URBAN PIKE FISHING

URBAN FISHING 

well recently went on a road trip down to engerland and came across this lovely lake while on a pit stop googled it and turns out it has pike perch and the odd trout in it , and the one time ive ever seen buddy duke without a rod in his car bloody typical but when we travel to gigs we always tend to go this way so we may get a shot, a fiver a day apparently  maybe leave a few hours earlier next time

EDINBURGH  ANGLING 

so im blessed to live in quite an amazing city , full of history going way way back to the dark ages of  mankind , the city has its fishing opportunity's if you know where to look and it can take a while to find those spots and then folks are inclined not to share them which i understand and dont do myself so a spot doesn't get cleared out  by those who just want food 

saying that there used to be a massive problem with eastern Europeans taking everything they caught and waters were being destroyed , this seems to be on the reverse now with a lot of fish going back but its still an up hill struggle .

so you can understand why so much cloak and dagger stuff among uk anglers , we are protecting our sport , but as i say attitudes are changing with education , so my local grab and go spot is the union canal in edinburgh hardly a secret venue and most anglers in the city know it .  

id arranged to meet friend and fellow fluff enthusiast ben at the crack of dawn (sort off) to have a wee session and to try out some new patterns ive been working on his happy face when i gave him this box full of fluff  

we fished along our usual spots and with the tempretures dropping in scotland the fish are starting to feed well but we didnt really touch anything in the first couple of hours , probably to busy on the tow path with people going to work and cyclists so we headed away to a couple of other spots we knew produced 

so ben was first way with a nice little scrapper which took a fancy to the blitzkrieg minnow 

now i may point out here that your really never going to get into the big girls on the canal , although they are there , your more likely going to catch micro pike .

but too me i dont really care fish is fish right , and if you scale your gear down then you can actually have some great fun with these , ive done the big fish thing back in the 90s and to be honest i have much more fun doing this i mean i caught a couple and dropped around 6 or 7 fish ,

my gear was quite simple a 6wgt rod , floating line and around 5ft of  8lb fluro leader a rucksack with a box of flies , spool of fluro and unhooking gear and that was it and i covered a few miles , i just love this kind if fishing , and yea besides pike threes also perch , roach and a few surprise species that turn up  

i mean its a fiver a year to fish how can you go wrong so if your going to fish join here click the link 

this gives you access to all the canals , its a fiver please support it  

so ben had one up on me already but not to be beaten i managed a personnel best packet of ready salted  

another favoured spot but little interest here but always worth putting a fly through just in case   

so ben nailed another on the blitzkrieg minnow almost looks like a barracuda this one   

i decided it would be far more fun trying to get my fly out from a tree , one of the pearls of urban canal angling 

so finally my turn and this is actually the stamp of fish you get along there but you know i dont mind great for a few hours sport and literally a short bus journey away.

more people should get out and do this as it is great fun and not all of use can have the luxury of getting further away for a few days due to lifes commitments . i mean i work night shifts so in actual days off im usually recovering or tying flies so yea life can get in the way sometimes , and this is why this is so important to me and of course i have the local sea fishing as well on my doorstep .

yea you know to me its getting out there enjoying your surroundings and learning your craft  catching fish is always a bonus , i have zero time for the big i am anglers because you know at the end of the day the fish dont care what gear you use , who you tye for or how many likes you get on facebook , just get out there and enjoy it people 

ok so this what did the damage a blitzkrieg minnow , a fantastic wee pattern  

when wet it becomes very translucent and mobile and has a very slow sink rate which actually is great for the canals as you dont want to be scraping all the rubbish on the bottom 

this is a smaller version and made to resemble a perch fry looked fantastic in the water .

anyway just a quick blogpost as im about to head into the cave , as always thanks for visiting , more adventures and fly tying shortly