Transient Towpath Trudging - Pt.23

Sam's Angling Direct Freebie whip was due for an upgrade, so I punted for a 75g Drennan Acolyte Pro 350 which to be honest, is like chalk and cheese.

To be fair Sam still loves his other whip but this one looks engineered to perfection and being lighter much easier to hold for any length of time. I've rigged it with some hook keepers which sit on the blank and you almost using it like a pole float winder so you can get fishing with the rig already attached and ready to go.

With a peacock watching over us as we were making our way to the chosen area to fish, Sam spotted in the distance a series of bubbles that were heading towards us, that can only mean one thing and that's not supersonic bream, but yes one of the resident otters.

After a mooch about in boat track and in near and far margins, it headed back where it came from and eventually popped itself back up the bank. A decent size one as well, so not a great start to the session with the fish likely to be in hiding from the furry intruder.

With Sam in situ I had a Zander sleeper rod out and allowed Sam to get grips to his new whip whilst I feed some groundbait and some disco maggot freebies. 

"Wow it's as light as a feather, you barely know you're holding it !!! "

And indeed it is, ridiculously light to be honest, the first bite took a good half an hour though and after missing a couple of bites Sam's chosen float was probably a little bit cumbersome so we'd change that for next time.  

Eventually he hooked in to a fish but was probably a bit bullish with it and the size 18 hook pulled, still at least there was fish in the swim. The zander rod was having more action where in the space of an hour and a half 3 very small dark schoolies took a liking to the small whole roach dedbaits.

A good sign for the future #SAVETHEZEDS but not the stamp I'm used to catching. In-fact these were some of the smallest stamp of Zander I've seen over the years I have been fishing for them and the Midlands canals. 

With footfall boarding on the ridiculous eventually after moving swims with ten minutes to go before we needed to be making tracks Sam's float bobbed a couple of times and then vanished out of sight. He struck in to something decent which as first I thought was a bream, but no, a bootlace eel was to christen his new set-up.

The blank was almost bent double but did a cracking job of resisting its lunges, Sam on the other hand having caught his first eel, didn't want to go anywhere near it for some reason. It was lip hooked thankfully and quickly returned to where it came from. And that was a wrap.  Next outing hopefully up the hallowed where hopefully more bites will be forthcoming so he can test it out properly.