Old Hill Canal Sunday 15/7/12

After a couple of weekends off due to decorating duties I was itching to get back to it as I was on one of the best runs of my fishing career if not the best, I had fished 7 matches since the end of our pairs league at Blythe and winning 5 of them!
This match had been taken off the river Severn at Hampton Loade due to around 6ft of flood water coming down so we switched it to a local section of canal that I had not fished since I was a teenager, the idea being that the two short sections we were going to fish are off the main arm of the canal so hopefully we wouldn't be affected by boats. The main canals we use if the river is out of sorts the Staffs-Worc & Birmingham-Worc are a no go areas in the summer due to heavy boat traffic, the two sections we were going to use today are off-shoots of the main Dudley canal No2 one a dead arm called the Bumble Hole and the other an arm that takes you to Hawne Marina eventually, both of these sections are controlled by Old Hill Legion which sell day tickets on them. As most of the lads had never fished these stretches or like me not for 15-20 years it was a bit of guess work as to what we were going to catch or how to approach it, after a word with one of the lads who has fished it who came into the shop I work in it looked like a bread, worm and pellet attack for Roach and Skimmers with the odd Tench if they feed. I drew the end peg nearest the road bridge at the back of an area called Darby End this is the stretch that runs down to Hawne Marina, for as long as I can remember this bridge has been called the PAP PAP! bridge and I was going to find out why it got its name big style. As you can guess this is a humped back bridge that is only wide enough to take one vehicle at a time so every time they approach it they sound the horn!!!, as we were setting up before the match even started I reckoned I had at least 50 PAPS some of them were single long PAPS while some were going for a more short rapid fire burst of PAP PAP PAP PAP PAP!!!!! F**K me has anyone got any ear defenders by the end of the match it was driving me up the wall and as I lay in bed that night I could still hear them PAP PAP.
Anyway back to the fishing my peg was around 13m wide up to the rushes which run along the whole length of this stretch and are probably around 1m thick sticking out from the far bank, after plumbing around a bit  I found there was around 4ft down the track but still 2 1/2ft over by the reeds I decided on a 3 pronged attack. I was going to fish worm & caster over by the reeds, bread punch down the track as the water colour is quite clear due to the lack of boat traffic, I was also going to put a pellet line in 13m down the canal at a 10 o'clock angle just coming up the shelf out of the track.
Rig 1 was my 13m line with a 4x10 Drennan caster float 0.08 line straight through to a 18 Preston pr322 hook with no5 elastic.
Rig 2 was at 10m down the track a Tubertini Styx float 4x12 0.08 straight through to size 20 pr31 hook with 4 elastic.
Rig 3 was the pellet line down the canal at 13m just coming up the shelf out of the track with the same float, line and elastic as rig 2 but a 18 pr322 hook.
For bait I had brought 1/2 pint of casters, 1/2 kg of worm, 1 loaf of liquidised bread and 1 pint of 1mm micro pellets I also had a couple of rounds of bread for the hook and some 4mm expanders for the hook, no squatts or pinkies as I was going for quality fish.
I fed half a pot of worm & caster over by the reeds at the start and a full pot of bread down the track, the pellet line got just a 1/4 of a pot of micros with 3-4 expanders in, I kicked off on the bread line with a 4mm piece of punched bread on the hook. It took around 5mins to get bite which was a Roach of around 3oz then I missed a couple of bites before hooking another Roach of around 1oz, two more small Roach followed in the next 5mins and while not setting the world on fire but at least I was catching which Chris on my left had failed to do yet as he had set his stall out for Bream, Tench & Carp fishing big baits and strong tackle. Then around 20mins in I hooked a better fish on the bread which pulled my no4 elastic out a few feet which surfaced as I steadily shipped back it was a nice skimmer, that's a nice bonus I thought as I slipped the net under the 1lb fish as shouts of jammy git came down the bank from Steve Robson who was two pegs away. Another couple of Roach were in the net before I hooked and landed another skimmer of around the same size on the half hour mark and it was all going well, I had three more small Roach and a small 3oz skimmer over the next 15mins before hooking and landing another skimmer of around 12oz this was going well I was just hoping that they would keep coming. With the first hour gone I was sitting pretty with around 3 1/2lb in the net already but the last 10mins had gone by without a bite so I made the decision to re-feed as I had only put that one pot in at the start, the bites came back after I put another pot of bread in but only Roach were showing at the start of hour two but I wasn't complaining. The second hour went passed without any more Skimmers just odd small Roach as the bites slowed right up to a stop and it was time for a change, I put a small worm head on the 13m line rig which I had been topping up throughout and shipped over to the reeds. I had been on the worm line for around 5mins before the float slid away which turned out to be a 3oz Rudd and on the next put in a 1oz Perch was in the net at least I was catching again, I was wrong because that was it for this line despite trying caster on the hook, jigging the rig with the worm on altering the depth I failed to get on this line. I switched to the pellet for 10mins but with no signs on this I was starting to scratch my head as I couldn't get a bite on any of my three lines, Chris to my left had only a couple of small fish to show for his efforts with his big fish attack but Steve was catching a few small fish to his left after a slow start. My peg had gone totally dead with only two 1oz Roach on a new bread line I had opened up on my right hand side down towards the bridge in the track at 11m, I was swapping and feeding between all my lines and with around 1 1/2 hours left I was on the pellet when out of the blue the float shot under and another good Skimmer was on, this one turned out to be another of around 1lb and I was hoping that they had decided to feed again. I was wrong as that was my only bite on the pellet line despite sitting on it for a good half hour after that last Skimmer we were now into the last hour and after doing the rounds again on all of my lines all I had was another two small Roach on my first punch line, while the first 2 hours were good the rest of the match had been a real struggle I was now praying for the whistle as the Paps on the bridge were giving me a headache I couldn't believe how busy a small road at the back of nowhere could be on a Sunday. I sat on the pellet for the last 20mins as I thought that if I had a bite on this it was more likely to be a Skimmer than anything else and with 5mins to go Steve shouted down asking if I had any more bites on the pellet, before I could answer him in a split second the float shot under and I struck into fresh air as I missed the bite S**T I blamed Steve for putting me off but despite willing the float to go under before the whistle it didn't. I had a match of two half's one good one bad with most of my fish coming in the first 45mins, had I caught most of the fish in the swim in that short time? Had the fish just stopped feeding? Had the Skimmers stopped feeding as the sun got up as it was 20c+ and bright? I hadn't got the answer but just had a gut feeling that there were more Skimmers in the swim, Steve spoke to one of the locals who said that he normally catches a few Skimmers & Tench up to 4lb but on a night after work? No Tench had been hooked or landed on this stretch today. I was first to weigh-in and was given 6lb 1oz by Baz on the scales which I was happy with but thought it would have been a lot more after that first burst on the bread, Chris next to me only had 13oz after sitting for big fish for 5hours but failing to hook any on another day 2-3 bites could have seen him with 10lb+?, Steve had more small fish than me with 3 small skimmers in amongst his Roach for 4lb 4oz, I went back to my peg to carry on packing up as the next peg Baz was quite a bit away and I didn't want to leave my tackle as the local kids were on the bridge waving the cars over the bridge towards each other! There was a big screech of tyres as a car and van ended up bumper to bumper! Baz had 5lb 3oz and there were a couple of 2-3lb weights passed him so I had the best weight off this section I was just hoping the dead arm had not fished I can remember catching 13 Tench from this section in a day some 15 years ago so they are in there. When we got back to the dead arm we soon found out that JB had won this section with 3lb 15oz of punch Roach off the peg that joins the main line canal most had 2-3lb weights, so I had won again I don't know what I am doing lately but it seems to be working but I still cannot get those 6 numbers up on the lottery. We all retired back to the local pub for couple of sherbets to chew over the fat of the day.