Staffs-Worcs canal Castlecroft Sunday 20/2/11

Back on the Castlecroft stretch of the Staffs-Worc canal for the first Halesowen A.C club match of the year, i was hoping for another good draw after winning the clubs fur & feather on this stretch before Christmas. If you have read my blog before you will know that on the f & f it was the first time i had drawn passed peg 7 on here after drawing it 3 times on the trot and then drew the chub flier peg35, as peg 7 was not in again at least i would be fishing a different peg. Into the draw bag i went and came back with peg 6 SHIT, with 7 out i came back with the peg that is only 10 yards away from it. After i had done a bit of swearing a few of the lads said it is a better peg and a few punch roach had come off it during the winter, so i tried to get my head on and have a go at it with a positive frame of mind. I set up 4 rigs to tackle the peg after pluming around a bit, there is a small tree on the opposite side of the peg and decided to fish chopped worm there, squatt right over to the left of the tree, punch down the track and caster just out of the track off at an angle to the left around 10 o'clock.
Rig 1, chopped worm rig, 4x10 Drennan caster float, 0.08 line straight through to a 18 Preston PR 322, shotted with a bulk and 2 droppers of no 10 stotz, no 3 elastic.
Rig 2, caster rig, 4x12 Drennan caster float, with the same line and hook as above just with strung out no'10 & no'7 styl's and no 4 elastic.
Rig 3, punch rig, 4x12 Tubertini styx float, 0.08 line to a 22 B511 hook & 0.06 hook length, with a bulk of styls & 2 droppers, no 3 elastic.
Rig 4, squatt rig, 4x10 Tubertini styx float, 0.08 line to a 22 Preston PR31 hook & 0.06 hook length with strung out styls, no 3 elastic.
For bait i had brought a loaf of liquidized bread, 1/2 caster, 1/2kg worm, 1/2 squatt, 1/4 fluro& red pinkies and a couple of slices of bread for the hook.
On the whistle i fed all of my lines and decided to have a look on the bread line first with a 3mm punch just touching the bottom in over 5ft of water, it took over 10mins to get my first bite and a 1oz roach was the culprit. Two more roach over the next 20mins and it looked like it was going to be another slow day as the cold wind started to blow down the canal in the same direction as the natural tow, a look on the worm line was called for and after 3-4 missed bites i hit one of the little roach that inhabit this stretch but at around the length of a fag end they are not worth catching. Around 3 years ago the staffs-worc canal was polluted by a water treatment plant at Compton that is only a mile or two away from our stretch and since then there seems to be a load of small tiny roach which bodes well for the future but are of little use in a match as they must go around 40+ to the pound. After 3-4 of these small roach i finally hit a better fish which turned out to be a 2oz perch followed by another one of a similar size and things were starting to look better!
Wrong again 3 perch was all i could manage from my worm line before it went dead and after re-feeding this line a few times throughout the match i never had another bite on this line all day. I had a few small roach on the squatt line but they were all a bit too small to make any weight up and the tone of the match was set just getting odd bites from each line all day with the punch line producing slightly better fish.
With around an hour of the match to go i heard a bit of a commotion coming from up the towpath towards the direction of Bob on the next peg 5, i looked up to see an empty seat-box and just turned back towards my float thinking that Bob must have gone for a walk or in the bushes for a pee. Then i heard a muffled cry for help with Bob up to his chest in the canal trying to pull himself up back onto the towpath, SHIT HE WAS IN!!! I threw the pole back as fast as i could and ran up the canal to help him out and after moving his seat box out of the way i managed to pull him out as Jeff came to lend a hand from peg 5. My god it was cold enough sitting in the wind with all the thermal gear on let alone being wet to the skin, Bob sensibly went back to his car to dry off in-front of the heater and find some dry clothes. That unfortunately was the highlight of the day as fishing was hard but all the old jokes started coming out,"How deep is the inside line Bob?" "Banned from weighing in for illegal wading" and "Too tight to buy groundbait using his feet instead to colour the water" His name is BOB after all?? The last one was all my own work!
Back to the match and the last hour after all the excitement of Bob's swimming session was as bad as the previous four hours with the wind getting colder i was dithering by the all out, when the scales read 1lb 10oz i was the top weight in the first 4 peg's Ritchie on peg 2 and Bob on peg 5 both failed to break a pound and Jeff on peg 3 had 1lb 5oz. Around the corner passed the club on peg 12 there was Phil with 2lb 3oz which turned out to enough to win the section, the match was won by Dave wood on peg 30 with 6 chub for 7lb 7oz just beating Brian Smith on flier peg 35 with 7lb 1oz the first time i have been on the canal and peg 35 hasn't won he match! 3rd & 4th were both just over the 3lb mark and they both had chub in there nets too. Looking back and if you take the chub out of the equation Phil's 2lb 3oz was the best bag of small fish on the day as the roach & perch failed to show in any numbers, it was a very cold hard day at Castlecroft.