Tuesday 12th April - Return to the Bristol Feeder Canal

This was to be my 3rd visit to the Bristol Feeder Canal in as many weeks. An early start again in order to get parked saw me leaving home around 06:30. I approached the Feeder Canal from the bottom end this time instead of the middle and found a nice parking spot outside a car dealers. opposite where I parked there was a walkway onto the canal bank approximately 100 yards from where I was last Wednesday. Feeder Road was busy but not as busy compared to where I had been before so crossed the road quite easily.
I walked downstream with the gear for about 50 yards finding a slightly wider piece of bank to settle and set up on.
Angling Times are giving the Feeder Canal a mention in the 'where to fish' section next week and asked me to take a photo of the venue. Thank you to the gentleman this morning who took the picture below just after I set up.

I had my usual caster, hemp and maggot along with a few red worms from the compost heap but my ground bait mix today was slightly different. I mixed up some fish meal, Lake and Black Crumb, about 3 kilo and intended to use it all to try and bring the bream on if they were around (they have got to show soon).

I had my usual 1.5 gram set up and had another rig with a 3.0 gram in case the flow quickened up too much.

Four big balls were cupped in at the start down the track and double red went on the 18 drennan maggot hook just to start with. The Canal was still without any tow either way but after approx 10 minutes the float sailed under and I had a dace of around 6 ozs. More bites soon came but the direction of the tow kept changing. For 10 minutes it would flow toward the docks, they stay still, then flow upstream toward the river.

I had the more positive bites when it was flowing toward the docks. 

I kept topping up wth ground bait and around 11:00 I bumped a good fish and wondered if it was a bream. back out with double caster and the float buried again and I connected with the fish. Quite a bit of no.4 elastic came out and the fish stayed deep. Even when I broke down to the top 4 it still stayed deep and i did think it was a small bream. I got it up in the water and could see it was a perch of around 8 ozs. It did feel bigger due to the 10 feet of water. 

I slipped on a red worm in the hope of a few more but it did not happen. 

Up until this point I had been catching dace but the roach came on and they were very rough getting ready to spawn.

I did have a good 5 hours fishing but not quite as much as last week, the spring balance registered 13lb   6ozs but not complaining.

I managed to get a young lad to take a picture of me and my catch a he was walking home.

13lb 6oz brilliant little fishery

This Sunday I am on the Gloucester Canal in the teams of 4 League, fishing hard at the moment.