Sunday 25th March - Bristol Feeder Canal ''Knock Up''

I had arranged this ''Knock Up'' a week earlier but heavy snowfall meant it had to be cancelled. It was re-scheduled for the following week and 8 confirmed they could fish. There used to be a Thursday evening series of matches on the Canal quite a few years ago but none since. It is a cracking venue which runs into the City of Bristol Docks and its proper Urban Fishing. I usually fish it during the week while the River Close Season is on and have had some cracking bags of Roach, Dace and Bream. If you search my Blog down the left hand side and click on Feeder Canal you will see the evidence.
The draw was at 08:00 on the Feeder Rd which runs alongside the Canal so the kit simply had to be taken across the road, no need for trolleys. Entry fee was £15 paying 2 Sections of £20 and 1st £45 and 2nd £35 so a 50% chance of a pick up as Sections by default. Fishing was 09:30 - 14:30.

There were a couple of pleasure anglers further down the Canal and they had only caught a couple of dace so not looking good.

The colour looked spot on but no sign of fish

There was much debate prior to the ''all in''.

At the start I fed the track and up the far shelf with a couple of balls of ground bait filled with hemp and caster plus a few dead pinkies. The flow towards the City noticeably increased and the 1 gram and 2 gram floats suddenly became the wrong choice so upgraded to a 2.5 gram. Normally you get an indication pretty quick on this venue and sometimes its a job to get through the small dace. No such problem today it soon became evident it was going to be rock hard.

It must have been 2 hours in when Team Mate Sam Johnson sounded a cheerful chuckle netting a small dace. Up until that point no one had caught. 

As time went on and it did ...there was no bites to be had and everyone but Sam was blanking. 

It almost went right to the wire before Jeff Surmon had a dace about 5 minutes from the all out.

That was it, fair play they all stuck it out.

Sams dace went 2 ozs and Jeff's went 1.5 ozs. We had to have a luck dip for Section pay out and Adrian Dennis and Leigh Wakefield were the lucky dip winners.

Sam with his winning fish worth £45

Despite the seriously poor day they were all keen to give it another go in April, I will give it a try before the next ''knock up'' though.

Not sure what I am doing over Easter if anything, there are a couple of matches on. I have been out fly fishing up Chew Valley Lake and managed 2 on a cold windy day so might go for another visit.

First 2 of the season.