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Alright... here's the story:
I've just sort of recently got hooked (pun intended) on fishing. The most fishing I ever really did until recently was at my Uncle's cottage on Little Lake near Port Severn... but fishing there is a bit of a joke. Most days you don't even need bait. A shiny hook will land fish after fish if you're casting at the right time. Worms -ALWAYS- work, and if you're willing to wake up early (not really... just sometime before 6am) you'l land a fish worth taking a picture of. Not tough.
A buddy of mine got me into it while I was at school in Kitchener Waterloo, and I had some moderate success there. I decided to try a bait casting set up and after that I was clearly an angler of some form. BUT... this is where the challenge begins.
I finished school and moved back to London. I know people fish here, but I've only seen very few fish landed. That's why I'm here. Hopefully someone on this forum can lead me in the right direction and let me know what I should try/not try and where I should go. I've looked at a few other threads about where to fish in London and they have 2 key locations in common: The Forks of the Thames, and below the weir behind Labatt's. I checked both those places out today and here's what happened:
Bass is what I normally go for. I know there are Bass in the Thames, buuut I'm most comfortable with crank baits. I have a couple different colours of senkos as well, and some hula poppers and pop-rs that I'm terrible with. First I tried the Forks... I've never really felt my crank baits bouncing off of a sandy bottom, so that was interesting, but no fish. I threw a few different wacky rigged senkos and still nothing. I feel I should mention that when I got there, there were already 8 rods in the water, and I wasn't the last person to show up, so after about an hour it felt a little crowded so I moved on to the weir.
The weir was nice. I didn't know that park was back there (I grew up in the west end...) and my crank baits bouncing off rocks was familiar enough... but the water was really fast (Like I said before, I'm used to fishing a super calm lake) and only appeared to be about 1ft deep at most. This wasn't discouraging though. I would have stayed longer than I did, but I almost walked on top of two men about 40+ years old sitting and talking and drinking in a bush. No big, I fished a little ways away from them, but I like my kidneys where they currently reside in my belly. I couldn't help wondering why 2 grown men wouldn't just go to a bar for a drink... or one of their houses... unless they had no money and no houses. I felt like I was fishing in their living room and moved on again.
Closer to where I live in the west end, there's a bend in the Thames that goes under a bridge... where Oxford St W/Glendon Rd meets Old River road. The river is deep and slow here, so if you squint just right you don't notice that it's moving and it looks like a lake. Also, there are fish here (you can see them throwing ripples up at the surface)... but I think it's mostly carp and I've never fished for carp (so I don't know what I'm doing). Hoping for bass I threw my favourite Rapala minnow crank bait and passed the time. I walked under the bridge a bit to get below a set of rapids there and saw a carp eye me up before lazily bloating it's way into deeper water. Somehow still more amiable than the men drinking by the river. I didn't catch anything there either, but the last time I was there I got a 8" ish bass that I took a picture of. You can see the bridge behind me...
Anyways... those spots are close to me and I would fish them more often if I knew what techniques/lures/baits I should use to be more effective than I am. I'm not opposed to fishing for carp either, I just feel I don't have the knowledge I need to get started. ANY HELP IS APPRECIATED!!!
Your new best friend,
-Matt
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