Transient Towpath Trudging - Pt.28

So I was back with Sam to the same swim which 24 hours before produced quite a few bites from Mr and Mrs Slabby. This time though a sleeper Zander deadbait rod out and Sam would fish his whip whilst I'd chill out and watch. This area literally has acres of wild garlic and that pungency hangs around in the surrounding air, no vampires to be seen here, well apart from the Zander that is. 

Now Supercrush Green from Sonubaits was a key ingredient to the success I had yesterday I would say. Why ? Well sometimes confidence is the key in fishing and I've used this a few times now and there is no doubt it attracts fish in to the swim.

A blend of fishmeal and crushed koi pellets it certainly attracted the bream that's for certain but it also kept them grubbing around in the swim. I added a few small pellets in to the mix which helped I'm sure so would this session live up to the whip bending it produced yesterday ?
 

Now locating bream in canals is not always an easy mater. 

The shoals you see tend to roam up and down the boat-road in search of food and in my experience there will only be a few bream in any swim. 

If one bream is seen or caught, it is a practical certainly that there will be others in the vicinity.

Now after seeing a decent one roll here many moons ago when I was chasing canal Zander it is an obvious place where the roving angler would stop and set the gear down. 

You see from a rather lacklustre looking canal all of a sudden open country side and feature aplenty. 

Bait I'm sure goes in here more than any other area in a good walking distance. It's just one of those areas that screams fish and believe you me from often huge quantities of very featureless cutting all of a sudden you have plenty going on from reeds, overhanging trees and submerged roots. 

Now I'm not likely to visit a commercial venue anytime soon where spods of bait add to the fishes girth, but any leg up the ladder on these sort of forgotten venues is a must if you are to get a bite or two where often sections of canal can appear and often are devoid of fish.

And talking of devoid of fish, well Sam and I hot footed it to the same swim where bites were aplenty but there was a huge chop on the surface where the wind was making if difficult to see the float. 

After feeding the swim as before I thought it was only a mater of time before Sam's float would go under, but no, an hour went by with no action whatsoever. Those fish most likely vacated to another area of the canal.

Perseverance brought a bite though and at first I thought it was a hard fighting hybrid, but no it was another eel which do seem to have made a comeback on this canal. Now I'd have stuck it out in the swim but Sam wanted to move so we retraced our steps and set-up 40 yards away where the water was still which made the float easier to see.

The first culprit to hover in the maggots was a ruffe which was a welcome sight considering the predatory fish that live here too. Which reminds me throughout the 2 hour session the Zander rod fishing a roach deadbait didn't have anything pick it up whatsoever.  
 
24 hours is certainly a long time in fishing where canal fishing can often be bomb or bust. This was definitely a bust session compared to the last.

Another move with Sam now searching for sticks and stones to annoy his Dad, we only fed maggots this time and 15 minutes with the float in the water it buried and a lovely plump roach succumbed to Sam's whip.

And that was that, it was a scratching round for bites day where the bream were nowhere to be seen. What an odd session, we'll be back though, there is some nice fish here and to be honest, it was nice to catch a variety of species even though they were not the intended target.