Sunday 12^th April – A Right Stinker On The Kennet & Avon Canal – Bradford-on-Avon

Well, it’s been a while since my last blog, partly due to some pretty pathetic returns on the Windmill Match Lake and partly due to moving my websites to a new, cheaper and faster server, with a new hosting company. For those who don’t know, website and graphic design are two of the services I offer, along with copywriting. Anyway, who wants to read about how I sat on the bank for 5 hours waiting for a bite and then caught 2 carp in the last hour? It’s not exactly riveting stuff! So, I’ve had a couple of sessions like that and then decided to have a silvers only pleasure session on Georges Lake, Whitehouse Farm, with my club mate Jason Pitman. As usual, a pound was at stake. Jason chose peg 17 and I fished peg 16. It was pretty much neck and neck all the way, but the scales revealed that I had won by 12 ounces, so a pound in the pocket for me.

So, onto more serious stuff…LOL!

Sunday 12^th was the date for the next Kingswood RBL club match and the Kennet & Avon canal was the chosen venue. For some strange reason, a few of our members don’t like canal fishing and some don’t like lake fishing either, hence we only had 8 anglers turn out for this one. The area we fished is known as ‘Stinky Bridge’, because of its location to a small sewer works… and it stinks! Narrow boats were moored up bow to stern all along the right-hand side of the bridge and so we had to peg the left-hand side, which isn’t always as productive as the other end. Still, it was all about having a day’s fishing regardless. Regardless of the poor fishing, the boat traffic, the walkers, the joggers, the cyclists and the water pikeys aka crusties. What? Racist? I’ve heard them called worse. Anyway, back to the fishing… I drew peg 3, which was just a nondescript peg in the middle of the section. No features and virtually no fish. Jason drew peg 2, which was pretty much the same. I always fancy an end peg on a canal… like everyone else.

Well, bread is the number one bait on this canal and so that would be my starting bait, with maggles and pinkles as backup and chopped worm as a desperation measure. My plan was to fish just 2 lines. One at 7 metres and one at 11 metres. It was around 3 feet deep on both lines and so my rigs were identical with 0.2-gram (4X12) Chianti floats to 0.13 mainline and size 18 microbarb hooks to 0.8 hooklength. Pole elastic choice was a 3-5 Daiwa hybrid for both rigs. I started on the 7-metre line by cupping in a small ball of damp liquidised bread and then fishing a 6 mm-sized disc of punched bread over the top. Within minutes of baiting up, the canal began to flow strongly to my right, as the lock gates were opened to allow a boat to go through. So, I baited up again. After 20 minutes, I had my first bite, which was a lovely 1lb skimbo. At that point, I thought I was in for a good day, but unfortunately, that was the best fish of the day for me. Meanwhile, Jason had got among some quality roach, landing a couple around the 6-8 ounce stamp plus a hybrid which must have gone 12 ounces.

To my right on peg 4 was Kev Murch, who pulled out of a proper bream early on, which cost him dear as he ended up with just an eel and a roach. During the course of the day, I managed to find 2 more very small skimbos and 4 or 5 roach from my short line. I didn’t have a bite at all on the longer line for some reason, despite trying bread, maggle, pinkle and worm. Well, 5 hours, 10 boats and a million walkers later, the match was over. Nothing dramatic to report… in fact, the whole affair was nothing more than a whimper, apart from a few loud sweary words, emanating from somewhere in the higher numbers…LOL! Well, Jason won the match with 3-09-0 and I was second with 1-13-0. Well done to Jason and he also got another pound from me. Verdict: A very tough day at the office.

Well, I’m not fishing again until next Sunday, when I’ll be on the Lido in Fishponds (Bristol) with the Alcove AC crew. With big carp, tench, bream, F1s, perch and crucians plus millions of tiny roach… Anything could happen. Keep you posted!

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