Saturday nights alright for fishing

It was saturday night, and marie was partying, so what else could a boy do but go out on the town, well, out on the edge of town anyway, about the place where nottingham hits the canal...


I set up the rod stands on the towpath within earshot of the Irish Club and the hubbub of the canal qurater of Nottingham, This is a fishy looking spot, to my left the surface is bedecked with a mat of flotsam gathered in the slack behind the lazy weir gates, to my right, and on the opposite side, the overflow from the lock burbled out and pushed through the turbid mass of the canal. I'd heard that barbel have been caught from here in the past so I was checking out the rumour, a May barbel would be a rare treat. Two rods, one with spicy prawn boilies, the other with halibut pellet were set into the streamy water below the outfall.

Passing the time I toyed around with floatfished bread, picking up plenty of bites, and eventually a few roach were to provide some entertainment. I later slapped a huge piece of flake on the size 16 hook and on the first cast the float sailed away and the rod bent expectantly... for two seconds... before this small bream succombed! unfortunately some random chap (he'd probably had a drink! )had seen me catch the fish and hung around for the next 30 minutes, talking crap and waiting for me to catch another... I couldn't oblige. Whether the disturbance from the bream or the noisome fellow caused the bites to dry up I'll never know. The barbel failed to show...and I packed up as any traditional landlord would be calling time at the bar... The trials and tribulations of fishing a city towpath on a saturday night...