Sunday, October 27^th – Kingswood RBL Club Match – Gloucester Canal, Southfield Farm – Row, Row, Row Your Boat…

Our Kingswood Legion club had a match on the Glossy on Sunday and you can read the full report in just a moment. Prior to that and despite my ongoing battle with the virus from hell, I was at Windmill Fisheries again on Thursday 24^th for another ‘catch and move’ silvers match on the Carp Lake. Here’s how it all panned out…

Thursday 24^th – Carp Lake, Windmill Fisheries

The original plan was to hold a silvers-only, ‘catch and move’ match over both the Carp Lake and the Top Lake but with the ground being so wet it wasn’t possible to drive up to the Top Lake. That meant the match was confined to the Carp Lake with just 10 anglers fishing. This was my second match on this lake so I had a better idea about what to do and what to expect this time around. I had a better draw too this time, pulling peg 1 from the bag, which is situated at the bottom end of the lake in a small bay. There were only 2 pegs here, with Kev Bush being on peg 2.

The bank was just as awkward as last time though with a steady slope making it a bit tricky to get my seat box in a safe position. I ended up sitting with one bum cheek on my box and one leg stretched out to the ground for stability. Needless to say, I had to get up a couple of times to walk about and restore the circulation in my legs. Despite that, I was quite happy with the peg and the room I had out in front. So, having surveyed the peg I decided on 2 lines. One at 6 metres out in front and one at 10 metres slightly to my right.

This lake holds a few biggish skimbos and some quality roach and rudd so my 10-metre line would be dedicated to fishing for skimbos with worm and my shorter line would be put to work for roach with maggles. I also had some pinkles with me just in case the situation got desperate. My groundbait choice today was a 50/50 mix of F1 SwimStim Sweet and Worm Fishmeal. So, on the all-in, I cupped out a large ball of groundbait laced with chopped worm and pinkles to the 10-metre line. On the 6-metre line I only used a cadpot for dropping in a few maggles and groundbait.

I started on the shorter line with a single red maggle on a size 20 hook to a 0.8 hooklength. My top-kit elastic choice for this line was a number 4. After 20 minutes, I still hadn’t had a bite so I changed to a single pinkle. After about 5 minutes I began to get a few indications so I began to add a few pinkles to the feed. I was feeding at every put-in, whether I had a bite or not. Little and often is essential when roach fishing. My first fish was a small roach. This was quickly followed by a couple more so I carried on feeding pinkle and groundbait for almost an hour. I had a steady stream of roach and rudd and I felt there were quite a few fish in the swim now so I tried a single maggle. This brought a better stamp of fish with some nettable roach now showing up.

So, as I was catching I carried on fishing this line and topped up the longer line with chopped worm and groundbait every 30 minutes. With 2 hours on the clock, the bites began to tail off so it was time to top up the shorter line with groundbait, maggles and pinkles and then go and take a look on the longer line with a half dendra on the hook. It was about 15 minutes before I had my first bite on the worm, which was a big skimbo but it came off. I put that down to my top-kit with a number 10 elastic, which I promptly changed for a different top 2 and a number 6 elastic. That worked!

I landed 3 skimbos averaging about 8-10 ounces apiece but then I couldn’t get another bite. Or I should say, I didn’t get another proper bite. The bites became very shy and I pulled out of a couple of fish so I decided to leave the swim alone for a while. I did top up again though before going back over the shorter line with a single maggle. I got an instant response from another nettable roach and this was followed by a string of smaller roach and rudd. However, bites began tailing off again. I had a quick look down my left-hand edge with maggles but there were no takers there.

For the next 2 hours, I scratched around moving from one swim to the other, just picking off the odd very small roach and trying to avoid all the floating leaves. Then with just over an hour to go, I hooked into a carp on worm. FFS! I’m pretty sure that was the problem with my worm line and why the skimbos had moved away. Now this was a big carp. My number 6 elastic was stretched to the limit and as much as I wanted this fish to break me, it just kept on going around the bay like it was stuck in a groove. I didn’t want to lose my complete rig so it took a lot of effort to hold it back from the reed beds to my left-hand side.

Well, I had it up in the water a couple of times and I could clearly see it was about 16lbs or more. I never came close to netting it though and it finally broke me after about 15-20 frustrating minutes. Well, I couldn’t get another bite from anywhere after that and had to settle for 6-9-0 net and third place in the match. John Smith was second, beating me by an ounce and silvers maestro, Hughie Evans won the day with 6-14-0. Well done to Hughie. Some fine margins indeed. I’ll be back again next week.

Sunday 27^th – Gloucester Canal

This section of the mighty Gloucester Canal is situated at Southfield Farm and controlled by Stroud Angling Club. Day tickets are available from Lobby’s Tackle in the town. What’s to like? You can park behind your peg that’s what! We had our first experience on this section of the canal in August last year but all didn’t go too well. The Division 1 National was held on the canal the week before with national feeder and float qualifying matches on either side of that and numerous practice sessions in between. By the time we got to fish our match the fish were so full of feed, they were completely turned off at the sight of a maggle or pinkle.

So, we decided we would have another go this year and move the date on by a couple of months. Well, that seemed like a really good idea… I mean what could possibly go wrong this time? Read on to find out…

We had 12 club anglers on this one and when we arrived at the venue we were stricken by how flat and calm the canal was. The sun was shining and there wasn’t a puff of wind anywhere. A few small fish were topping here and there and the canal looked perfect in every way. I almost had one of those Mr Crabtree moments lol! Well, we soon got the draw underway and I plucked out peg 2, which was where the bank gets a bit narrow. You can drive up but you have to reverse back. However, the swims are all nice and flat so what more could you ask for? A bream or two perhaps?

I set up a feeder rod with a 25-gram cage feeder and just the one pole line at 11 metres. I also set up a whip for fishing at various depths to my left-hand side just next to an overhanging bush. I would start here, loose feeding and fishing a single pinkle or maggle over the top. I had two topkits set up for the 11-metre line, both at full depth, which was just over 14 feet. On one top-kit, with a number 6 elastic, I had a 2-gram float rig set up with a size 18 fine wire hook to a 0.8 hooklength. This would be for targeting mainly roach on maggle or pinkle. On the other top-kit, I had a number 8 elastic, a 2.5-gram float and a size 16 hook to 0.12 hooklength. This was for fishing worm and targeting skimbos and bream. Groundbait was my seasonal favourite 50/50 SwimStim and Worm Fishmeal mix, which has been working well for me lately on a number of different venues.

So, on the all-in, I cupped out 8 large balls of groundbait laced with chopped worm, dead red maggles and dead pinkles to the 11-metre line. Then I started on the whip. It took about 20 minutes before I had my first bite from a small roach and then a small perch. I couldn’t help noticing at this point that there were quite a few rowing boats coming down the canal. There were 2-man crews, 4-man crews, singles and 6 and 8 man-crews. Well, the crews were both men and women actually… many of them fresh-faced student types. So, it wasn’t quiet and peaceful anymore and the surface water soon became very choppy, calling for some adjustments to the shooting patterns of my rigs.

As the rowers were going from right to left down the canal, most of them were in the middle to far side so I was able to fish the pole without too much trouble except for the odd boat that went astray and ventured a bit too close. Well, within about 20-30 minutes, the fooking canal was full of rowing boats all charging down the canal at a rate of knots. FFS! This was beginning to get on my fooking wick and I’m sure everyone else thought the same. I was catching the odd fish from the pole line, including roach to maybe 3 ounces and the odd perch but it was hard work. Then the boats had all gone through.

But that was just the start… within half an hour they all began to come back and this time they were on our side of the canal, making it virtually impossible to fish the pole. So, out went the feeder. I put my feeder over the pole line as I just wanted to continue getting some feed into the swim in the hope a bream would show up. It would have been pointless casting right over anyway. So, I only had 2 small roach on the feeder and a tiny 1-ounce skimbo. Once all the boats had gone through again I was able to continue on the 11-metre pole line. I picked up a few more small roach and the occasional small perch but bites were very tentative. I’m sure all the splashing about on the surface had unsettled the fish. I missed quite a few bites too as it was getting really difficult to see them.

Anyway, we had about an hour of “fishing” before all the fooking boats came back again, first one way and then the other just like before. FFS! After they had all gone through for the final time we had about 15-20 minutes of the match left. I carried on in vain and desperately hoped I might catch one bream or a decent skimbo and then… the float dipped, I struck and I was into a decent fish. I slowly coaxed it toward me, raising it up gently from the darkened depths only to realise I had hooked a fooking 2-pound zander! Alas! Pike and zander don’t count in our matches. So that was all I needed.

Why didn’t anyone fooking tell us there was going to be a fooking regatta on today! The day was absolutely spoiled and so it’s not surprising we all ended up with such pitifully low weights.

The top rod today was Alan Maggs with just 3-9-8 of small roach. Kev Murch was second with 2-8-0 of the same and Jason Pitman and myself both picked up sections with 2-7-0 and 2-2-8 respectively. We’re now thinking about a new date for next year and hoping it doesn’t fooking clash with some paddleboard or wild swimming fooking fiesta! Well, that’s my round-up for this week. Next Thursday I’ll be back at Windmill Fisheries for some more silvers bashing on the Carp Lake and then on Sunday, November 3^rd it’s the Alcove Poppy Match at Whitehouse Farm… Cough! Cough! Keep you posted!

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