Canal Roach - The Sisyphean Task ? Pt.6

I've seen plenty of drained pounds over the years as a gongoozler but this one on the South Stratford was a bit of an eye-opener I must admit. Firstly where the heck were the fish and secondly you can see why the canal is coloured 99% of the time.

The fish must have been stranded at either lock entrance I'd imagine and I did think about going home to get the deeper fish finder and see if my suspicions were correct. I had some fishing to do though, I wanted a decent roach. 

Thankfully the pound I was fishing was a good 10 minute walk from here where there was actual water. It was a nippy morning and I decided to see what the water temperature was like, wow, quite a drop only 10.5 degrees. I'd switched to a set-up that can withstand the tow better, so the sensitive antenna float was ditched (for now) and was replaced with a 4bb insert waggler, with two of those bb's anchored on the bottom.

 

What I didn't expect that the float on the sleeper deadbait rod was off on a run literally 5 minutes of getting the frozen deadbait out.

I didn't connect in to anything mind you I can only assume it was a small zedlet with eyes bigger than its belly.

The new float set-up worked rather well I must admit but a good hour in one swim without any enquiries whatsoever I got bored and went on the move to fish some more swims.

The first was my usually reedy swim where I picked up some roach from the other day but apart from a missed bite because I was premature on the strike, there was nothing doing in that swim either.

And the next and the next. So 4 swims fished with nothing to show for it, even the sleeper deadbait rod didn't have any more takes.

Fishing bread this way is very selective I must admit and is certainly a patience tester when I know if I fished groundbait and maggots instead I would have likely got more bites.

With the lack of action I dumped the gear back in the car and walked the whole length and back of a stretch of canal where you need a small mortgage just to become a member.  

66 minutes of walking at least that was enjoyable the fishing could do one 😀. Anyway as usual that was deserted of anglers, and to be honest also no fished showed either. It's a lovely stretch mind you. Very peaceful indeed however one big problem it's a very popular walking stretch so sees lots of foot traffic.

So one of those wasted sessions really and those I hate, because my spare time is limited and I need to make sessions count. When I was catching those lovely Zander yesterday on the Grand Union the water was a lovely dark green colour not turd brown like the South Stratford is, so I might drown some maggots over there next time and see if I'm missing anything.

There could well be a reason why the Zander are hanging about around there, yeap I wonder if there is a decent head of bait fish to be caught. Only one way to find out I suppose, but come on, can we have better weather please, I'm getting a little fed up of it at the moment.