Red or white?

A big change in the weather this past week has seen the blue skies replaced with angry grey clouds and the bone dry fields have been well watered at last. In normal times I would be reaching for my salmon rods and confidently casting over the well known lies of my local rivers, but this year I will leave the tiny remaining numbers of salmon well alone. God only knows what next season will bring for Irish salmon anglers, if the decline in stocks continues there will be no fish at all in ’26.

The little fishing I have managed this summer has been limited to coarse outings and this change in weather has brought the realisation we are heading into autumn now, a time when I usually do well with roach and perch. Perhaps I could catch one or two more tench though before they go off the feed? So it was back to the Royal canal once more, south of Longford on a stretch which was new to me. Why not return to one of the spots that have fished well for me recently? I have always enjoyed trying different places to fish, it is just something odd in my personality. I suppose it is a reflection of how I have lived my life, never settling down in one place, always on the move. There is a line in that old Scottish song ‘the northern lights of Aberdeen’ which goes ‘I’ve been a wanderer all of my life, and many’s the sight I’ve seen’ which sums this old Aberdonian up perfectly. The grass might not be greener on the other side of the hill but I had to go and take a look anyway. A few minutes looking at Google maps is always time well spent, and I soon found a place that looked a bit more remote and hoped might not have been over fished.

The usual rods and gear (a float set up and a feeder) were loaded in the car the previous evening. I would pick up maggots in Longford and aimed to be fishing by 10.30am. Ideally I’d fish much earlier in the morning but I had to wait for the tackle shop to open, hence the relatively late start. One advantage of being retired is that I can change plans easily and not be restricted by work days. I had been planning on fishing on Thursday, but it turned out to be a day of constant rain so I postponed. Friday looked like it would be a bit drier in the morning before the rain returned after lunchtime so I had simply pushed out 24 hours. Leaves are starting to fall and the hours of darkness are lengthening, sure signs the year is on the wane. Autumn is my favourite season and I look forward to more days outdoors before the harsh winter weather arrives. There is something invigorating about the drop in temperatures, a need to make the most of the time available. Wet tarmac and heavy traffic made for a dull journey east but I arrived in Longford town just as the tackle shop was opening. Cold, hard cash was exchanged for a pint of wriggling maggots then I was back on the road again for the short run out the Lanesboro road and the canal. My chosen spot was aways down the winding towpath, a good 20 minutes walk from the car park.

I set about baiting a swim before sorting out the rods and other gear. Sensas 3000, home made brown crumb, some oats and crushed hemp has become my favourite mix for the canal so three balls of that were thrown in dead ahead of the small clearing in the reeds where I decided to fish. A few rudd were topping but otherwise all was quiet. The prawn baited feeder was cast off to my right and then I set up the Korum float rod. A nasty wind was blowing, sometimes from my left, more often straight in my face. That wind was going to make it a challenging day for me.

For a change I tried using prawns as bait for the tench on my feeder rod. I used my ‘normal’ set up of a twizzled boom paternoster, an open end feeder and a four inch hook length of six pound mono. Hook size had to go up from my usual 14’s or 16’s, and I started off with a size 6 to cope with the large bait. I filled the feeder with a mix of my ground bait plus some halibut micro pellets, thinking the fishy smell from the pellets might help to turn the tench on to the prawn sitting close by.

The eleven foot Korum float rod, six pound mono on a fixed spool reel was next and the gusting wind made float choice important. I decided on a 3AAA balsa bodied waggler with a fine tip, the heavy float giving me weight to cast into the wind but the tip fine enough to be of least resistance when fishing. I spent time fiddling with the shotting to get the float to sit with only the tiniest part of the tip showing and so that the hook was fishing over depth. I wanted the maggots to be hard on the bottom so the tench could find them as they snuffled along and also to try to reduce bites from small stuff. Hook was a size 12 spade end to a six pound hook length. Prying open the plastic bait box was a disappointment, the pint of ‘mixed’ was predominantly white with very few reds in there. It is a bit of pot luck what colour of maggots are in stock at Dennistons, sometimes they have only reds, other times only mixed. Being a fan of reds, I spent the session picking out the ruby coloured grubs for the hook (more on that later).

And so I started, the feeder out to my right, the float right in front of me three rod lengths out. Weed growth was luxurious and I toyed with the idea of raking the swim but it looked like someone had done that recently. Casts to left or right of me resulted in the baited hook not get to the bottom and getting snagged up on weeds most casts. The swim in front of me was clear enough to fish comfortably though, the only issue being the wind. After a slow start some small rudd turned up, not the smallest of the species but nothing big enough to require the net. After 6 or 7 rudd it all went quiet for half-an-hour, maybe because a pike had appeared. The wind grew stronger and was a real nightmare to cope with as it changed direction all the time. Around eleven o’clock I started to pick up more rudd and some bubbles could be seen in the swim, the tench had discovered my ground bait at last. I switched the feeder rod over to my left as there were more bubbles on that side of me but alas, the feeder remained unmolested all session.

Another couple of balls of ground bait went in and I kept up a steady stream of loose fed maggots as best I could. The wind made accurate positioning of the loose feed difficult with some maggots flying way of course. Despite huge concentration on my part I could not get the tench to bite, just the odd rudd pinched my maggots. I decided to drop hook size from a twelve to a fourteen and reduced the hook bait to just a pair of reds. By now there was a fairly constant stream of fizzy bubbles in the swim as the tench munched happily away on the bottom. There were times when my float was right in the middle of all the fizzing yet no bites from the tench were forthcoming. This went on for a while until I recalled a conversation with a fellow angler on a different part of the canal a couple of years ago. He told me he much preferred white maggots to reds for tench, so was a simple change of colour going to work on this windswept stretch in Longford?

Off came the pair of soggy red maggots and I replaced them with wriggling white ones. Nothing happened for maybe 20 minutes bar a few more rudd but I resolutely stuck with the whites. Finally, a solid pull on the float saw me set the hook in a good sized tench. The fight was unspectacular for such a good sized fish but by then I cared not a jot, I had finally landed my tench! The wee size 14 barbless was very far back, quite unusual in my experience on the canal, but it came up with a quick flick of the disgorger. She went back after the photo and swam off none the worse for our brief encounter. Hands washed, re-baited hook back out, I sat down and found a sandwich to eat while I basked in the glow of success only an angler understands. Two casts later the float went under and would you believe it I was into another good tench! Half-eaten sandwich clenched between my teeth, I tried to keep this one from heading to my left, but it was too strong and it managed to tangle the line on the feeder rod which was positioned over on that side. There I was, cheese and pickle sambo in my mouth and a rod in each hand with a somewhat bemused tench circling around in front of me. Opening the bail on the feeder reel allowed the line to peel off and thankfully this fish was pretty docile. Safely in the net, the lines were quickly untangled and the fish released. It had been a mad 10 minutes.

As it turned out, those would be the only two tench I’d hook, after that I had a smattering of small rudd before the promised rain showed up. In total I landed 14 rudd, which given the amount of them I saw all morning was actually a very poor return. A switch to bread would have boosted numbers greatly but it was tench I was after, not the pretty little golden flanked rudd. I packed up as the rain drops got bigger and made it back to the car before I was too wet. Low clouds spilled rain all the way back to Mayo and I was glad I had decided to fish that morning in a short window of dry(ish) weather.

What to make of those two tench taking my white maggots then? I do believe smell and presentation are the two biggest factors when choosing bait for coarse fish but colour does seem to be part of the attraction. Keeping an open mind and trying different things is the lesson I re-learned on Friday. Shame the prawns did not work but I am not giving up on them yet. Maybe it was not the most productive session of the year for me but I thoroughly enjoyed the few hours trying to fool the tench.

What lies ahead for me? I am trying to arrange some fishing with friends in the midlands next week, possibly a session chasing rainbows for a change. The recent rain should have invigorated the trout and I hope to do a bit of fishing on Conn during September, fly or trolling depending on conditions. I have to apologise to those game anglers and fly tyers who read this blog, I have let both camps down badly this year. House renovations need one more big push to complete all the big jobs, then I can focus on my angling again. My arm is a bit better and as long as I am sensible, refrain from damaging it again, and do my exercises, I should be good to go for the 2026 season. I have not tied a fly for months but I’ve been sorting out the fur and feathers now all the gear is back in one room and I’ll get back into that next month.

Footnote: no word back from the publishers yet, but they did say it would be 6 weeks before they respond to me.