Club match today on the Slough Arm at Langley Boats, our first canal match of the season and probably a bit too early as the fish haven't started moving into their winter quarters here yet (or mostly not, see later...). The usual suspects had been down on Wednesday for an exploratory knock up, they pegged it past the gate and after a 2 -13 and a 2-8 on the first two pegs used it went even harder with some only having two or three fish. So today it was pegged mostly before the gate with four pegs past it on the basis that it couldn't be any harder. Well...
Drew peg 4 on the day, nice reed cover in the edge and a few clumps of weed close in , glad of any cover as so clear that could see any lighter patches on the bottom all the way across and probably would have been able to see everything if it had been sunny . Plumbed up, no real shelves as 2 ft out from the towpath was only 6 inches or so shallower than the track, as was next to the boats at 10m. Shallower by about a foot in the gap between the two boats.
So, 4m whip, 3BB waggler rod and three topkits set up, all with a 24 Green Gama to .06 except 0.07 on waggler and one topkit with a 5 elastic , 0.08 and a size 20.
Started on whip, two nuggets of liquidised and smallest punch on the hook. Nothing in ten minutes, so put a fluoro pinkie on, buried and its a 3oz perch, which came off. Still blank after 40 minutes by which time Ian on my left had a tiny roach and Dave on my right a perch. A bit early for the usual Arm desperation tactic of chop up a single worm and fish a piece in the edge, but needs must, one worm fed about 4m along and half metre out to each side. Nothing. Went out across to the boat where had been feeding squatt and a few pinkies, same result, back on inside and at last a bite. Three in fact, all perch about an ounce each, at which point realisation dawned that didn't have enough worm with me to fish it as a main attack which was looking increasingly necessary. Only had the equivalent of about one and a half of those small tubs , hadn't bothered buying a top up quarter kilo as for the last two or three years the only real use for chop here has been to save a blank.
Definitely didn't have enough to rotate more than two lines even feeding only one or two at a time so decided that would concentrate on the inside initially and see which side produced better before deciding whether to switch one worm line to across.
To cut a long story short, picked up odd fish from each side for the rest of the match as well as two or three across on pinkie (had kept feeding over in case the roach did a late switch-on) but could really have done with twice the quantity of worm so could have kept more than two lines fed with it.
Ended up with 23 fish, all perch, for 1-10-8 and 4th. Third had 2-0 and a tie for first with 2-5 and pretty sure I would have had that if etc etc.
Said earlier that the fish had "mostly" not moved yet. Two of the lads who were really struggling on the last two pegs went for a walk mid match and about 200 yards past the last peg there was a 30 yard stretch that was black with roach, some looking well over the pound, and a few skimmers, this in the exact area that had barely produced a bite on Wednesday.
And the Signal Crayfish have finally arrived here. Never seen them here before but saw at least half a dozen today and most of the others did too.
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