Trying to earn my stripes

After myself and Danny had fished a new stretch of canal last weekend, and he had kicked my rosy red butt. I decided to venue back in search of perch for myself.

I had not bothered with any roach gear this time and packed only my pole, a light 9ft feeder rod and a pred rod just in case the Zander started to feed.

My bait was simple left over maggots and caster and a large pot of worms. Incidentally the kids parents thought I was absolutely mad at the mid week football fixture....as whilst they patrolled the sideline cheering on the little lovelies, I had noticed that their constant walking in one area had caused a delude of lobs to appear on the surface so though I should have been coaching the team I spent more time with an empty drinks bottle picking up lobs!!! (might take a container every game!)

Anyway I digress.....as usual!

I got to the canal for about first light and started to set up my gear, eventually casting my first lob out at about 7.10.

With the feeder rod swung out just down the near shelf, I then sorted my pole rig for the session, as soon as I picked up my top section to do this ...my tip bent round and I had missed fish number one...but things looked promising!

I quickly sorted the rig which was very simple 3lb 6oz Preston rig line, Drennan pinkie .50 float a .30g Olivette and two number 8 dropping stots, to a size 18 Drennan red maggot micro barb hook ( I only used these for perch due there mouth being so hard and head staking action during the fight). I laid this on about 3 inches.

To get the area going I cupped in a very generous mess of chopped worm, caster and maggot.... It immediately worked and I was into fish. After a couple of perch around the pound mark, I hit into a much better fish only for my loop onto my pole connector to get caught up some how though I tried to free it the fish managed to snap me at the loop, this must have been the weak link! I was gutted with this as I had spent time making this rig especially for this peg....ou couture! I busily looked for the same float in my box and a new Olivette, just as I started to tie the new rig my old one appeared right on the spot I had cupped into, this did baffle me some what, I was looking as a Drennan pinkie float in my hand and there was one floating in the water...when my brain had sorted the issue I used my pred rod to hook up the rig, I was relieved to say though the fish was not attached every think else was..including the worm!

Through out the session I landed fish both on the feeder/bomb rig and the pole the majority of which came from no further than 4 metres out, in fact some came from under my keepnet!

As I was on my own some of the pictures are not great, but I finished the session with....
1 Zander of 2lb 1oz.....

16 perch...

6 of which where over a pound.weighed in as 2 at 1lb 3oz, 2 at 1lb 40z, 1 at 1lb 5 oz ,and...

1 of which weighed in at 2lb 2oz.

Sorry about pictures!!! Though my DSLR has millions of pixels, looks great and takes great images, the self timer is not that easy to use! (might be time to buy a cheap compact)

This improves my challenge score a little and I am pretty sure most of larger fish are different from those caught last week....lets hope it holds a 3lb er!

Local have told my all sorts of tails about this stretch bream, huge roach and pike....only time will tell!!!