Transient Towpath Trudging - Pt.39

Well the planned gooseberry picking nearly didn't happen, you see, the last trip out to the canal when I left at 10.30pm I had a wildlife encounter that could have gone quite a bit differently than it did.

You see driving down a single track country lane literally the 2nd road I came to I stumbled upon a bull slap bang in the middle of the road looking towards me. 

I put my main beam on to get a picture of the escapee and then after 20 seconds or so the bloody thing starts walking towards me and then picks up pace heading Jimny'ward with that 'I'm going to ****' you up look in its eye.

Que me having to stoke up the 100 horses and reverse at the rate of knots where I cannot see anything behind me. I know the road reasonably well and luckily it was a pretty straight affair. 

Thankfully 100 yards later he gets bored and stays put, still with his eye fixated on me, so no time to waste so as quick as I could I did a three point turn and got the hell out of there with my heart still jumping out my skin.

Anyway I got to see another day and for this seasons crop I harvested a little earlier than usual before the overnight Gooseberry nicker (Google it, its a thing) turned up to ruin yet another year. 

So to the fishing, well another manic week with all manner of work and family related stuff so this 2 hour session would be most welcome indeed. So another double dipping session where I'd fish maggot on the whip with groundbait and have a Zander sleeper rod out. 

I used to catch some nice Zander here in the past, in-fact 200 yards from the chosen swim I named it 'the deep bit' because well, considering the canal it is on for some reason it was far deeper than the surrounding water. That swim is a patch of its former self though as literally all the cover has been removed and the Zander are no longer there. 

This swim has some nice thick cover though which is a good place to target Zeds. Anyway after feeding some groundbait and maggots I left the swim to settle a little and got the predator rod out with a small roach. After half an hour in to the session the floats bobs and then carts to the right however I pulled the bait out its mouth when tightening up to the circle hook.

What I didn't expect was a few minutes later the float bobs and moves again and this time I've hooked up. After a decent scrap when it took me all over the swim a nice Zed was in the net.

Well worth coming out then, especially when 10 minutes after after moving the bait 5 yards to the right I get another bite but this time hook in to something bigger !!!!

Now this fish was giving me a right old tussle and at first I thought it was a huge Zander because I rarely catch pike here, but no after it surfaced after taking line after 3 decent runs it was a Pike. A good one too and after teasing it in to the landing net it was worth a weigh. A nice one too, a 12lber, however it wasn't going to test my canal PB of 17lb and 8 ounces. 

After I put that fish back the swim went dead. The maggot rod wasn't fairing very well either without a bite since I'd got there. So it was time for a move to another section of cover and do the same all over again. The first boat came through at 8.10am and after an half an hour with nothing on the predator rod out of the blue the whip float buried under and a fish was on. 

Only a small splasher bream though despite it trying to act like a hybrid. And that was that !!! a couple of most welcome hours peace and some sanity restored again, for how long I'm not sure.