Wyrley & Essington Canal Carp


	The Canal - 1986 Onwards A tough place to serve your apprenticeship The Wyrley & Essington canal flows through the heart of the West Midlands, but became of more interest to me as it reached the Pelsall, Brownhills, Walsall Wood & Aldridge regions of this area. Having lived in the village of Clayhanger, Brownhills, all my life, when I began fishing at ten years of age, the 'cut' was where I learned to catch fish on a variety of different methods, & the desire to catch carp was there from an early age. As I progressed through catching roach & perch, then tench & bream, the carp were always going to be targeted by me one day! When I eventually left school in 1988 (eighteen years ago!) & started work, I started to spend some of my early wage packets on a two rod set-up. It was frighteningly basic! From memory, I had two Sundridge 'Turbo' 1.75lb TC rods, two Sundridge rear drag reels, two 'hi-tone' Optonics, 12lb Maxima main line & I didn't even have a chair, I had to sit on my coat on the floor! My first sessions were totally fruitless, as I really was just finding my feet. I was aware that the other guys, Dave Edwards, Dave Williams, Royston Butwell, Wayne Dunn, Lee Evans, Stu Lines, Micky Eagles & Les Bowd were catching odd fish, & was dying to glean as much information as possible. I hooked my first fish after a night session at Clayhanger. I borrowed my parents camp-bed, & spent the night under my 45" brolly & thin sleeping bag one autumn night. I woke early in the morning because I was freezing, & had zipped the sleeping bag right to the top. Out of the blue, my left hand rod, on a side hooked Richworth 'tutti-fruitti' absolutely flew off, & I couldn't get out of my sleeping bag! When I eventually did get to the rod, it was buried solid in the weed. After a bit of pulling, the rig eventually came back, complete with a straightened out size six Drennan Super Specialist hook! Although I was gutted at losing the fish, I was pleased that at least I knew that I was in the right places to get pick-ups. Dave Edwards became my closest source of information, & from him I learned most of my carp fishing knowledge. He introduced me to the three inch bolt rig, big leads, line sinkers (back leads), peanuts & pop-ups! I slowly but surely started to notch up a few captures, even though most of these fish were no bigger than low doubles, these early lessons were extremely important. I started to move further afield from Clayhanger (which was easy for me to fish, as I lived about half a mile away), & I paid a lot of attention to an area we referred to as 'Tesco arm', at Brownhills. Here, the 'arm' was a small cut-off from the main canal that was no more than three feet deep, & twenty feet wide & was heavily overgrown. Although most of it was unfishable, because of the trees, it provided us with some great positions to watch the carp closely, so we could study how they behaved. We quickly realised that all the carp in the canal were nomadic. They would remain in one holding area, until they decided to move - usually down to angling pressure, & they were all resident fish. After five or six years spent carp fishing the canal, all the fish being caught were the same ones over & over again. There were two known twenties - the biggest of which was a fish known as 'the leather', which seemed to spend most of its time in the arm at 'Tesco bend'. In fact, for all its captures that we were aware of, it was never caught anywhere else! I caught this fish twice, the first time it weighed 22lb 8oz, & the second time I caught it, I didn't have my scales, & it seemed much bigger! The other was a fish we affectionately named 'sid'. I was fortunate enough to catch this fish off the surface, mid-summer one year from Catshill junction at 22lb - it's biggest known weight. I also had a fish known as 'the 18' at 20lb 6oz from 'the grove', in Pelsall. These carp were the most noticeable captures from my time on the 'cut', where the average carp was around 12lb in weight, & a good fish would have been perhaps 15lb+. 'The Leather' @ 22lb 8oz 'Sid' @ 22lb from 'Catshill' on a floater 2nd capture of 'The Leather' @ 20lb+ 'The 18' @ 17lb 12oz from 'the anchor' 2nd capture of 'the 18' @ 20lb 6oz 17lb 10oz from 'tesco bend' A 13lb 10oz Common from 'the apex' During the summer of 2008, I made a few visits to an area of the canal in an attempt to stalk a fish known as ‘three scale’. I believe this fish was first caught by my mate Dave Edwards some time during the early eighties at around 10lb & I last caught this fish at a weight of 18lb 12oz from Aldridge marina in 2002 & it certainly looked as if it was now over the 20lb mark. Unfortunately, I only had one real chance to hook it on a floating bait due to the blustery conditions on the day. I opted to fish a hastily arranged night session in the area, knowing that there were only two carp in the stretch. The take came in the early hours of the morning & it turned out to be the other fish that I’d spotted – a small common. I found ‘three scale’ the following day, where it had located to another nearby stretch. During two evening stalking sessions, I caught two fish whilst trying to snare it – both double figure commons! 'Three scale', along with another couple of known fish (one of them being a good upper-double ghostie) are still on my hit list, but unfortunately, my canal fishing is limited to just a handful of opportunistic sessions per season, due to the already limited fishing time I have available being spent targeting bigger venues. A surface caught double-figure Common With the weather turning markedly warmer during early May 2009, I was able to sneak a few stalking sessions in, here & there on one or two local stretches. Frustratingly, I’d been unable to locate any decent fish & had only succeeded in catching a couple of small commons – more by accident than design. June subsequently arrived on the back of two weeks of very hot weather & this triggered the carp into spawning activity which lasted for a few days, further increasing my frustration! However, after lots of walking & looking I eventually managed to find & bank my first, half decent fish of the summer. A nice reward for my efforts - A lovely double-figure Common As my evening stalking sessions were limited to no more than just a couple of hours, the need to locate fish & get them feeding as soon as practically possible was extremely important. By keeping a close eye on just a couple of local stretches that I felt would yield the better fish, in most cases I was able to segregate the smaller fish from the decent ones. On one evening, I turned up to find a good breeze blowing along the stretch & I was surprised to find hardly any carp there at all… Out of desperation I followed the floaters that had drifted into the next stretch to find three fish taking the occasional one or two. Luckily the smallest of the group was happily slurping the floaters down on its own, well away from the two better fish – a common & a mirror, both upper doubles. Although the mirror managed to avoid the hookbait on several occasions, the common eventually made its mistake after a very delicate take. At 18lb 10oz, I also realised that this was my biggest canal common to date. 18lb 10oz Common One of the most frustrating things about my evening stalking episodes was the amount of times I would locate fish, get them to feed, then for no reason at all they’d vacate the area completely. I’d also noticed that there were more & more people targeting the canal carp using surface methods. When my friends & I used to fish the canal over twenty years before, we never saw anyone else fishing for them. These days it seems as if everyone is out with a rod, net & half a loaf of bread as soon as the sun comes out! With the extra pressure on these fish, seeking out quieter stretches where their presence may have been overlooked was now my highest priority. Fully-scaled Mirror 17lb 12oz Common 15lb 10oz Mirror Last updated: 20th August 2009

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