Bleaking on the London canal

I grabbed the chance of another short evening session, except this one expanded a bit. To tick bleak off the list I headed straight to a reliable small fish swim just a few hundred metres from the centre of Nottingham. There haas been quite a bit of talk about zander in this stretch, but Ive never taken a zander from any canal, so I thought I could combine the two activities.

This tame young female mallard kept me company for a while

It was a really pleasant day, once more I went coatless, though this time I at least had the confidence of the weather forecast to back me up. Fishing a waggler, size 20 and 1.1lb line i soon began picking up bites, though i was missing every single one, everytime the float dipped a strike would fail to connect... deepening up and switching to double maggot soon started to produce perch and a took half a dozen in short succession, no bleak though, so I shallowed up again, shifting all the shot to the float targeting bites on the drop... the strategy worked and the first decent bite resulted in target bleak, I tossed it into the landing net to join the couple of perch I had already retained as potental zander baits.

bites slowed down & eventually dried up on the double maggot with only two more bleak to show from a handful of chances, I switched back to single maggot and resumed getting a bite every 3-5 minutes, landing about half of them. Having had my fill of bleak I tried deepening up, dropping to 6 inches from the bottom. This resulted in a few more perch and a suprise rudd... I was a bit suspicious at first of its parentage as, though fins, clolour and body shape were all "right" the mouth looked more like a roach hybrid, but on closer inspection the other side was good and "ruddy", i think there may have been some well healed mouth damage on the other side... I calling at as a rudd anyway!

soon after the rudd I picked up another couple of bleak, so they were clearly feeding at all levels in the water, one of them was a little deep hooked, and though the disgorging ws efficient enough, there were signs of blood. i decided that fate had chosen this one as the first zander bait, and the timing was perfect as the light was beginning to fade. I prepared the bait my removing the head, piercing, descaling and skinning strips off both sides. It went out on a 1oz running ledger with the clutch screwed back to its lightest setting to give line.

I went back to the float rod, but within minutes the alarm bleeped and something had picked up the dead bleak, it wasnt really going anywhere, but as the tip jiggled again i struck into a better fish, though it couldnt really give a good accound of itself against 12lb line... 1lb 4oz perch, not to be sniffed out out of the canal. The bleak was still in relatively good nick, so it was remounted and recast...

back on the float rod and mixed in with the bleak and perch was the occasional baby bream/hybrid - too small to tell really. they did however have very distinctive bites that would tug the float around for ages though strikes would not connect, i think that these were the culprits earlier on, though as the light had faded their bites became more persisternt and confident hence landing a few. When unhooking you could see that the mouths are absolutely tiny, never mind getting the hook in, some of these little chaps were barely big enough to ingest a maggot.

once it was too dark to see the float, i switched to a second deadbait rod, this time supending the dead bleak on a paternoster rig about 2 feet off the bottom. As darkness enveloped me a heron floated down to raid my fishy larder. The minutes became hours, and eventually, I came to accept that i wouldnt be seeing a zander, and that as midnight was approaching i should really be tucked up in bed. so I slouched off, Bleak done on the first attempt... Can i do the same with brown trout?