BACK TO THE CUT

  

After three consecutive blanks on the Leam and with all traces of ice melted away, it was back to the canal today. A local stretch of the Grand Union is closed for White Elephant Railways construction giving us a rare, boatless window of opportunity. With the tail of the latest storm still thrashing about, I decided to use the quivertip rod and fish bread on the bottom. It's a good method for me in uncomfortable windy weather because I can just turn my back on the wind and sit facing along the canal, parallel to the water. It also allows me to fish slightly narrower towpaths than normal without restricting access to joggers and cyclists but that is by the by.

     I lobbed out four balls of liquidised bread, stiffened slightly with a little Gros Gardons and a handful of hemp while I set up. It didn't take long, 2bb a foot from the size 14 hook and one more two inches from it just to anchor the popped up bread flake was all I had on the line. Just enough weight to set the tip against.

    I'm still testing this rod out. Originally I intended it to be a slightly heavier duty, stiffer blank than my previous creation for light ledgering on canals, the Hornet, as I was hoping to use it for chucking out a small cage feeder. The Hornet will swing out and fish effectively, loaded feeders rated up to 10 grams but I was hoping for something that would throw maybe a 20 gram feeder.

     Using various bits of old cane rods, I assembled one whose action was tailored seamlessly into a 1/4-1/2 ounce fibreglass quivertip. Unfortunately I'd taken my eye off the ball and ended up with an extremely sensitive and light rod that seems to work best with no more than a couple of swan shot down below.

     For the record, the old float rod handle was turned down to match the butt section of a Barratt fly rod, maker unknown, and a pair of reel bands made to match. The tip section was from another fly rod and a male ferrule machined from brass to fit the butt. Not sure where the tip came from, a Sigma wand maybe, but I re-spaced the rings on that, drilled out the threaded tip ring and Araldited it in place permanently.

     Bites on this 'bitsa' are easy to hit, half of them pull the tip right round the others tend to be massive, unmissable slack liners and although I may have missed one possible bite this morning, I hit the other ten having to use the disgorger on all but one of them.

     Pete chose a different method, fishing a porcupine quill bottom end only, anchored by a single small shot. Feeding a little slop and a few grains of hemp, it surprised neither of us that his fish were mostly roach with a single rudd and maybe a hybrid making up the bag.

 None of today's fish were particularly large, but only one of them was small enough to lift out on our light tackle. Virtually all of them came in the first hour and I think eight of mine came to the first eight casts. One or two took before I could even set the tip. It was hectic fishing for a while and I finished with ten fish, seven between 1-0 and 1-14. I suppose they were best called bream, but several of them were of doubtful parentage, given away by their propensity to fight and the odd pink fin or roachy scales and mouths. Interestingly these, if they were hybrids, are very bream-heavy whereas those I catch on the Ashby are so roach-like as that they give the angler palpitations until he has them in his hand.

     It's been a long time coming but at last, thank goodness, we have evidence that we aren't as useless as we were beginning to think we might be.