As a young lad I fished a free stretch between Fenny Statford and Stoke Hammond a number of times. A few of us used to cycle there and almost invariably caught lots of gudgeon - with the occasional small perch, roach, bream and on one occasion I recall catching a ruffe.
Although I have lived in my present home for 25 years with the canal passing by so close, strangely enough I have only ever once fished the canal just three minutes walk from my door ( and that was a short spinning session in heavy rain in autumn). OK - for 11 of those 25 years I had stopped fishing , but its still a long time with fishing on my doorstop to have not wetted a line in the canal.
In addition to the main canal also just at the nearest point of the canal to my home is the 'boat basin' - a new arm of the canal that is about two hundred yards long that was dug out at the beginning of the 1980's where they then built about a dozen homes with boat mooring and fishing rights for each home along the basin. Each summer a considerable number of large carp move out of the main canal into the boat basin section (probably partly to avoid the endless stream of barges on the canal in the summer). You can walk along the landscaped 'bank' one one side of the boat basin - lots of trees and bushes , and even a weeping willow tree (the other side is the back gardens of the residents with their individual patch of canal) and see many large carp at or near the surface in this basin stretch some summers - just a few feet from where you stand - but unfortunately you can't cast a line as its 'no fishing' on the public side - only the residents on the opposite bank can do that - but hardly any of them ever do. There are also a considerable number of good size bream in the basin section as well.
I recall a few years ago there was a piece in the fishing report section of the local paper where a twelve year old lad had caught a 25lb plus carp from his aunts back garden on this basin stretch.
I feel very tempted to one day in early summer, on a fine morning, walk down there at sunrise with a rod set up, net, forceps, unhooking mat, and a bag of dog biscuits or crust of bread - stalk a good carp - catch it , release it immediately and nip off home sharpish, before anyone notices.
Would you?
