Coventry Canal at Atherstone
100 anglers
After lifting my 3 year old daughter up on Tuesday and finding i had pulled the muscles and sprained the ligaments in my neck, i had been in agony all week, all i wanted was a peg where i could fish bloodworm all day for few small fish at 3 and 8 metres and nobody to catch chub in my section.....The captain got it almost right at the draw giving me a bridge hole that was usually good for a lot of small perch and gudgeon AND it was only 9m wide.
As i intended fishing mainly for perch the plan was to feed lots of lines with small golf ball sized balls of damp leam with very little joker in them.
I fed 1 ball on each on my perch lines,8 in total, 1m left and right about 1 ft away from the bank, at 4m left and right, 8m left and right and two lines right over. In additional to this i fed 150ml of joker with a sprinkling of casters 11m to my left and right just in case a few roach showed late on, the last line to be fed would be a few casters down the track every so often.
As the whistle blew i started on the 4m lines but after 20 minutes only 1 tiny perch had sucumbed 1st put in at 8m and a skimmer of 4oz took a bit of pressure off, two small perch quickly followed before a holiday boater decided to see how fast he could go through the bridge to my right right over my far lines.Knowing that it would be a waste of time fishing over i decided to come close in either side of my keep net, a tiny perch from my right then 1st chuck to my left the float buried, i struck and 5ft of elastic came out, followed by another 5ft as the fish charged towards the bridge to my right then to my left with me adding sections, first impressions was that it was either a zander or a small chub but after 15mins of adding and taking off sections a very fit skimmer of about 2lb was guided to the landing net....a very nice bonus.
After catching one skimmer i decided to spend a bit of time on the caster to see if there were any more in the area, alas no more followed but with over 2lb in the net i was quite happy anyway.For the next hour i persevered with the bloodworm on different lines with very little success, only catching odd perch and gudgeon.
It was now two hours in and i would estimate i had 2 1/2lb, a quick look down the track added a roach of 2oz before looking over my roach lines across, Now normally if you are going to catch small roach on this canal you will have a odd ones on your perch lines so with this in mind i thought i'm try the shell first. After 5 minutes i had a bite that resulted in a 6oz perch followed by one of 3oz next put in then nothing, a look on bloodworm on the same lines produced no more bites.
For the next hour, despite swapping lines every 5 minutes, i put virtually nothing in the net. This was to change when i had started having indications on the caster over, in the next 40 minutes i added 11 roach that would put at least another 4lb onto my weight, only problem was that the peg to my right where i was catching was now completely covered in leaves.
Again i went through a spell of inactivety only stopped by two roach down the track in the last 10 minutes.
With reports from my section saying chub had been caught by three anglers i was delighted to find after the weigh in i was 3rd in section with 7-8-8, beaten by eventual match winner Matt Hodgetts on C8 with a carp and a small carp for 39lb 11oz and Darren Massey of Shakespeare on C9 with two chub and a skimmer for 8-14-7.
What suprised me even more was after working out the results i was last in the main money ,beaten by 5 chub weights.
With the team joint 2nd on the day i think we can safely say i was over the bloody moon...
Warkshire winter league RD2
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