The water might still be cold, but it was nice to feel the sun on my face for a couple of short reccies along the Ilminster Canal. I picked up a pint of white maggots after a morning at work yesterday and checked out the water with a short stroll before opting for a waggler rod over the whips in the boot of my car. A reliable old Image canal waggler was threaded onto the line and locked with two number four shot. I started light, with some spread 10 and 11 droppers to a size 20 on an 0.08 bottom. It wasn’t long before a few roach responded and the odd wasp perch. As the evening drew to a close I was catching some very nice 3-4oz roach alternating between the deck and half-depth. I even had a little fantail brown goldfish and spoke to a walker who said that quite a number of goldfish had been popping up in catches recently.
I returned the next morning before work in an attempt to catch, if not a bigger goldfish, then a more colourful one. The ‘canal’ is best described as a long pond really, as all that remains of it (whatever it was) is a section some 200 yards long on the edge of the recreation ground, so it is hardly surprising that someone has decided it is a convenient place to dump any fish which may have outgrown the garden pond, but it does add more unpredictability to quite an appealing little fishery. It was back to basics stuff once more, and with only two hours to play with, I took the same rod out of the car, already set up, and sat down this time near one end of the pond where I found it weedier and had obviously decided it looked more ‘goldfishy’.
It turned out it wasn’t and a few tiny perch later I decided a move was in order, even on such limited time. I relocated a short distance away to the middle of the canal and set about feeding some maggots there in an attempt to at least add to my tally of bumblebees. It was slow going for twenty minutes or so before the odd roach began to respond and just as I was suspecting that only dusk would bring them properly on the feed, I began to put together a run of plump roach once more, and, lo and behold, another brown goldfish. Not long after, I had a bite on the drop which resulted in a plodding fight and a larger, far more colourful goldfish. A very, very pretty one in fact, as you'll see below. I rounded off the session with about a dozen last casts and a couple of welcome perch, one about 6oz and another of half a pound or so. The best roach of the lot was actually a roach/rudd hybrid, which was unexpected as I never caught any rudd on either day despite fishing shallow on and off, and there was also another strange occurrence when I struck a quick bite, completely missing it and coming back with a cleanly severed hooklength, an occurrence I associate with the Grand Western Canal and its abundant jack pike population. I’m not aware that the Ilminster Canal holds any pike, but If it does, then I fear for the future of those goldfish!
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