored water like this because not only has it got a really wide wiggle that's giving off tons of vibration but it's got a really loud rattle and that sound is helping fish find the lure in this really murky water floating crank baits are a great choice but don't rule out sinking crank baits either so one of my favorite crank baits for fishing on rivers and canals is the sound most Barca shaft which is sinking it's got quite a unique shape to it it's quite unlike any other crank bait I've seen actually it's got a very angled shape to it but it's also got a very loud rattle similarly to the rattling hornet but because it's sinking I have to fish it a little bit differently so the way I'll fish this is cast out leave it for about five seconds or so so it just gets down a little bit and then I'll just twitch it pause it for a second and switch it pause it for a second and basically fish it unlike a stop-start retrieve you don't want to let it sink too far down though otherwise it will get close to the bottom and that's going to increase your chances of hooking into a snack but what a sinking crank bait does is it allows you to fish a little bit differently from a floating crank bait a different kind of retrieve and a different kind of retrieve can often be what's needed to convince fish to take your lure well in the last half hour or so the wind's dropped and it feels like it's got a lot warmer and I think it's made a bit of a difference because in the last few minutes I've just had a couple of bites and one of them has turned out to be this perch there's a root really chunky little fish this one it took as and approach add we've done a 3.5 gram jighead I was just hopping it on along the bottom I actually bumped into a snack on my first cast and I just shook the little out of the snag and as it was falling bang I had a proper take it turned out to be this perch [Music] well the temperatures really warming up now so much so I've actually had to take my jacket off in the last hour or so I wish I could say the same about the fishing but unfortunately it's been tough going so far so as the days gone on obviously it's got warmer the boat traffic source owing I'm not sure if I had to take then I'm just gonna keep retrieving I'm just going to make another cast back over that direction anyway as I was saying as the days gone on the boat traffic's increased and as the boat traffic increases the color of the water starts to change so this morning the canal was relatively clear we had a few inches of visibility it wasn't too colored but now that a few more barges have been through and the water started to turn chocolatey I've had to change to use in brighter colors so at the moment I've got as and approach a Don in lemon tiger other colors like fire tiger hot tiger and white would also be good choices in these kind of conditions as well basically what you're aiming for is to help your lure stand out as much as it can in this really murky water another reason I've put the Zander fro shad on is because it's got a fairly big profile and it's also got a fairly thick paddle tail to it as well so that's gonna cause more vibration and displace more water as it swims another one of my favorite tactics for fishing on canals is a drop shot rig so this is especially effective when you found a shoal of fish or if you want to fish really tight to the margins like I'm doing here so you can either cast out to the other side and fish it similarly to a jig by keeping the rod tip up and dragging the drop weight along the bottom you don't really have to impart that much movement into the lure just that dragon effect will enable that lure to swim around and give it a really unique look and give it a presentation unlike any other really you can fish it vertically by walking along the bank like I'm doing here or you can cast along the bank instead but I like to walk along the bank like this because it allows me to fish it really really slowly you'll notice that I'm standing a fair way back from the bank as well this is because if I'm standing closer to the bank then I'm more likely to spook the fish so by standing away I'm not creating as much noise and I'm not going to put any fish off that are sitting by the bank canals are often a lot shallower than most rivers and a lot of gravel pits and lakes that I fish so after the fish a much shorter drop shot rig often in the margins you're fishing in just two or three foot of water if that so I like to shorten my rig right down so there's a very short distance between the hook and the drop bite sometimes I'll go as short as two or three inches even but at the moment I've got it set up for about four inches [Music] when I'm jigging soft baits in murky water like this what I often like to do is to double jig the lure so I hop it then hop it again very quickly and basically that helps the lure fall down and gives it a little bit more time to fall down to the bottom and that helps for a few different reasons one of those is that it gives the soft bait more time to swim from side to side and the other reason is that it gives the fish a little bit more time to see the soft bait as it's falling down too and also giving it that extra little jig it just gives the the lure a little bit more vibration that can hopefully help you get a few more bites on the day well it's been a great day weather-wise the fishing hasn't been easy but it's been nice to catch a few fish on a variety of different tactics it makes it a lot more interesting than just sticking to the one tactic all day but I really enjoy exploring canals with the lure rod they're not often big fish that you catch but it's all about getting bites really and having a bit of fun so hopefully after watching this video you can try out some of these techniques on your local canal [Music]

Channel: Fox Rage TV

Views: 25,417

Rating: 4.8901958 out of 5

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Id: 0hvhlXVIiFw

Length: 15min 45sec (945 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2019