Street fly fishing - Tails of the Unexpected

At 0700  the scent of coffee spreads around the house as  Susy, the girlfriend of Miki - my companion on this fishing adventure, prepares coffee for us. We need this in the cold and misty morning in mid January, in a town in the north of Italy. 

We are in Pavia, a city with 72 000 habitants -  full of canals, a very quiet city with a lot of countryside around.

After a few cups of espresso  we decided to go to a large canal which is bordered by a cycle path on one side and on the other side by a busy road. I let Miki decide because I dont know this area - I dont have a lot of hpoe for a great fishing day, but as always: A day on the water beats any day of the office….

Having parked the car we take the rods, for me a 10.6 #3  with a reel and a line #3 , and a  2.75 m leader. My tippet is  0.12 and  approximately 1.5 m. This is a good alround rod that I use for a lot of my fishing.

Immediately as we look out on the canal we see a handful of large chubs in mid-water, motionless.  I try to cast with a dark nymph of size 18 and as the nymph touches the water -  the chubs get scared and move away..

We get moving up stream and as we are walking, we continuously gaze at the water.  At this time of the morning the light allows us to see the bottom well and the polarized glasses helps us spot the fish.

After several hundred meters, we see a large group of carp, in the middle we also distinguish two amur, a type of carp that feed on grass. One of them must be at least 15 kg! Then still among the carp we also spot a large perch weighing about 4-5 kg. Exited about these  fish - we try to cast our flies, but when there are many carp together they are very nervous -  and in fact they start to nervously move faster and faster and not take any interest in our flies.

We must have done at least two or three km, carefully looking at the canal, but we no longer see anything except a few carp moving quickly without taking any interest in our flies. A little disappointed in the cold morning, we change places and go near a lock, a place where there usually are chubs, but we catch nothing.

It's 1pm and we are saved by the rining of the phone -  Susy calls us to come to he house for some pasta carbonara and in 5 minutes we are at her house enjoying the pasta! This is incredible for a fishing trip - normally we stay far from the house     During lunch we need to get new motivation and Miki suggested a different canal -  smaller in size. Miki decides not to take the rod because he wants to have me fishing since I am his guest - and he fished there many times before.

We arrive at the first pool and I immediately see some carp and chub intent on eating, I had a pink egg with a 2.5 tungsten ball on a 16 hook on.  I approach slowly and on the first cast a nice chub moves quickly and eat my fly,  - the first catch of the day!

Then I relaunch and caught another one, probably about two kg!  I retrieve and release, then a barbel and another carp!  I'm excited and every fish caught is released with all the attention.

We move to another pool and as we get closer we glimpse two perches, both fish weighing around two kg. I change the fly and rig a worm imitation in chenille, I cast carefully and move the worm in the direction of the first perch. It is very aggressive - and gave me a big surprise!  I land it and then we had to make  a  photo also because this is my first perch on fly!  A beautiful and mysterious fish.  I am happy to have finally caught my first perch.

Still caught up in the enthusiasm, Miki and I continue along this canal and after The two anglers are lighting up - smiling and having a great time, Miki continues to take photos and congratulate me, I am so two empty pools we arrive at a large pool where we glimpse  a part of the body of a catfish, hiding with the upper body in the grass on the bottom of the canal. We could only see the tail and lower part of the fish, moving slowly in the clear and low water.  Miki had never seen such a big fish in this canal and my mind started to quietly lay out a strategy for how to get in touch with this true monster of the canal.

We are both nervous and want to try fishing at this huge fish -  I change my tip, look for the toughest fluorcarbon I have -  and find a 0X fluorocarbon from Cortland, it would be a 0.28, I shorten my leader and add two meters of 0X.

With one eye always fixed on the big tail in the water,  I look for the biggest worm imitation I have, I found it and made sure my knots are solid before casting a in front of the monster and place the fly heading straight towards the catfish. Every now and then I could see the two whiskers coming out and feeling around.

At a certain point the head comes out of the pit and in one shot after having touched my worm several times with its whiskers, it takes it and the angry reaction  is immediate, it goes back into the burrow! I try to counteract its strength, but the 10.6 #4 rod can do very little when faced with a fish weighing over 20 kg. I support it by maintaining tension and try to take it out of the hole, my luck was that being a small canal, it could not throw itself into the current or try to escape to other places, consequently I tried to manage this monster and not let it go where there were wood or other obstacles.

In these moments you don't realize how much time has passed with the fish on the rod, and I was only thinking about getting its head out of the water. After,  Miki told me that I fought for a long time.  Then while I was trying to tire him out, we asked ourselves the question:  How the heck do we get this fish out of the water???? The landing net is too small, we didn't have gloves - a fish like this is impossible slippery and jelly like - you can't get a grip.

Miki had the idea of ​​taking the net of the landing net and using it as if it was a rag to grab this fish by the mouth.After two or three attempts Miki managed to take it and drag it out, to his and my unbelivable relief, jumping of joy! A 1.40 meter long fish, with an estimated weight of over 20 kg. Taken with a 10.6 #4 rod and a 0.28 tip...

What can I say, an incredible day, which started slowly, without great emotions and then ended with two hours of fire, catching 5 different species of fish, beating my record for the catfish - before it was 85cm, now 140 cm! Then I finally managed to catch a perch…..and my first is a fish of around two kg. Unbelievable….What a DAY!

I wanted to share this story of the cold and misty day in the centre of a town - because I think we can have incredible possibilities in our neighborhood sometimes. It all comes down to one thing: Keep the fly in the water.

Never lose hope -  for this type of fishing you need to be ready for anything and you will need your imagination, initiative, resourcefulness and knowing how to take advantage of it when luck arrives.

Tight Lines!

Valerio