Canal Fishing

Good morning brothers.

What comes to mind when you think of canal fishing?

Is it slop? Ditch pickles? Mucky mayhem? Garbage fish? Hot sticky days surrounded by stagnant, stinky water? Disgusting old filth some wanker tossed from his truck as he drove over the bridge?

Sure… sometimes that can be the case… but for me, canal fishing is associated with BIG BASS.

That wasn’t always the case though…

I Used to Avoid Canal Fishing

Completely. It wasn’t until the DNR stopped me (multiple times) as I was leaving other clean bodies of water. He commented on my little jon boat with the huge battery (again… multiple times) and asked “you ever get over to fish the canal? It would be perfect for the way you fish!“

Yes. True story. This happened multiple times. (Do not underestimate my ability to learn slowly.)

So fine. FINE. FINE! I’ll fish the stupid ditch! STOP ASKING!

I waited… and waited… and waited… I drove over it probably 25 more times, fishing other bodies of water. Then at the very tail end of 2023, finally took a reluctant trip to the canal… and landed a 3.5 pounder that also ended up on a Midwest Outdoors cover:

Holy smokes. That’s a game changer. They can really live – and thrive – in this shallow water that, at times, barely seems to cover their back! It was decided right then and there; the following season I would dedicate a serious amount of time to canal fishing.

Here’s how it started…

Canal Fishing Equipment

This isn’t a sales pitch so I’ll keep it short and sweet. Most of the gear that I took with me lives in my Heavy Muck Base Box. This has been converted (minimized) to a Heavy Muck Kayak Base Box. We’ll talk about that in a future article – but the long and short of it is this:

You need a stout rod and the ability to cast a fair distance. The fish are living in shallow water, so while they can be aggressive, they can also be extremely spooky. I prefer to use a spinning combo when I’m sitting low in my little plastic kayak. A 6’9″ Bass Pro Bionic Blade with an Ugly Tuff spinning reel spooled with 30-pound Power Pro V2 braid works really well in these situations. The rod is rated as a medium-heavy (fast action) but it has a surprising amount of backbone. A 7-foot Berkley Lightning Rod is another great option that I use often for this kind of fishing. It’s a bit “slower,” but these are great workhorse rods that won’t break the bank. The Ugly Tuff (by Ugly Stik) is solid, but I did have to completely disassemble and grease it to fix a nasty squeak that developed after I dropped it in the water. Fluorocarbon leaders are not usually necessary, but when they are, 40-pound Seaguar Fluoro Premier gets the nod. I’ve tried their Blue Label and Gold Label, and like them at times, but in this situation Premier has the best mix of stretch, strength and abrasion resistance (for working around tree trunks or sporadic riprap) with a reasonably small diameter. Bit pricey, but man, Seaguar makes good stuff! (That said, I am really looking forward to testing out the Reaction Tackle fluoro that’s sitting on my desk at the moment…)

Start with a topwater. Always. If they won’t bite, go subsurface… but remember, subsurface here doesn’t mean a jerkbait or a crankbait. Ever. It might mean a weedless chatterbait or a weedless swim jig or a spinnerbait if you really have high confidence in something like that. But for me?

Stickbaits.

I caught more fat canal largemouth bass on stickbaits last season than all other baits combined. Sure, I caught some on tubes, I caught some on flukes, a few others on soft-plastic creature baits with all kinds of flappys on ’em… but day in and day out, whether the bite was on fire or extremely tough, some version of a stickbait was always the top producer. Often the setup was super-minimalist: Weightless Texas Rig. At times: Weightless Wacky Rig. Occasionally I would add weight, but with such shallow water, that only happened if I needed to punch through overhead cover or play with the rate of fall.

90% of the time a big chunk of plastic, rigged some sort of weightless, was plenty.

Now I will admit, occasionally a monster heifer (my big bass for the day) came on another presentation. Usually topwater. But most of the time both quantity and quality engulfed the stickbait.

Start there, and you’ll be well on your way.

Everyone needs a few more heifers in their life.

That needs to be a t-shirt…

Canal Kayak Fishing: Day 1

This video shows some of the events from my first return visit the following season. It also shows how to meet other anglers at the ramp, and how much fun that can be! If you meet a quality fisherman that is willing to trade information, this can be extremely valuable.

It was the beginning of a long learning process… one that continues to this day. Upcoming videos will show the progression in-depth:

Oh, and get this: the best fish of the day came out of a tube, after biting a tube…

That’s canal fishing.

So, brothers, there is much more canal fishing goodness to cover, and this season I have no doubt there is even more for me to learn… but that’s part of the fun. That’s the good stuff. Figuring out the puzzle. Getting humbled. Figuring it out again. I’m so freaking ready to go. More videos covering canal fishing are on the way in the near future, but I just wanted to say if you haven’t given it a try… consider it.

Lol… heifers…

Tight Lines & Godspeed, Patriots.

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