Closed Season Canal Zander Quest PT86 – Tragematopolists and Tangerines

A doddering tractor, impatient drivers, one makes the move, unsighted, blind bend, another car follows as does a van, then the fourth car decides to chance it just before a learner driver appears over the hill where he is now faced with a situation he should have never been put in. All ridiculous manoeuvres and some of the worst driving I’ve seen on the road for a long time. Utter madness the lot of them.

Accident avoided luckily, more luck than judgement mind you, a second or two delay there would have been a different situation altogether. 5 or 10 seconds later there was a sighted straight, chill people for God’s sake, what’s the f’ing rush.

Maybe they should take up fishing, you see, whatever your pace of life, it could certainly be of benefit. Certainly for me it is an avenue or departure from my busy schedule that puts oneself on the right track and keeps me straying off it. Now Sam had been a little disinterested in fishing of late as the Wife stupidly allowed him to play a game called Fortnite on the PS4 which he has actually become obsessed with, so much so he had a time constraint now, an hour a day and that’s your lot much to his annoyance.

So to keep Sam interested for this morning session down at the deep bit where he would be fishing a maggot rod whilst the float rods would be doing their thing, so a quick stop off at the shop on-route it was out with the tangfastics as the hush money . You see last time we fished together at the secret pool he was becoming a little restless after 2 hours without a bite on maggot.

Now having fished a friendly match at Packington Little Geary’s recently where I managed third place with 46lb of F1’s, (winner had 59lb) it’s not the sort of venue I want to take him to. Ok if you’re a seat box frequenter and carbon molesterer,but the fishing was ridiculously easy and after a while I was bored as biteless Sam found himself the other weekend.

When we went on search of fish though, that was more his thing, on my shoulders to avoid the wet grass he eventually spotted a couple of carp mooching around in the margins and sure enough, after tempting one to feed on maggots he was in to a hard fighting carp that powered off down the lake. His attention span went from a couple of minutes to being back in the room again and as it was the first carp he had ever caught it really made his morning and I was glad I was there to share the experience.

Got to keep him interested as I want the next generation of anglers to be likeminded not lazy, which seems much the norm these days, then again I ain’t a follower of fashion generally.

There were fish other than Zander here last time and feeding a few maggots every few minutes or so to detract me from the motionless zepplers, eventually the float dipped and perch and bream were caught. I rarely fish canals for fish other than Zed’s so after receiving some tips from those in the know for this session we also had some groundbait where a tangerine size ball would be used to try and attract fish in to the swim this time and maggots would be used sparingly. I’m always intrigued to see what else other than Zander turn up on the canal stretches I fish because I very rarely bump in to other fisherman. They are a rare breed indeed, bit like all the gudgeon that used to call home here apparently.

It was a hot one as well, when we left at 11.30am it was well over 20 degrees with 27 degrees the hottest during the day. I should have brought some more groundbait with me because certainly the first were up for feeding. A sprinkling of maggots and a ball of crumb the bites came frequently and Sam's float was dipping most of the morning.  Well until the boats started coming that is, the first turned up at 7.30am and then at around 9.00am they were quite frequent, so much so, Sam was shrugging his shoulders everytime one appeared.

Still it was a decent morning, the first fish was a hard fighting hybrid and then the rest were bream or skimmers, all of a decent size too. We fished two swims and the Zander floats remained motionless throughout the session despite catching Zander from there before. So not quite ready to go to a commercial fishery just yet, there are some nice fish to be had here. Next time I'll bring more bait.

So with the deep area not producing and the Zander off their feed, I might do some double dipping, there is an area that has produced some decent Zed's in the past but also there are some carp around too, so hopefully I'll manage a session after work this week.