Tuesday 5th April - Bristol Feeder Canal Head to Head with Leigh Wakefield Round 2

 We met on Feeder Rd again just before 07:00 and parked quite close to the ramp down to the Canal near Manor Scrap. A short walk up the road and we were at the Cafe for a good breakfast (it used to be Kelly's Cafe).

Although it is necessary to get up very early in order to park it does turn out to be a very sociable day out with no rushing. We do spend time talking to a lot of passers by. Some of them are also anglers and they do follow our outings when I post them on FaceBook, we are getting regular spectators now.

It doesn't take long to set up as the rigs we use from the week before generally only need a change of hook length.

When we finally got down on the Canal it was pretty calm, just a very light wind so out came my two 1 gram rigs, one to fish at 13 and the other at 7 metres.

I thought I had some dead reds in the freezer but didn't so only caster, pinkie, red maggot and a few worms. Instead of Sensas Black Lake and Gros Gardons Noire I used some Black Magic instead.

After mixing up and plumbing I put in 2 big balls on each line and took a walk down to Leigh who had already started fishing, it was bang on 09:00.

As I was talking to Leigh a guy came along the pavement above ....Tony Humphries who we have both know for years from our Bristol PO Angling Club days, Tony still fishes and does come to Ireland with a few of us each year. He had seen our posts and this blog and came down for a look himself, he may even fish with us next week.

After 5 minutes or so I walked back to my peg and Tony came down level with the Canal. 

First put in across I had a dace followed by a roach, Tony couldn't believe it. The line quickly died for some reason so I re-fed and came in on the 7 metre one. Another roach which was quite rough so they are getting ready to spawn.

I honestly thought I was going to have a good day on the roach but alas no. All I could catch was very small and I mean small dace. Looking down toward Leigh he was also struggling.

But .... you have to keep plugging away on the Feeder Canal and put in regular balls of feed.

The wind picked up and it became impossible to present long so was left fishing the short line most of the day. Lots of bites but hard to hit. Most of the time the float would sail away and the tip of the maggot or pinkie was just nipped.

One of our regulars .... Dave .... came down and stood behind Leigh, not long after he had a skimmer. This happened last week as well. At this point I knew Leigh would go into the lead.

Leigh was persevering holding the pole right across and snared a few decent roach late to increase his lead.

It was going to be a low weight affair today but Leigh took top honours with a level 8lbs to my 4lbs.

So it's 1 - 1 now !

Fishing an Open on the Glossy this Sunday then one day next week it's Head to Head Round 3.