Staffs-Worcs canal Hinksford Sunday 14/11/10

Hi folks, this Sunday saw us on the Staffs-Worcs canal at Hinksford for the last club match of the year with one of our clubs Cradley Heath which was the fur & feather, we had got the section from Hinksford bridge down to the Navigation pub but with 26 turning out for the match we decided to put a 5 peg section above the bridge going back towards Swindon to take some of the pressure off the main stretch. Me & Stav had been down for a practice a couple of weeks ago and with me catching over double figures i was hoping for a good draw which was to take place a the Green Man pub at Swindon. With all 26 hopefuls assembled outside the pub ready for the 9.00am draw the mickey talking started as you have to get into the top 12 to get a turkey on this match then all the rest get capons ( or as the lads call them budgie's! ), i went into the draw bag and peg 2 stuck to my hand Great! i had drawn one of the 5 unknown pegs above the bridge which no one new nothing about as since they extended the boat moorings not many people fish it. The pegs below the bridge are well fished as there has been a league run on here with double figures needed to win all the rounds but our pegs have no form at all, not many clubs bother to book the stretch we are on as there are boats moored up for 80% of the stretch on the opposite side of the canal which might sound good for cover but if you get someone working on there boat banging and rocking the boat it can ruin your days fishing. To make matters worse after talking to Martin who had pegged out me & Kev Clark who had drawn peg 1 had to walk passed all the boats to get to our pegs as he had put pegs 3, 4 & 5 just above the bridge then left all the boats out so we were up towards Swindon lock, when we got there we felt like billy no mates as we were a few hundred yards above peg 3 but to make matters worse Kev who thought he had drawn the flier peg 1 under the lock which holds big chub in the over flow from the lock was some 50yards away as they had put some more moorings on our side of the canal down from the lock. It had been many years since either of us had even seen this stretch of the canal as we didn't even no there was any moorings below the lock but you can understand not pegging them as if a boat wants to moor up you cannot do anything about it. My peg was 14m wide with the end of the last boat some 16m away at a 2 o'clock angle but there was very little depth over as i plumbed up so i was going to base my attack at 11.5m where the boat channel started to shelve up. I set up the following rigs.
Rig 1, a 4 x 10 tubertini stix float, .08 mainline to a .07 hooklength with a 22 pr31 hook set just touching bottom in just over 2ft of water at 11.5m finished off with a 3 vespe elastic.
Rig 2, the same as above but with a 4 x 8 float for 13m if the boats moved the fish up the shelf in around 18" of water, any further over and the depth was less than a foot.
Rig 3, the same 4 x 8 float and the same line but with a size 20 pr322 hook for the hemp set at around 18" deep were i found a little more depth at 14.5m at 2 o'clock towards the moored boats.
Rig 4, a 4 x 10 original Drennan caster float, .08 line straight through to a 18 pr322 & a no4 vespe elastic set just out of the main track in 3ft of water at 11.5m off at a 10 o'clock angle to my left.
For bait i had brought 1/2 pint each of red squatt, caster & hemp a few pinkies for the hook and some of my favorite g/bait mix of V.D.E supermatch & supercup mixed 70% supermatch to 30% supercup, i had also got some liquidized bread if the going got tough as it is around this time of the year it starts to take over from the squatt as the water temperature cools and the canal starts to clear due to the boat traffic slowing down.
On the whistle i put 2 golf ball size balls of g/bait with a few squatts in then loose fed hemp and caster onto there respective lines some 6-8 grains or shells every now and then, i sat back on the 11.5m squatt line awaiting the first bite of the day while firing a few squatts over the top.
Kev had started on the bread right over to a set of reads he had in-front of him but 5mins went passed without a sign then another 5mins we started to get a bit worried after around 20mins i was really worried as neither of us had so much as a bite, i kept saying to Kev that my fears were becoming reality as no one fishes here much any more the fish haven't seen any bait here for that long that i feared the fish just weren't there anymore and have swam to where they get fed regularly. Then out of the blue on 25mins we both had a fish at the same time then another 3-4 on the next 3-4 put-ins just like someone had flicked a switch the fish started to feed, i was catching small roach to start with then after around 45mins proper dumpy squatt roach in the 2-3oz bracket with the odd gonk (gudgeon) thrown in for good measure. Kev was still struggling to catch much at all but i was now flying coming back with a roach, small perch or gonk every put in, i stayed on the squatt up until the 2 hour mark when most of the roach had dried up and all i could catch was gonks so decided to have a look on my hemp line to see if there were any roach over it. First put-in on the hemp at 14.5m the float buried and a 3oz roach was in the net but it was another 10mins before my next fish a 2oz job so after another 5 mins i decided to go back on the squatt, there were odd fish on the hemp line but they were not coming fast enough shipping 14.5m of pole out when i was getting bites on the squatt at 11.5m a lot quicker. I had a quick 5mins on the caster but without a bite i was soon back on the squatt because i feel that if you have feed a line for 2-3 hours and don't get a bite within 5mins there is not a lot of fish there, then just as i got back onto the squatt the first boat of the day came chugging up the cut and went right over my squatt line churning up the bottom i think his propeller mush have hit the shelf as he turned the peg into a mud slick. 5mins after the boat had gone through and all i could hook was leafs or very fine green weed was masking the bait, another 5mins went by without a sign of a bite so it looked like the boat had done a lot of damage even going up the shelf at 13m failed to produce a bite so i had a look back on the hemp line as it seemed to miss most of the disturbance caused by the boat. I had put another golf ball of g/bait on the squatt line before trying the hemp as i had done 4-5 times throughout the match when bites started to dry up, after 10mins on the hemp with just 2 more small roach to show for my efforts i went back to the squatt line and the fish had come back mainly gonks but a least they were back. I decided to stay on the squatt as kev had a phone call from Steve Robson who was just below the bridge to say that they were struggling in his area and Kev himself had found bites hard to come by all day, with 30mins left to go i decided to have a last look on the caster line for 5mins and if it didn't go by then i would just catch the gonks on the squatt until the whistle. With my 5mins almost up on the caster the float buried and i was playing a better fish a roach of around 8oz was a welcome bonus, i sat on the caster for the rest of the match with a roach and a perch both around the same size as the first 1 gonk and a roach of 2oz right on the whistle. I was left wondering how long the fish had been on the caster line but i was happy with my days fishing apart from the slow start and the boat that wiped me out for 25mins, we had another boat that came down the lock some time after the first one but it came at half the speed of the first and straight down the track and never even stirred up the silt. A quick call to Stav who had drawn a good peg just above the power cables on the main stretch reveled he had got around the 4lb mark and there was a couple admitting to around the same, i thought that i might have around the 5lb mark. Kev was the first to weigh as we had the scales but only had to weigh our 5 peg section he had struggled putting 2lb 1oz on the scales, i was well shocked when Kev shouted out 7lb 9oz for my net the last 3 bonus caster fish had really bumped my weight up Kev put my 3 caster fish back then put the sling back on the scales reveling 6lb of squatt fish. Walking down the canal we started to here of another 7lb and one of the lads was admitting to 6lb+ the next good weight on our scales was Brian Smith with 5lb 10oz, when we got back to the car park i spoke to Shaun Waite who had the other 7lb and said his was 7lb dead so i was the best weight we had heard of so far. Back in the pub it was soon reveled that i had won the match and i was well pleased even more so when i was handed the bouns money as i was sitting on one of the half a dozen bouns pegs MEGA HAPPY!
The match had fished well as 12th place and the last turkey went to Martin Yardsley with 4lb 2oz, Satv had got into the turkey's with 4lb 7oz. Shaun was second with his 7lb which he said contained a 1lb carp while getting broke by 2 more proper carp! Baz Robson was 3rd with 6lb off the peg i practised on a couple of weeks ago, there were a few good pegs that didn't produce as there was a club match on there the day before but overall the stretch had fished well for this time of the year. Lets hope that it fishes the same again in 2 weeks time as we have got the same
stretch booked for the Halesowen fur & feather, i am just hoping the weather holds before we return as we fished the stretch earlier this year in the cold and there were a few dry nets as the fish start to shoal up.