I went fishing yesterday on a stretch of my Local Canal in Congleton, Cheshire.
The strong winds made presentaing a Pole float on the far shelf extremely difficult so i opted to fish with a Whip instead. I fished at the bottom of the near shelf just were it levelled out on the Track which is about 3 metres out.
I fished using a 3 metre whip, that has had the metal eye removed and replaced with a Middy Whip Connector, this just makes it easier to attach your mainline to your whip as you just tie a loop in the end of your mainline and attach it like you would to a pole connector. The connector is just glued in to place, and the blue sleeve just slides up and secures the loop of your mainline in place.
Middy Whip Connector
The mainline of my Rig Set up was was 2.13lb Garbolino line, to this was attached a 6 inch Hook Length of 1.7lb Garbolino line which was tied to a size 20 Kamasan B520 Whisker barb hook (to which i crushed the barb using my styl pincers) which is a personal choice, as i am not comfortable unhooking fish with a barbed hook in them.
The pole float was a Maver one of 0.20 grams with a wire stem and a thin bright orange bristle, which did make it a lot easier to see in the choppy conditions. I used a bulk of 5 number 10 Stotz with 3 number 11 stotz used as droppers in the last 18 inches all attached to the mainline, which is why i only used a 6 inch hooklength as i don't like attaching shot to my hook lengths.
The bait and free offerings consisted of, 4 slices of Liquidised bread to use as a groundbait (which on the day was more than plenty), and 2 slices of Warburtons medium sliced bread with the crusts cut off and the bread rolled out using a rolling pin. The slices of bread i was going to use as hook bait were then cut in to quarters which then allowed me only to remove a small slice of bread at any one time and the rest of the slices remained freshly wrapped up in Tin Foil.
On the day i used a 4mm Drennan Bread Punch to punch out the bread pellets, as i found that it helped to conceal the hook as well as being ample enough for the size of fish i was targetting.
The fishing was ok, a fish every 2 to 5 minutes, mainly Gudgeon but also some small roach and 1 skimmer, i fished for 5 hours and although i would have liked to have caught a few bigger roach and skimmers, the constant catching of small fish helped to keep my mind away from the cold blustery wind.
Here area few pictures to accompany this brief outline.
The Canal Stretch
The Bait used on the Day
A Small selection of the Fish caught on the day (
i didn't feel comfortable trying to take pictures of them all in a landing net)
A great big thank you to everyone that gave me some excellent advise on how to approach fishing on a Canal, and tips on how to best fish it. You helped to motivate me to give it a go, and i feel reasonably comfortable with going canal fishing again on my own, even though i know i still have a lot to learn, you have all given me a good start.
