the outlook is not so bleak

woke up this morning thinking about the lack of progress I had made with the A-Z. Marie was going to the gym, so I grabbed a float rod and the leftover maggots from the fridge and got a lift to the canal on London road. There is a turning basin here, with much less flow than the rest of the canal, I was optimistic I could find bleak here, even if I did only have an hour or so.
a small handful of maggots went in before I had even put the rod together and another dozen before tying the size 18 to a 3lb bottom. It was warm I thought the fish would be up in the water so I started at 3ft deep. feeding a dozen maggots every minute it took less than 5 before the first fish, a perch, latched on. I was then "plagued" by fast biting roach, they certainly honed my striking reactions but as my tally neared double figures there were still no bleak. Acting on a hunch I shallowed up to about 18 inches and bulked the shot below the float. that did the trick, as I held a wriggling bleak in my hand.
Marie returned form the gym and as I was enjoying myself so much she was happy to give me another hour or so while she went to the supermarket.

The mixed bag that followed included more perch roach and bleak along with a solitary small common bream. A perfect bronze minature of its parents rather than a traditional silvery skimmer. I started retaining some of the bleak in the landing net, intending to bag and freeze them for deadbaits later in the season. Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age, but when it came to the crunch I was happy to let them go - there will be another time to get some deadbaits before the A-Z reaches eels... Next stop Carp

Top Tenching and the UKs smallest carp

Only occassionally do I fish commercial pools, on this occassion I joined my father in law, Alan, to burn some time before we went to meet Marie's mum to celebrate her birthday. We went ot the local Coppice Lane Fishery near Lichfield. Fishing with a waggler and double maggot on a size 16 to 3lb line in the downwind corner of the pool I fished the lift for tench and took nine over the course of the afternoon, together with a small carp and lost a better one. As bites dried up on the bottom I edged up 6 inches or so and started getting lots of unhittable bites, dropping to single maggot I must have missed 20 or more before I banked one of the culprits, a beautiful inch and a half long baby common, how he managed to get the size 16 into its mouth I have no idea. I had another couple of these and then finished with a lovely baby mirror of the same size. clearly the carp spawned successfully this year and the youngsters are growing well in the soupy water.

trout from a tent

  I'm back from a 1568 mile roadtrip around scotland. I didnt get anything like as much fishing done as i'd hoped but it wasnt exactly fish free either.

  The rods first came out  near Whitebridge, just east of Loch Ness. I drove a few miles from the inn up to Loch Killin. The rain which plagued the trip was holding off, but there was a fairly stiff and cold wind blowing. I worked the shallow margins of the loch with a small floating plug at first, switching later to a mepps. I didnt get any takes, and with hindsight should probably have fished with my fly gear and a tiny nymph, to at least pick up one of the small wild brownies that I had been able to spot
 The other location I fished was a beautiful forestry commission campsite called Cobeland east of Drymen between Loch Lomond and the Trossochs. We managed to get a pitch right on the rivers edge so I was able to fish out of the door of our tent.

 The water was high and coloured so I was lamenting the fact that I didnt have any worms. I was about to go and turn over some stones to see what natural baits I could find when i spotted another guy setting up his rod near the tent, after a quick conversation it turned out he had caught a small trout on floatfished maggot the day before, and, that after another hour or so's fishing this evening he would be done fishing and heading home in the morning; I could have his leftover maggots if I wished. Brilliant!.
With the rod tip poking out of the door of the tent I took three small trout on a bunch of legered maggots crammed onto a size 10 hook, almost without trying.

If Carlsberg made campsites...