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.