I was well pleased that the 5th and penultimate round was going ahead. So Sunday morning saw me heading
to Enfield in great form. On the way I passed the canal in Kilcock and it was still frozen so wherever we are fishing today is at very least going to be very very cold and so it turned out to be.
Theres very few cars in the carpark at 09.30 and by 10.00 theres only eight eejits standing there so not so much jossling for draw position is needed. I drew third and got myself an end peg, happy days.
Theres only one venue available to us as the others are frozen, so it's back to Kilmore again.
On the short drive to the canal I'm thinking, won here the last time and I've an end peg this time,
I'm confident, you'd think I'd know better by now.
Got to my peg (no 17) which is quite close to the bridge and it is one desolate and featureless place to be.
Still it's on the end so time to get sorted.
Theres very little flow and the wind that is blowing is on my back, so the water was very still which
would help with presentation and allow me to use small, light floats.
I figured nothing much was going to be caught so there would be a fair bit of scratching and searching round for "blips". I was right.
First things first and I mixed a small bit of groundbait, VDE Super Canal Black and black leam mixed 50/50.
I'd ran the groundbait through a pinkie riddle a couple of times to remove any large bits of feed, before adding the water. The idea behind dong this is to have a groundbait with little or no feed in it.
The only feed I wanted in my swim was a few freebies and my hookbait.
I plumbed two swims to my left and right with the same rig (The Garbo float) .09 mainline to
.08 hooklength and a size 20 Kamazan B511. This was plumbed to dead depth and then marked on
my topkit with tippex. Using this method allows me to adjust depths but allways get back to dead depth if I want to. Another rig (the Sensas float) was used to fish at varying depths up in the water in the area
between my two "bottom" swims. The same mainline and hooklength but with a size 22 hook, they'll be smaller fish at mid water I figured.
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| Left, Sensas Desque, 4x8 Right, Garbo ds14, 0.4grm |
so all wasn't lost. I flavoured some of the whites with Turmeric and managed to get some caster out of them too. That gave me a few different options to try out over the 4 hours but you can't beat a single pinkie
in a freezin canal.
At 11.30 I'm chatting to Seanie Ward who's pegged next to me and it's "All in". Over to my swim and
in goes a couple of small balls of groundbait with a few caster to my right hand and a couple of small balls
of groundbait with hemp to my left side. My plan was to leave them alone for an hour and search around with my short rig in the open water in front of me. A small sprinkle pot fixed to the end of my top kit allowed
me to drip feed in as I needed to. This was pinkies and groundbait, the groundbait was left powdered so it would come out of the sprinkle pot and go through the water in a cloud.
After 15 mins the float dipped and I had caught the smallest fish in the canal, as I swung it in I thought "he won't be on his own" so straight back in and as it turned out he was on his own. A couple of hours went by and it was clearer than the water, that there was very little in front of me.
Time for a couple of changes and the hook sizes were scaled down, the 20 to a 22 and the 22 to a 24.
The two swims to my left were still blank and a phone call to the other end peg confirming that was blanking
aswell made me feel a wee bit better. Two swims in the middle were throwing up a few fish so I
had to keep going. Seanie next to me, jumped in to his van for a bit of heat, maybe he had the right idea.
It was horrid cold, I had all the usual thermal gear on plus many many layers but was shivering so much at one stage I couldn't hold my pole still.
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| Wheres Seanie ? |
was going to move my float other than my shivering. A few minutes after changing down to the size 24 hook
I discovered that the smallest fish in the canal, who I had caught earlier, had a twin brother.
He must have been missing him in the canal so he kindly jumped on to the hook and volunteered to join him in my keepnet. With five minutes to go a fish of about an ounce took a single caster again from my midwater
rig and I was so desperate to land it I even considered netting it !!!
Time was against me so I did swing it as I had time for one more put in. I needn't have bothered really
as I got it back in but nothing happened. The 4 hours have gone by it's 15.30 and the "All Out"
is called. I swear I heard eight lads scream thank God for that.
Packing up and looking at a rapidly approaching weigh scales made me realise that not many of the lads had weighed in so suddenly my three fish are looking huge. Turns out the two lads in the middle pegs 13 & 14
had a few fish in front of them. Pat in 13 had 1lb 14.5 ozs and Robbie in peg 14 had 1lb 4 ozs.
My three fish weighed all of 2ozs, yes you read that correctly but they got me second in my section
and third overall, good points for my league position and a few quid.
We were the only three to weigh anything, the 5 other lads all blanked.
I can't remember who said it to me first but someone did say it to me, "allways weigh in, allways weigh in"
Whoever it was was right.
Theres one round left now on the 29th, hopefully it'll be a bit warmer.
