Whipping up a storm down the cut

Sunday the 1st of April

After another busy week I wasn't sure what to do fishing wise, the wife was out on Saturday evening so I had a pass out to do a night, my initial thought was to go to the tench lake and stop well into Sunday but Leo reported that it was busy and I wasn't in the mood for crowds so in a moment of inspiration I settled on the canal with zander in mind and picked up a few maggots on Saturday for bait catching.

Well its a good job that I didn't do the night as I was rudely awakened in the early hours by a load of banging on the front door, guess who had lost her key, if I wasn't in she would have been kipping on the drive! After all tht commotion I turned the alarm off and decided I'd fish whenever I woke up which unusually for me was late, very late in fact, it was midday before I was bankside. The sun was high and very bright which didn't fill be with hope for a zander and I didn't have much time to play with so I decided to just do some bait snatching and see how it went. I suppose the long and short of it was that I was a bit mad at myself for not getting up early and wasn't really sure that I should have even bothered turning up.

Now I really wouldn't like to guess when I last fished a maggot on a canal, certainly well over twenty years ago, the truth is that generally I'm not very keen on canals they are just a bit too industrial for me, out in the sticks they are more bearable but I still feel like I'm perched right on a thoroughfare. Nevertheless I was going to give it a go and found myself a spot on the opposite bank to the public footpath with a small reedbed on my bank that was obviously of some attraction due to the number of small fish dimpling the surface. Out came a six metre whip, something else I hadn't done for donkeys years was pole fish, I set it up at three metres to hand and looked suspiciously at the flick tip as I fixed the rig, hook anything substantial and it would be exciting for a second or two before something went bang, probably the pole. I thought it unlikely that anything big would come along and I guess anyone used to fishing in these circumstances wouldn't think twice but I'm used to dotting the I's and crossing the T's in my fishing. I rigged up with one of my favourite floats from my childhood, a 4 no.6 loaded insert waggler that was always my first choice on a small pond stuffed with crucians, I own hundreds of floats but isn't it funny that after all these years that was the one that I wanted.

For half an hour or so there wasn't a sign of a fish, the constant taking apart of the pole was starting to get a bit irritating as was the change in flow when the locks were opened. Then I started to get the odd bite, a small perch was landed, then a couple of bleak, then a skimmer, I started to forget the annoying little things and get into the swing of it. An hour or so later I was getting a bite most put ins though strangely I couldn't get a touch when the flow was running from left to right, I had two or three ruffe, a nice little roach of about 6oz's, plenty of bleak, another small bream and a few more perch, by the time I called it a day after maybe three hours fishing I had actually really enjoyed myself and I guess had thirty or so fish in the net. The surroundings, boats, flow and messing about with the pole had become irrelevant and I had been totally absorbed in the fishing, a complete change from what I am used to, sitting it out for better sized specimens, and a refreshing change,.When you are getting bites so regularly the focussing on whats happening allows you to switch off from the outside world in a completely different way and I might just do a bit more of that, in fact for several years I've been promising to take my young nephews fishing and I've just discovered the ideal place, you never know, maybe they will learn to love a favourite float down there.