Transient Towpath Trudging - Pt.30

No let up on the sessions I see, but the thing is especially my body clock hasn't recovered from the 20 odd years as a freelancing jobber where often I was out the door by 5.15am and and returned 12 hours later. 

An alarm isn't needed which is completely alien to the Wife and Sam for that matter where its a much needed hardware to make sure they awake from their stage 3 delta sleep. Now Ben is an earlier riser like me, but Ben is Ben, fishing is about as interesting to him as trying to conform to being 'normal' but thankfully a happy kid and that's all that matters at the minute.

So the problem is when I wake at the weekend I just cannot lay there and after that period of tossing, turning and thumb twirling I might as well get my backside out of bed and go fishing. So I was back to the bream dream swim mainly because I fancied one of the roach hybrids that reside here to try and get a much needed proper bend in the rod.

To be fair there was another reason and that was because when I was fishing here the other day a lady who was passing said she had seen a carp slurping on the surface and it was a good'un too. 

So with the same gear as the last session I was back for some double dipping, again with bread as bait, with a disc on the hook and a large piece in the band. 

This stretch of canal seems to have less boat traffic which is nice and especially along this length of it where it would be difficult to moor a boat. It's just one of those nice local rural areas I have at my disposal to enjoy the surroundings where at the minute there is a canal side property for sale at a steal at £2,350,000. 

There is something so satisfying about turning up at a quiet canal when most people are in bed, especially at this time of year when the insect life is vibrant and the waters warm. 

There is a lovely set of reeds here and I positioned the lump of bread just off it and feed some pellets and a dose of groundbait for any passing carp to home in on.

Compared to the last session here the surface couldn't have been any calmer and with the sun nice and warming what a pleasant place to be. 

I found to my detriment though that the fish on this canal can often vanish completely but it looked so good for a bite it was just a matter of chilling out, sipping PG's finest and watching the world go by.

I fed the main swim with groundbait the tell-tale swirling on the surface showing that it was doing its thing and hopefully bring some fish in for a feed.

The bream here do produce quite a bit of bubbles but they were suspicious in their absence and after an hour with only a line bite I was scratching my head wondering where the heck they had gone to.

Ok the carp may well be hard to track down but the other species were not showing either.

I decided to give it another hour which is unlike me as ones restless legs tend to kick in but I stuck it out knowing that any transient carp may well show up when I least expected it.

Nothing on the sleeper rod either which was still doing its thing close to the reeds where I'd also fed some pieces of bread to float on the top to see if any carp in the area would take a bait off the surface.

The sun by this time was illuminating the surface nicely and any passing carp would be easy to see if they were patrolling the reeds over at the far side. A farting bull on the field opposite brought a smile to a rather lacklustre trip out and when two hours had passed I decided enough was enough and headed back to the car.

Not far from where I'd parked there is an overhanging tree and a rather wild looking bush so I fed some mashed bread and then flicked out some bread flake to fall slowly through the water column.

Canal fish don't mess around when taking bait and a few seconds after the flake settled a bite developed and the float was moving from right to left. I struck in to a solid fish and after a characterful fight a 3.5lb bream was in the net. Ok not the carp I wanted, but I'd take that especially when it was in decent conditions. No more fish, and another blank avoided, on to the next one !!!!