Woodside Winter League Sunday 21/10/12

This Sunday saw us on the first round of the Woodside winter league on our stretch of the Dudley canal no1 nr Merryhill, we have controlled this stretch of canal for many years which has got a lot harder than when we first took it over. Many of the Roach that we used to catch along here seem to have vanished leaving most of the weights made up of Perch, Skimmers and odd Chub on a few pegs, I used to fish every match on here years ago but as it became harder during the winter months I used to stick to the Carp pools and just fish the odd match here when it took my fancy. Due to a lot of congestion during the summer months with a lot of or lads fishing in two or more clubs or fishing opens there is only time to fish the canal during the winter months, I only fished 2 matches on here last winter and they were both hard winning my section both times with just over 1lb so there a lot of people with less than that, I have planned to fish all of the matches this year come rain or shine ( more like sleet or snow ) but I will see how hard it fishes or how bad the weather gets first! There was a poor turnout today for the first match with only 12 turning up normally there are 20-30 anglers on the first one then a few drop out as the weather gets colder or they have had a couple of bad draws, at least with only 12 we should all be in for a half decent peg. I drew peg 94 which is just before a bridge a few hundred yards away from the main Merryhill Waterfront Basin and not a bad peg but as I have said they were all decent pegs with on 12 fishing, John Babb had drew next to me on peg 95 right on the bridge so at least I had someone to talk to as the next peg in my section was Baz Robson on peg 82 and way out of sight.
I set up 4 rigs to tackle the peg which were a punch line down the track at 10m, a squatt line on top of the shelf at 13m, a caster line at 14.5m to a small bush to my left right over and 2 worm lines at 10 & 2'o clock just out of the track at 11m which I would use the same rig for both lines.
After feeding all of my lines I kicked off on the punch down the track with a 4mm piece of bread on the hook and had a small 1oz Roach on my first put-in followed by another of the same size on the next drop-in a good start I thought to myself, just as I was thinking of a big bag of Roach the bites slowed down and by the end of the first half hour I had got 8 small Roach so it was time to switch lines. I was going to try the squatt line which I had fed with a couple of small balls of g/bait at the start and loosefed squatt over the top but the sun had come out after a misty grey start and it was bouncing off the brick wall on the opposite side making seeing the float impossible, with the reflection of the sun on the far bank I switched to the chopped worm lines which I had fed with around 1/4 of a pot on each at the start I had bites straight away from the 10'o clock swim with Perch in the 1-3oz bracket. While I was not setting the world on fire at least I was catching the odd fish John on my left was having only odd fish with around half the amount I had got, I was switching between my two worm lines in an effort not to blow them out too early taking 2-3 fish from each line then re-feeding before switching to the other. I had a quick look on the squatt line when the sun had moved around a bit but the wind had blew a raft of leaves over the top of my feed and after just 1 small Roach 1 missed bite and around 5 leaves I gave up, back on the punch line for 5mins produced just 1 Roach so it looked like sticking to the worm for the time being. After another few Perch on the worm I had a look on the caster which I had been feeding with half a dozen casters now and then from the start, I had a 3oz Perch straight away but waited a long time for the next bite which was a 2oz Roach I gave it another 5mins after this but decided I was getting more bites from my worm lines. With around an hour to go a big fish topped in peg 93 to my right which seemed more like a predator striking than a fish just  topping I joked to John that it might be a Pike and if it was it can stay over there, you can guess what happened next I was fishing my 2'o clock worm line around 5mins after I saw the big fish rise when I struck into a solid fish that a first refused to move of the bottom I shouted to John that it looked like I had hooked what ever it was that had topped. With a no4 elastic the fish was going where he wanted but after a couple of mins I managed to get some of the pole back then right back to the top kit but with such a light elastic I couldn't get the fishes head up, it started to swim along the inside right along the tins by my feet but with me standing up and around 10ft of elastic out I couldn't see what it was then the 0.08 line parted and the unseen beast had won the battle S**T. That was probably a match winning fish both John and I both guessed that it most likely was a pike after JB had one last year on the winter league around 6lb there are odd ones in the stretch but very rarely hooked I have only ever seen one before around 2-3lb looking at the fish in my net. What ever the fish was didn't put the Perch off and I just picked them off both of my worm lines until the whistle I had caught a few fish with the biggest only around 5-6oz and thought I had got around 4lb, When Barry appeared with the scales he said that he had struggled saying he had only got around 2lb, John was first to weigh with 3lb 8oz, my net went 5lb which I was happy with but as we couldn't see anyone else we didn't know how the rest of the canal had fished. When we got back to the pub we found out that Tony Bowen had caught 8lb odd off peg 57 in the bay for the match win catching a big Perch around 1 1/2lb some skimmers up to 1lb and a lot of small Perch and Roach, I was shocked to have come 2nd with 5lb while the next 3 weights below mine were only 6oz apart so it was close and all of the rest of the lads had 2-4lb weights so apart from Tony's weight the canal had fished well with a few fish caught.

Warwickshire Avon Pensham Sunday 14/10/12

This Sunday saw us on the Pensham stretch of the Avon for a Cradley Heath club match, I have not fished for more years than I care to remember this stretch is slower and deeper than the the next stretch upstream which is Pershore, Pershore is more noted as Chub, Barbel & Roach venue where Pensham is more Bream & Roach. As per usual the rain gods had decided to do there dance in the week leading up to this match leaving the river up and coloured, looking on the web cams it looked up around 18 inches to me but when we got there I would say it was more like 2ft. I drew a peg just below the car park that looked like it had a bit of slack water but on closer inspection the cut away bank below me was just boiling over and didn't look very inviting at all, it looked like there was something just below the surface which without the extra water on would probably be above the water. I just set up one pole rig with a 5gram flat float to be fished at 6m just below me which was just out of the main flow and a small openend feeder, I planned to fish chopped worm & maggots on the pole line with worm, cater & maggot in the feeder with a little amount of groundbait to hold it all in.
To cut a long story short the match was crap for most I messed about with the pole for around half an hour before throwing it up the bank as it don't think that the bait was on the bottom for more than 5 seconds before the water erupted lifting the float out of the water!, I had a massive 14 eels ( sorry elvers they were that small ) and one daddy ruff for 2lb 2oz no matter what I put on the hook or what size hook I put on tiny eels was all that I could catch. John below me had 3-4 eels and half a dozen bits for 1lb 6oz and Baz Robson below him had 3-4 Roach plus eels to beat me by 8drams for 2lb 2oz 8drams. The match was won by Martin Yardsley on upstream peg one opposite the last couple of pegs on Pershore with 3 Bream for 12lb on the pole and he lost another, Ollie was 2nd with one good Bream and two smaller ones for 9lb on the feeder, Shaun was 3rd with one bream for 2lb 12oz, for most less than 1lb was the norm on a very hard and rising river. Baz managed to scrape in 4th leaving me winning the section it was just a shame that there was so much water on as in the right conditions there would have been a lot more fish caught.  

Staffs-Worc canal Hinksford Sunday 30/9/12

This Sunday saw us on the Staffs-Worc canal at Hinksford which is a stretch we fish a few times a year and it normaly produces a few fish, there was some bad news though as there was a league match on the venue the day before but at least we had both sides of the bridge booked so half the pegs were up towards Swindon that hadn't been fished the day before. This was were you would need to draw to win we all  thought as fishing a peg that had been fished the day before on a natural venue does'nt bode well for a good days sport, there were 21 fishing today with 10 pegs above and 11 pegs below the bridge you virtualy had a 50/50 chance of getting one of the unfished pegs. I drew out peg 4 which was on the right side of the bridge so the first part of the day had been done now all I had to do was find out how far up the boats I was, the upstream part of Hinksford towards Swindon has got a lot of moored up boats which is always a danger pegging in a match just incase you get a boater working on his craft or he decides to pop along to the shops mid match ruining your peg. Ollie had managed to get away with just 3 pegs on the boats as the first few pegs are infront of the water works and the top pegs are either side of the turning bay where the are no boats, my peg put me infront of the first 2 boats at the upstream end of the stretch just 1 peg below where I had won a Cradley match from a couple of years ago with 7lb+ so I was happy with my peg as long as the boaters didn't start a party! Well as I began to set up the guy on the boat opposite awoke sipping a cuppa before I noticed him walking up and down the moorings looking for something? When he had found what he was looking for my jaw dropped!!!!! 5mins from the whistle he walked upto his boat with an extension lead and sander!!! F**K ME??? I looked at Brian in the next peg as the bandana wearing hippy began sanding his boat, Brian just shook his head in disbelief . This is the reason you cannot put pegs opposite moored up boats, I couldn't do anything about it now I would have to grin and bare it. I had set up 4 rigs to attack the peg which was 13m across to the boats I was going to fish the bread down the track at 10m, the squatt at 13m, the caster line was at 13m at an angle of 10 o' clock just out of the track and a hemp line at 14.5m up to a gap inbetween the 2 boats.
On the whistle I potted in 2 balls of g/bait on the squatt line and one pot of liquidized down the track while loosefeeding the caster & hemp lines, the first half hour produced 8 fish on the punch 7 of which were small Roach and one Gudgeon. While not setting the world on fire at least I was off the mark but the first boat of the day wiped out the punch down the track so a move to the squatt up to the boat was called for, I started catching on the squatt Roach & Gonks but they were all on the small side so it was just a case of getting my head down for now. I tried different feeding patterns and putting some more groundbait in but couldn't find any better fish at least the guy on the boat had stopped sanding his boat he was now doing some painting, around the 2 hour mark a friend of mine came walking up the towpath saying that there were a couple of guys catching better net fish down the bottom end of my section I was on around 40 small fish which was probably around 2lb. It looked like I was going to have to catch some better quality fish on the caster or hemp as Brian in the next peg had started to catch one or two better Roach and Perch fishing the chopped worm, my mate Paul agreed that if I carried on with the squatt fish for the rest of the match I was looking at around 4-5lb which was ok but Kev Clarke around the corner was catching a lot of net quality fish. It was time to try the caster line which I had been priming since the start of the match with 8-10 casters every 5mins, so out went the rig laying it in upstream of the natural flow which is the way I love fishing the caster on the staffs-worc canal and the float just kept on going I lifted into a better fish that pulled a few feet of no 4 elastic from the pole tip. First drop on the caster had produced a lovely 8oz Roach a nice start I was just hoping there were more and on the next put-in the same thing happened this time another Roach of 5-6oz, now I was starting to think how long had the fish been there eating my free casters while I was squatt fishing? within half an hour on the caster I had managed 7 net fish 6 were Roach and 1 Perch which were all around the 5-8 oz mark which gave me around 2 1/2lb and doubled what I had caught in 2 1/2 hours of squatt fishing. Just as I was about to ship out again a boat came around the corner then after I had waited for him to pass 30 seconds later another one came passed no problem I thought after they had gone through I fed around 15 casters with the pole pot, I was going to have a look on the hemp line for 5mins allowing the caster line to settle again after the boats. I went over on the hemp and had a 3oz Roach after around 5mins so I gave it another 5mins but with no more response I was itching to get back on the caster line I think that my hemp line was too close to the disturbance from the boats opposite. I was back on the caster line but 5mins went by without a bite then 10mins went passed and I was cursing the 2 boats that had gone over my line while the fish were feeding when the float shot under and I was connected to a bigger fish, the fish shot across to my right towards Brian and was trying to get under the far side boats I shouted to Brian that this one was no Roach I was starting to think Chub. I managed to get the fish under control after a couple of minutes but when it came to the top down the middle I was surprised to see it was a small Carp, after a short but scrappy fight on a no4 elastic I netted the Carp which was around 1 1/4 - 1 1/2lb a nice bonus that I thought as I placed him in the net. I sat on the caster for another 10-15mins without a bite so was it the boats that had moved the Roach or was it the presents of the Carp that had saw them off? I tried the hemp line again but while I was fishing it the couple that lived on the boat opposite that looked like they had been for a lunch time pint had come back and the guy looked at my float from above asking if I was trying to catch his Carp? Well that's that line F***ed I said to myself no self respecting Roach is going to take my hemp with a Bob Dylan lookalike staring down at them from above!!! I told the guy that I had 1 small Carp but was now biteless he and his misses told me that there are loads of Carp under the boats in this area that get fished for buy some locals on a night with bread on rod and line. Then the guys misses proceded to clean the canal side windows of the boat by hanging on to the top rail of the boat while shuffling along a tiny foot ledge that runs the length of the boat hanging her bum over the water at the same time, I looked over towards Brian as she had her back turned towards me he just shook his head in disbeilf trying not to laugh as a made a motion with my pole that I could have shoved it up her ARSE!!!! I went back on the caster with 30mins left as both my far lines were now shot thanks to them the float sailed away with my no4 making a b-line towards the boats at a fast rate of knots before my hooklength broke, I had hooked Carp no2 for around 5 seconds at least I was now wishing that the couple had told me about the Carp this morning I might have set a rig for them. I was now 25mins from the whistle what do I do? Set up a carp rig and sit out the rest of the match, I would have to set one up from scratch as all my Carp rigs are in my other draws at home I had 0.14 & 0.16 Chub rigs in my box but there were small floats with short line for fishing the far bank and not deep enough for fishing down the track where I had hooked the 2 Carp from. I took the lazy option and just put another hooklength on and carried on fishing but I didn't have another bite till the end of the match.
I was left wondering what might have been had the couple on the boat not decided to sand the boat down, clean the windows and generaly make a lot of noise all day, I would nave been happy if the Carp had not turned up as I was catching some nice Roach until they came and spooked them. The pegs to my left had not fished that well with 3lb odd the best from them my net went 6lb 11oz, Brian next to me had 6lb 12oz doing me by 1oz great, he had some nice Roach and Perch mainly on the worm. Kev Clarke won the match with 9lb 15oz of big Roach & Perch on the worm, caster and a few hemp Roach the last hour. We found out later that Bri and I were 2nd & 3rd as the best from below the bridge was Ollie with 4lb 14oz from the pegs that had been fished the day before, Steve was the best from the fliers infront of the water works with 5lb odd for 4th. If only the couple on the boat had stayed in bed all day I might have had a few more but I was happy to have come 3rd and caught a few fish after having 1 bite 1 fish on the river last time out.