GOOD FISHING SESSION ON THE GRAND WESTERN CANAL

22RD JANUARY 2014  

DEAD STRETCH

               Welcome back to my latest blog in my last few blogs i have wrote about the weather ect as well as the fishing so this blog is not going to have very much talk about the weather today just the fishing on the canal.So here we go fellow readers it was Wednesday the 22rd of January 2014 the forecast was not bad for today light winds and a chance of a light shower or 2 later on in the day Colin and my self had agreed to fish the dead stretch which is a really good part of the canal at the tiverton end we were going to fish the top end which was only a couple of pegs before the turning bay (tidcombe bay) so it was about 9 am when i left home and headed up there i made my way down towards the turning bay were we were going to fish.

 

As i walked from the opening up to were we were going to fish i did not See any fish or sign of a fish move all along the dead stretch the water had now started to go clear which i see as a good think as we have now had weeks and weeks of wind rain and very bad storms so when i arrived at the end of the dead stretch were we had agreed to fish i decided to wait for Colin as i knew he would not be long as he text me to say he was just loading the gear in the car and he could park close anyway then we could decide were we were going to fish.With in 10 minutes my mate turned up i decided  to fish 2 pegs back from the turning bay (tidcombe bay) and he fished just one peg back from me so we had both picked were we were going to fish and were both happy with the area we were fishing it was now time to get started and set up and get some fishing done we both took our time setting up i was only going to set up one top kit which was a match top 3 kit this would be with a number 3 browning latex elastic through just the top 1 section with a Dacron connector i was going to fish a 0.30gr pole float with a long tip it was on a 1.12oz mainline to a 1.5oz bottom to a size 20 Preston pr311 hook 

I plumbed up the pole rig at about 5 to 6 meters slightly to my left hand side i plumbed it so that there was only a very small bit of the pole float tip showing this meant the bait would be just touching the bottom after plumbing up it was time to get my bait sorted out i put half a bag of liquidised bread into a bait tub and kept adding water until it was turned from a crumb into a sloppy mixture of bread which when i feed it will leave a nice white cloud as it falls to the bottom so i got my cupping kit and fed the swim but i only started off by feeding a medium cup of the sloppy mix on the swim were i had just plumbed up i then left it a while while i sorted the rest of my gear out i also had a coffee and a chat with my mate before returning to my box . so now it was time to start fishing i started off by using a 4mm bread punch i shipped out and let the bait and float settle on the area were i had just fed and placed the pole in the pole rest normally when using the bread punch over bread crumb you get a bite very quick in fact some time it before you have chance to put the pole in the rest but today was a bit different i had to wait about 30 to maybe 45 minutes before i had my first bite but i missed it so after putting on another 4 mm bread punch i shipped back out on the same spot.

After shipping back out i had another bite about 2 minutes later but i was taking a phone call i did strike and i had the fish on for a few seconds but the hook pulled out so that was 2 bites no fish but it was looking good as it was a better fish that i had just pulled out of so i stuck to the same and carried on fishing the 4 mm bread punch i started catching or getting bites every cast which was great and was catching skimmers up to about a pound and a half and i also had a nice size roach of about half a pound the bites did the stop and between half past 1 and 3 pm i only had 2 bites it got very hard but i ended the session at around 3 30 pm with a net of fish that i was very happy about and was good for this time of the year i took my net out and i had 9 skimmers between half a pound up to about a pound and a half  and i also had that good roach of about half a pound it was a good days fishing and shows all you need to cackle you local canal is bread punch so with all the gear packed away that was the session over so until my next blog if you on the banks be safe and tight lines if you have any question of feed back for the blogs i write please feel free to comment on this page bellow would be great to hear from the readers 

tight lines 

lee