All good in the hood, well almost !!

April had us out and about with mixed results and constant reminders from the fishing Gods
that for every good day there'll be bad days too. It's part of the draw of it all I guess, never quite knowing
whats going to happen. Will the float go under ? Will the tip go round ? Did I get this right ? Did I get
that right ? Theres more to this aul fishing lark.
A thoroughly rotten canal match with Enfield had us heading for a different stretch of the canal the following weekend after a suggestion from a couple of my fellow competitors. Maybe they were winding me up !!!
A Saturday afternoon session on a venue I'd only once fished before saw very little coming to the net.
Rob had a few perch on his "I will get a bite, worm tactics". I had little better until a surprise dip of the float and loads of elastic suddenly on show resulted in this wee surprise.






It really was a bonus fish and made mockery of allways having to get things right. Any Tench I've ever had before came off the bottom, this lad had a swipe at my "blips rig". A single pinkie on a size 20 drennan hook
fished closer to the surface than to the bottom. Still I wasn't complaining, cracking good scrap on
no.4 elastic and a very light hooklength.
We called it a day after that but decided we'd put in a bit of bait and re visit early the following morning.
Less said about it the better.

A couple of weeks later and theres an FTI get together on Muckno, one of my favourite places.
With the draw of the venue itself and time with the gang from FTI, heading up the road had me in a great
mood and really looking frward to the day. Ne'r mind as they say, a really poor day unfolded and I packed
up fishless after a few hours. I had 2 tough hours on the pole, a couple of time was holding on for
all I could. I should really have packed it away earlier but I wanted to try a few things, none of which worked. Back to the fishing wagon and out with my trusty feeder gear. Thanks to Karl for the few bits
I needed and soon enough I'm blanking on the feeder as brilliantly as I was on the pole.
After a fishless hour I packed up and headed home. Like I said earlier, theres allways bad days.

Not sure where this one fits in but after a long time trying I finally got Golden Balls to leave his pole at home and we headed for a well known match venue in Cavan. We'd fished it before on the match stretch and had good results on the pole. Today was a feeder only day and to make sure we only brought 1 feeder rod with us and  it was to be Robs first time fishing this method. We clipped on a wee lead at the start to get his casting sorted and after looking like we were good at 40 turns we clipped up and set about getting some bait in to the swim. The casting wasn't great and as it turned out hitting the spot at the original distance was
proving difficult so we abandoned that line and moved back to 30 turns where fairs fair, Rob was hitting the spot pretty much ever time. To compliment the feed going in on the feeder I was catapulting on top of every cast and boy was I glad I did. Three great hours on that line and bite after cracking bite saw him bagging
a very nice 26lbs of roach, hybrids and skimmers. Jammy little git had a right good introduction to it, allthough I did have the odd cast, well I had to demonstrate for him the odd time, insert smiley here..............