The 'Big One' was certainly less well attended by some of the bigger manufacturers this year with Korum and Dynamite baits the stands I would quite happily hand over some of my hard earned cash to.
Still enough to go at and NGT for example has a cracking sale on and I got through the money I'd set aside rather quickly. Sam, Carrot-Man and I didn't hang around for the speakers this time so a few hours we were done and dusted.
I do like to get hands on with rods and Freespirit for example had their full range for all to see and there is a certain rod that may well be added to ones armoury. They seem to have a nice range now and not overly expensive compared to some rods these days.
One of my favourite rods a TFG River and Stream was built on a Freespirit blank and for a chub rod I cannot think of another rod I'd replace it with, it is just one of those rods that suits the quarry perfectly.
Now what didn't suit the quarry perfectly was the -4 degrees that greeted me when I headed down to an area of canal that I haven't fished for ages.
I've caught Zander here in the past so a deadbait rod and I'd also have a float set-up where I'd fish maggots with some liquidised bread as visual groundbait. The water temperature had plummeted over the last 48 hours and even I didn't think it would be as low as 6.8 degrees.
Still plenty to go at here and it's one of those stretches that can offer plenty of bites from silvers if you can get them feeding.
Could I get them feeding, errrr no....!!!!
....there was lack of fish topping as well which didn't bode well.
Now I got bored with the lack of bites so went on the rove and basically fished three swims with the same result. The Zander rod, fair enough was unhindered but I was surprised that even the small roach and the bream failed to show. The morning was pleasant though and when the sun rose and warmed the face I was glad I made the effort to get out and fish.
Even the area of thick cover that often throws up a bite or three the deadbait didn't get any interest whatsoever.
It's surprising just how Zander can switch off in these conditions though so unless you can drop the bait directly on their heads like I found out for this session, as I found out you'd be staring at a blank. So not unexpected to be honest but a very quiet morning indeed.
So I decided to end the session early and the frost was still hanging around when I left at 10.30am.
We are in to April and it should be the prefect time of year to fish the canals for all manner of species but this was one of those mornings where I could have predicted the outcome. Let's hope that cold snap is the last one till next winter but the weather does seem to be all over the shop at the minute so who knows, it may well be wishful thinking !!!!
0 comments:
Post a Comment