Last year myself and team mate Leigh Wakefield had a number of head to heads on the Bristol Feeder Canal. Leigh won the series quite convincingly. We both had some great nets of dace, roach, skimmers and bream. The posts attracted a lot of interest and a lot more anglers gave the Feeder Canal a go.
I had sneaky look a couple of weeks ago and managed a few roach but mainly small dace.
Leigh and I agreed to meet up today for the first head to head, Leigh had not been fishing for a few months and it this was confirmed when he opened his bait boxes. The contents from his last outing where still in the bait boxes and resembled badly gone off porridge! He still had 3 month old casters in a vacuum sealed bag and to be fair they looked ok. I gave him some maggots and pinkie.
We met at 07:00 on Feeder Rd and headed into Kelly's Cafe for a cooked breakfast. £5 for a full breakfast and a coffee or tea was great value. After a good meal and a catch up we headed to the Canal and we were set up ready to go by 09:00.
I went on my usual spot in front of Manor Scrap and Leigh went down 35 metres or so toward Avon St Bridge, he done well there last Spring catching plenty of skimmers.
I had my new Sensas Nanoflex 3900 seat box out for the first time so would it bring me some luck?
My ground bait mix was basically the same as a couple of weeks ago with the exception of team. Just the Sensas black lake and gros gardons noire. Its a nice stiff mix and smells great. If the canal is towing hard I recommend a bit of leam as well or sived mole hill soil in order to get the ground bait down to the bottom quickly in an average depth of around 6 to 7 feet.
The canal looked spot on today with a tinge of colour and there was a light wind, a few fish (dace were topping) .
I set up 2 x 1 gram rigs both with 20 hooks to 0.09 fluro, elastics were no.3 and no. 4.
13 metres takes you to just off the far shelf and 7 metres is down the track were it is slightly deeper.
I usually let the rigs run through very slowly at 13 metres and hold back harder down the track.
One ball went in on each line to start with laced with dead reds and caster plus a few live pinkies.
Starting off long I soon had a run of very small dace and after 20 minutes the size was not getting any bigger so re-fed and came in on the 7 metre line. A sail away bite almost immediately and and I though it was a skimmer but no .... a 4 oz perch, but at least something bigger than the dace. Staying on this line I did pick up better dace but they backed off pretty quick so re-fed and back out long.
More small dace, nothing unusual about this as the Feeder can take a while to respond, so its just a case of plugging away and keep feeding.
I couldn't see Leigh catching much and after 2 hours knew I was ahead but went down for a nose anyway.
Leigh said he bumped what he thought was a bream / skimmer but in general he wasn't seeing much action.
We do get a few regulars come down to watch us as well as locals. Some of the local's are real characters if you know what I mean !
One of our fans (lol), Dave does quite a bit of fishing on the canal was the first to arrive and we passed the time of day away for 30 minutes before he went down to Leigh. Not long after I could hear them shout up and I saw Leigh playing a good fish, a big skimmer around 2lbs. Bugger I thought ... but it was still only 11:30.
On my long line I had some better dace and a few small roach but it was hard work.
The 7 metre line came on all of a sudden and I had some proper stamp roach, great weight builders but you had to rest the line every 15 minutes and re-fed.
About 12:30 I had two big roach in consecutive put in's, one went over a pound and the other about 10oz.
I knew these fish put me back in front as Leigh was catching that much after his skimmer.
The last hour was very slow but when we packed up at 15:00 I knew I had double figures.
I weighed in Leigh first and he had 7lb 8oz
My net went 13lb 4oz.
So Round 1 to me. The nest head to head is Tuesday 5th April on the same venue.
This Sunday 3rd April I am on the Gloucester Canal fishing the Canal Championships so a good draw is necessary.
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