Woodside W/L Dudley Canal Sunday 16/1/11

FISHING AT LAST!!!!!!! A break in the weather finally, after the worst cold spell i can remember we can go fishing after 5 weeks of sitting in the house with her-in-doors I'm ready to wet a line as i have had enough of the omnibus edition of Eastenders. How did we used to get on in the old closed season? I know decorating! stuff that thank god for PS3.
This was the first match of our winter league which there was supposed to be 9 matches but Baz has canceled the first 3 due to the small problem of 6-8 inches of ice, i haven't fished the winter league on our cut for 3-4 years after a string of bad draws and fishing the Woodlands View W/L which used to clash. With us not fishing Woodlands this winter i decided to have a go but just fish the match as an open instead of joining the league so i could just dip my toe in and not lose the £20 entry fee if didn't fancy it after the first match, the stretch of canal that our syndicate control starts just below the lock at the junction with Dudley canal no2 halfway down Peartree lane, Nertherton (PEG 1), then runs into the main basin at Merryhill Waterfront (PEG 109).
There were 20 guys that turned up for the match which worked out great for the league as you are in a 5 peg section for the league points so there would be 4 sections of 5, i drew out peg 83 which i new straight away from the lads expressions who have fished it regular that the peg has not changed form over the years i have been away it's not a good peg. It's not a match winning peg but as i said the sections are only 5 pegs so at least you have something to go for, there used to be some big roach on pegs 82 & 83 some years ago but sadly they don't seem to show anymore. The mainstay of the catches on the canal at the moment are small roach & perch with the odd big chub, tench or skimmer thrown in for those lucky enough to hook one, there are 2 bays on the canal pegs57-60 & the smaller bay pegs 69-71 these are proper fliers with peg 57 probably winning more matches on the canal than any other. With the match in 5 peg sections the 2 bays section are put together with 3 in the big bay and 2 in the other so the fliers are all together, i have seen it in the past were 5th place in the bay section has won the section by quadruple default as all the top 4 have come from this section! Talking to Baz before the match it seems that unless you have drawn on a few roach that most of the weights on the canal lately are made up from perch, with this in mind i had brought bread, worm, pinkies and caster for bait. The worst thing about the pegs 80-85 they have a 8ft tall steel railing fence behind you around a pole section away so you are sitting right on the edge of the towpath with no room to ship the pole back so your only option is to ship sideways along the towpath. The weather gods were not with us either as there was a strong wind blowing up the canal so fishing 14-16m right over was out of the question, the canal is this wide most of the way down from the bay section down to Merryhill with the top end peg1-56 a little narrower around 13m wide. With the strong wind i set up just 2 rigs, 1 for the bread/pinkie and the other for worm & caster, rig 1 was to be fished at 10m just coming out of the deepest water down the track and the second would be fished at 11.5m at the bottom of the far shelf but fished at 10 & 2 o'clock covering 2 swims. With the wind so strong all the rest of the pole sections were left in the holdall and everything bait wise was put into my preston pull-out side tray for fear of it blowing in.
Rig 1, 4x12 Tubertini styx float shoted with no10 & no7 styl's, .08 mainline to a size 22 fox mp1 hook on 0.07 hooklength, set just off the bottom in 5 1/2ft of water.
Rig 2, 4x12 Drennan caster original float shotted with styl's again o.08 straight through to a 18 Preston 322 hook set just 2 inch over-depth in 4ft of water.
On the whistle i fed just half a pot of liquidized bread on my 10m line some chopped worm & a few casters on the 10 o'clock 11.5m line & some chopped worm with a few fluro pinkies on the 2 o'clock line, i started on the bread with a 3mm punch on the hook and had 2 roach in the first 2 put-ins around an 1oz each. Just when i thought it was bag up time it was another 10mins before my next bite which i missed, it must have been on the half hour mark before roach no3 was in the net and it looked like there wasn't a large head of roach there. I gave the punch line another 10 mins without success before moving onto the worm lines, i re-fed the punch line with another half pot of liquidized and put a small piece of worm on the hook, John to my right on peg 81 had managed around 7-8 roach on the punch line before his dried up. First put-in on the worm and the float buried with a small 20z perch the culprit, the next 6-7 put-ins produced perch all in the 1-2oz bracket but at least i was now getting a few bites. I tried the caster/worm line at 10 o'clock but i was waiting too long for a bite on the caster which only produced the odd perch of the same size from my main worm line, so i started to put a bit more worm in than caster in on this line to try and get two lines producing fish. This seemed to work for most of the match but i couldn't find any bonus fish and never had another bite on the punch despite having another couple of looks on it throughout the match, John on the other hand had caught a few small fish at around the same pace as me but had managed a bonus 1lb+ perch on the worm.
After 5 hours of battling with very strong winds and heavy rain which started half way through the match my first outing for weeks had produced a few fish but i felt that my chance of any major coin had gone out of the window at the draw, at least we had caught a few fish and got out of the house for a few hours. When i weighed in my 3lb 7oz i knew that John had got more than that and knew he had won the section when the scales read 4lb 4oz so well done to him ( jammy git, with a big perch!), to be honest the canal on a whole had fished very well in the horrible conditions with the lowest weight 2lb 8oz and all 4 sections needing over 4lb to win them. The match was won by Tony Bowen with 7lb 12oz off peg 71 in the small bay with roach, perch & skimmers, another 7lb odd off peg 59 was second & 3rd was 6lb odd off peg 69 which contained a 2lb+ tench.

Sunday 9/1/11

There is light at the end of the tunnel as most venues now have matches running but i have nothing on after missing 4 weeks i don't have a match to fish? some of the lads have gone to Hill view rearranged fur & feather, a few have gone on the canal at Netherton and some on Sion farm, hopefully if the weather gods are with us i will make it out next week on the winter league at Merry Hill canal.

Sunday 2/1/11 Happy New Year

Happy new year to you all, still no fishing to report bloody ice, Baz has canceled another winter league on our canal at Merry Hill this is the 3rd one canceled out of 9 the way it's looking it will be a very short winter league or it will be a spring/summer league? I have completed 2 of my new ps3 games twice?

Sunday 26/12/10 Boxing Day

NO FISHING ZONE, this weather is starting to get annoying now with a lot of guys on holiday for the festive period there is no fishing just the odd few at Moorlands or Tunnel Barn not catching a fat lot even the rivers are starting to freeze over, thank god for PS3 and the misses for getting me 4 new games for Christmas i will need them the way it is looking to stop me crawling up the walls?

FROZE SOLID 19/12/10

This was going to be the date of the Blythe pairs league rearranged from 2 weeks ago due to the ice but with the weather getting worse it was canceled, some of the locals who fish Blythe on a Wednesday tried to break it but the ice just laughed at there ice-breakers with 4-5 inches reported!