It was a tale of woe on the match length this afternoon at the all-out & ain't that the truth... I got up a tad late and thought "J'ai un peu avancer à froid ", so I rolled over and decided to have a few more hours kip. When I did eventually wake up properly, I felt a bit better but wasn't really bothered that I'd missed the match. Instead, I decided to have a pleasure chuck up in the late twenties after the all-out.
I got down there at around half-two and there were cars & vans all o'er t'shop. Messrs Clegg & Tabron were in the car park and soon after Peter turned up to help with the weigh-in. The all-out was shouted at precisely 2:45 and there were a long line of pained expressions looking up as I walked along the bank. Plenty of nets already drying out meant the fish were few & far between. I stopped for a quick chat with a few of the participants and from what I was told there was the odd tench caught here & there but otherwise it'd been a proper struggle. Twenty anglers fished the match, so my initial plan of going up to peg 25 still looked good. In recent weeks, this was the area fishing well, so off I headed.
Having cleared the feral geese (mainly Canada but with one pink-foot in with them) off the bank, I set about clearing the rushes from in front of the platform. That done, I setup as usual - which is getting a lot quicker these days after I markedly thinned out my tackle. A quick churn-up of the usual groundbait ingredients and a riddle into the bowl and I was ready to go. After feeding a couple of lines and dobbing-in on the 11m swim, it wasn't too long before I was swinging a fish in. Sadly, like the match anglers, I was straight into a nest of tommies. There were loads of them and it was all I could do to catch something that wasn't one. I had a couple of roach but the tommies persisted. I went onto the other fed line and that cured it - roach all the way, but only very tiny (possibly 30 to pound). There was the odd 3-4oz specimen, but very rare.
Uninspired, I decided ( as there was no-one about) I'd go for a walk up the bank. I got down to the bend and stopped for a while to watch a bird of prey harrying the pigeons which were on the field across the way. Unfortunately, I'm only a latecomer to the ornithological world, so I won't embarrass myself further by wrongly identifying it. All I know is, it was bloody quick and it made short work of grabbing it's evening meal... Behind me, possibly from a roost in the wood, I could clearly hear a buzzard (that's one I can recognise in form and call) and further back towards the plank a kestrel was working the top bank - the second time I've seen this in the last two visits.
There wasn't a soul around - I was on my own and it was a grand spectacle watching the birds doing their stuff. Just goes to show how crap the fishing was - I spent the next half hour clearing the rushes from in front of the platforms on some of the top end pegs. I managed a few on the way back to my gear before sitting down for a brew and another chuck. Swims fed again, I managed a few more roach and a couple of perch but the main concern I have lately is that there aren't any skimmers - they seem to have just vanished, almost as if they were never there in the first place. I'd caught a few hybrids the other week but even they've gone doggo now. Word has it that there'd been a big catch of bream last week, so well done to whoever it was who managed that.
I was ready for home at seven o'clock, so made my way back to the car. I didn't expect to be contemplating going back on the canal for a pleasure chuck in August, but it's showing more prospects than the sluice on present form...
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