As mentioned in my previous blog, the plan is to always have a rod in the car set up ready for fishing whenever the opportunity presents itself. At the moment the rod is set up with a 3BB peacock insert waggler and size 10 wide gape hook. After work today I headed to the Grand Western Canal, more to stretch my legs than anything. I took along a few slices of bread and my landing net head for preliminary investigations, the idea being to feed a little mashed bread into any swims that took my fancy. In the end, I baited three such swims along a 400 yard stretch.
I walked back to the car and grabbed my kit, heading for the furthest of the baited pitches to begin with. I was into bites immediately; several 1-2oz roach, a rudd, and a skimmer were landed despite the relatively crude tackle. I felt there was something better to be caught in this area which was reed-lined on both banks, however all that materialised were plenty of bites, and no quality. The second swim was situated in front of a bench, and much more open. I had baited there originally because I saw a small skimmer swim past on my initial walk. The first bite took longer than in the first swim but resulted in a half-pound skimmer bream and then followed some lovely roach to a similar size.
I wasn't hanging around though and hoped for a sizeable bream or tench before leaving for home. The final swim showed no signs of any larger fish until I began fishing, whereupon bubbles seemed to be breaking surface almost continuously, preceding the capture of my biggest bream for some time from this canal at four pounds plus. I didn't weigh it, which was just as well, otherwise I would not have had time to make another cast and catch a classic hard-fighting Grand Western Canal bream, only slightly smaller than the first. I didn't stick around after that though, on account of a flash of lightning that really did feel much too close for comfort. Besides, by the time I hooked the rod up and returned to the car it was absolutely chucking it down.
