Monday nighters - week 8

After a rainy & overcast day, it turned out to be a nice night for fishing on the sluice. There was a bit of an upstream breeze and a bit more colour in the water.

I was on the end peg and got off to a good start with three net skimmers in the first 5 minutes. I fed a couple of lines, one with chopped worm and the other a groundbait line with casters and a few pinkies.

After a few more skimmers, I had a nice hybrid on caster over the worm line, so out came the big rig and on went half a worm. Within a few seconds I was playing a nice Tench around 3lb and after hearing the ensuing splashes, Graham started up on the next peg. "I'm really struggling", "My luck's deserted me", "I didn't know you could get Perch so thin you can see right through 'em" were a few choice comments.

I kept feeding the long line and the fish seemed to keep coming. Not big stuff, but enough to keep the weight growing. After about an hour and a half the short line showed signs of active feeding, so I gave the double caster a go. Very quickly I was into another Tench, if anything it was slightly bigger than the first one. It must've been on it's tod there, because no more bites came - back across I went.

There was a bit of a lull after that and from what Graham was telling me (the other side of the tree) there was someone bagging further down. That got me a bit despondant because sport had dropped off in front of me. I cupped in a bit more feed with some casters to one side (at a different length) and had a bit of an experiment. Sure enough, the fish were there and the skimmers started coming again, a few hybrids in with them.

With about twenty minutes to go, I started seeing bubbles over my main line and went back to it for a last ditch attempt at another bonus fish. A couple of missed dips later and I was into what seemed like a humped-back whale. With elastic ripping out at some speed, I tried to get it turned and sure enough it relented enough to force a change in direction. It was then that I realised that the line was doubled-up around the float and there was quite a knot (stem almost doubled over). The fish kept coming back and as I reached for the landing net the whole shooting match let go at the float - I'd lost the piggin' lot. Bubbles still showing, I reached for the suicide rig (No6 elastic) and went back over with a few minutes left.

While all this was going on (and scalesman Cleggy was issuing me with a bollocking for the loud profanities coming from my peg) Graham had suddenly sprung to life and bagged a BIG Tench from under his feet under the rushes. He went back for a second one but the all out sounded.

I was a bit dubious about how well I'd done, but I didn't have long to wait because Cleggy was soon at my peg with the scales. Fish slid into the sling and the dial went round to 13lb 10oz - a lot more than I thought I had. I carried on packing away and Graham was soon giving it loads with a claimed 14lb. That Tench must've been a reet lump because he actually weighed 9lb odd.

I lost track of the weights after that while I was packing up, but it soon got back down the bank that Derek had a nice net of fish, so that's who I presumed Graham was on about earlier. When I got back to the car park, Derek had weighed 13lb 4oz, so I'd finally won a Monday nighter at my 7th attempt.

I might sneak out for a bit of bait tomorrow and have a chuck on the canal if the weather stays OK later on.

Back inside to coffee & donuts.