Transient Towpath Trudging - Pt.106 (Maggots)

Jon Arthur's recent Youtube upload was a painful watch I must admit, a really nice guy and family (His brother Mick is a good mate of mine) but a heat of the moment misjudgement in a FishOMania qualifier has spiralled and you can clearly see it has affected him mentally and it looks like physically too.  

He's properly beaten himself up over it and will probably haunt him for the rest of his match fishing days, especially when no doubt there will be those finger pointers most likely jealous of his success, and it's one of those situations that he would play back differently if he could go back in time.

That's why <----------Mick---------------------------------------------------competitive match fishing---------> because I'd have no qualms about cheating whatsoever 🙈 in-fact I remember fishing Tunnel Barn once for a Shanghai AC match and I'd plumbed up the depth 5 minutes before the match has started, removed the plummet and flicked out the float rig in to the margins and a fish had hooked itself on a bare hook a few minutes afterwards. 

Obviously me being me I'd tightened up the clutch and let the fish take some line, where upon the sound of the horn 30 seconds later I'd scooped the 3lb manky F1 in the landing net. 💪

Fish with two rods, yeah I'm sure I've done that too, if I think about it, but then I did 'accidently' leave the bomb and pellet rod in after going back to the float again. No issues fishing the canal this way though because I was back up Wild Garlic Way where I'd have a sleeper rod out for the carp and a float rod with maggots for anything that came along. I fancied catching a fish this time though because I had a nightmare here the other evening when I couldn't buy a bite. 

I intended to give it another go here before trying elsewhere because the carp was on patrol and Nic from Avon Angling had spotted it too when he was here as well, so the big roach didn't seem to be showing but at least I might get a chance to catch the carp because I wanted to see if it was the same one I caught here almost a year to the day. 

I'd hooked it recently on the roach gear so could do nought about it and that took bread that day like it did when I caught it off the surface, but I literally dropped it on its nose last time because it was spooky as hell when it was out in the middle of the canal, where if you flicked bread towards it, it would skoot off the other way. 

On-route to the area to fish there was a hype of activity in the reeds because yes fish were spawning again. A load of them too so that could well make the fishing a little tricky but I didn't take long to get the first bite to be honest so at least I'd not blanked,

The first spot produced a few small roach, a perch and small hybrid but as expected the bream were not showing. The carp rod had gone out next to some reeds with some bream mash and some pellets over the top but that remained silent throughout the session. I was fully expecting to see it or them during the morning as it was glorious but they were suspicious in their absence.  

The bites dried up in the first swim and being the inpatient me I decided to try a few other spots. The first next to a oxygenated lock but despite a couple of fish topping the float remained motionless. So the next port of call was tight to some near margin reeds where it's no more than a couple of foot deep. Eventually the bigger fish started to show themselves but nothing to write home about really with the 5 or so bream caught the biggest shown below.

As the morning went on the bites were hard to come by really but with the sun blazing down on a relatively clear canal, for here anyway where there was a least a foot of visibility, not entirely unexpected. 

Sometimes it's just nice to be out at this time of year when everything has woken up from the winter slumber. The fish I bet must be feeding on these tadpoles because there was thousands of them in one particular spot.  

A slightly disappointing session really considering the amount of fish that were here the other evening but I still enjoyed myself and that's the main thing. I spotted a few mayfly too so I'm hoping to give the trout a go on the lure soon because I bet they are on the munch at the moment.