Planes, Perch and the worlds hottest Chilli

In between visiting relatives and attending an air show ive not had much time to fish really this weekend although thats not say i havent been out at all. I did manage to squeeze a quick-un in this morning so  i cant complain. Ive mentioned on here before that i have a keen interest in military planes and helicopters and some of the hardware being put through its paces at Waddington this weekend was very impressive indeed, the whole family had a great time.

Whilst we were there i came across a stall which claimed to sell the worlds hottest Chilli and after tasting a sample i can confirm the stuff is practically weapons-grade! I purchased a bottle with an idea of using some in my bait come the wintertime but after since having a look online i was surprised to see it genuinely is the hottest in the world and im having second thoughts in case it damages the fish! Find it here.

So what of the fishing? I knew id only have around 3hours max to fish so i went for the lure-fishing option and when i awoke Sunday morning the sun was out in force. I headed to a local stretch of the Soar only to find it very mucky and carrying around a foot. A quick check of the river levels on my phone had me heading towards the canal as i knew this wouldnt be affected by the recent rain. I know fish will hit lures in coloured water but im never very confident in such situations and try to avoid them where i can.

Although the canal itself was coloured due to the boat traffic it was a different kind of colour and visibility was around twice what it was in the river. I started below some locks and first cast with a chartreuse and orange jig-fly resulted in a nice Perch of around the pound mark.

After that i was getting lots of taps and plucks on the fly but no more hook-ups so i turned to my trusty Mepps backup plan. I had a couple of really savage pulls over the next few casts which didnt connect and i suspected that Chub might be responsible. This was confirmed as the next fish i did hook proved to be a nice canal Chub of somewhere between 2-3lb which put up a great scrap on the light gear.

Another Perch followed pretty quickly after that before the first boat of the day arrived and the action was killed stone dead. On the way home i decided to stop off at a couple of our clubs lakes to check some tickets seeing as i was in the locality and whilst i did so i took the opportunity to have a few casts with the jig-flies id recently tied up. Everybodies tickets were in order but the fishing proved fairly slow. An algal bloom had coloured the water up quite a bit but nevetheless i still managed to land a small jack and pull out of another slightly larger fish.