First Trip of the year for me.

First trip this year

Well snow has gone ( nearly ) and I was feeling fit enough to attempt a small fishing trip, I realised that I had not wet a line for nearly 3 months, seems that too many other things had got in the way.

So we had a late start, knowing it was a frosty night I did not feel the need to get there at daft o'clock, and we set off to the local canal to hunt some tiddlers for points.

We arrived at about 10 am and found the canal still a sheet of ice, the hills near by still had snow on them and the towpath was still icy.





Here you can still see the ice on the water



I was fishing a simple float set up, Claudia had decided on pole fishing.



We got to some swims, the ice was jut thawing in patches, so Claudia set up by an open bit, I was walking on further when I noticed an ice breaker coming. A barge went by and opened up a nice swim for me. Having thanked the Bargee ( or is that bahji ? ), i flicked a few maggots in and set up my rod.

This was fingers and thumbs time for me, 3 months away and I was struggling tying the knots!!! but soon I was ready, did my first exploratory cast for depth near a tree and caught....................... a branch!!! Re tie all the rig, untangle everything and try again ( thought this was supposed to be fun and relaxing! ).

Finally got fishing, and there was a big fat nothing happening. It took nearly an hour before I found a pocket of small roach hiding near a tree. Managed a few little ones before it went dead again.

I had a brief break from the float and put out a small maggot feeder on a very light quivertip, this is not a technique that works very well on the canal normally, but as it was almost windless I could try it. I noticed some very tiny little twitches and struck into one, yes the roach were still there, but the bites, like on the float were oh so fine.

That was it really, I had half a dozen small roach, here are a couple






Claudia had a slow day too, did not start getting bites until about 2-30, but ended up with this little net full



Well at least we got out, and we both got some points for the species hunt

I had roach, she had roach and a silver bream.

Nice to see some of us are getting out there and well done on catching a few

I really must try and get out myself this week as it is half term and I will have my little helper with me.

Well I say little he's 13 6'2" with size 13 feet but will always be my little boy LOL