Bank Holiday Blues

I managed a couple of trips over the bank holiday period, but both turned out to be a struggle.

The first was a largely unplanned effort on the local stretch of canal for about 3 hours. I set up 2 similar lightish rigs with maggot as bait and took a lazy approach of setting up a couple of alarms, while I waited for the fish to home in on the bed of bait I'd introduced. The plan was to mug one of those Silver Bream I've read about in a quick smash and grab raid.

While I was whiling away the hours listening to the cricket, my alarms failed to twitch even once. I moved 100 yards to try a second area and the result was similar - the only benefit being a slightly better reception on my personal radio! After 3 hours I slipped off home with tail between legs and not even a token suicidal Perch to show for my efforts.

On Monday I went back to Ryton with Brian. Sensibly we'd already agreed that the morning was a write off due to a solid band of rain being forecast. I can stand a bit of rain, but if they forecast it will be wet when I start, wet when I plan to finish and very little let up in between, then I tend to avoid it unless there's something special to fish for.

The revised plan was a 2pm start to catch the back end of the rain and then to fish until gates closed around 8pm. The flaw in the plan was that it didn't seem to fully dry up until 6ish, so we suffered more rain than expected.

It was a tough old session with Brian managing one Tench in the 2.5-3lb class. I had two fish of that stamp myself and one better sample that went 4lb 15oz and fought like a demon, along with a solitary Perch.

4lb 15oz

Barry the Fly was also on hand again and he was struggling too - just a Tench and a Perch for his efforts.

Not the best of fortunes over the holiday period and I even gave up listening to the cricket (test match) early on Monday afternoon, having declared it a bore draw in my own mind. Listening to 8 wickets crashing in next to no time (and an England win) would have been a nice tonic while waiting for the Tench to sniff out my bait!