One of my favourite bits of canal is the Taunton to Bridgwater near the Boat & Anchor Inn. Many people prefer to fish the bit known as Widewaters a bit further on, but some of my best days fishing - ever, actually - have been back towards the pub. When I'm tench fishing, on any canal, I never aim high to start. Usually, I start by thinking "Two. I'd be happy with two today." Then, if I achieve that, I'll keep revising my target - a bit like a run chase in cricket, ten runs at a time.
Four hours into today, on one of the banker swims on this stretch of canal, and I hadn't even got off the mark. I could hardly believe it; the canal looked spot-on colour-wise, and has recent good form. Even the whip line was very slow, and two anglers to my right had also only managed a handful of silver fish between them. I picked up maybe ten small rudd for my efforts before deciding to take lunch and a walk along the canal.
If nothing else, the Widewaters at least showed signs of rudd or roach at around six metres, and that was enough for me. I trudged back, pulled together my kit and dragged the lot to my new swim in the Wides, which I started off with a pot of finely chopped worm, casters and red maggots at 13m, and a small ball of liquidised bread on the whip line, at 2.15pm.
First chuck on the whip and a nice rudd of 2oz kicked back before being swung to hand. I then had a roach of similar size (an even better sign), and decided that 8lb would be a good target for the rest of the afternoon, which would require either a good whip catch or some supporting tench or bream. After two more top-ups on the long line, and more than an hour of relatively consistent sport on the whip, including three small silver bream, I noticed a small patch of bubbles over the worm.
By this time it had gone from being distinctly chilly in the morning, to quite bloody hot mid-afternoon. The blazing sun didn't bother the tench though, which responded immediately to triple red maggot over the top of the thirteen metre line. Frustratingly, I lost four, which is quite unusual, but did manage to bring five over the rim of the landing net. The best of these weighed 4lb 2oz, and was a very long fish. Then, as I packed the kit away, there was a wonderful red sky sunset, which proved to be far more mesmerising than the solar eclipse which took place not long after I settled into my first-choice swim.
