First Session of the Year with Luke....

Saturday 18th March 2017
Mereside Pools, Cloweswood Lane, Earlswood, B94 5SE
Pools 1 & 2
Weather - Overcast with spells of light rain
Temperature - Mild(ish) when out of the wind, Cold in the wind

I have a new favourite fishing venue and I am 100% sure that I will be heading around the M42 to Junction 3 on a regular basis from now on.  It wouldn't suit some anglers and I can't see Damian fishing there because it isn't the sort of place he favours.  He likes those big expanses of water where he can cast some distance and possibly catch something in the 20 to 30lb range and with the huge Earlswood Lakes being right next to Mereside, he'd soon be off over there anyway.  This is a venue where you go just for the sheer pleasure of fishing for anything at all, big, small and for a variety of species.  There are three small pools all located a very short distance from the car park and you can easily move between all three and fish each one, as Luke and the kids did.

Saturday's are usually my weigh in day at Slimming World, and I have been quite good about attending the early morning sessions, but the lure of fishing proved to be too much for me today and I decided to skive off this weekend.  I have to blame Luke for this though because up until he sent me a text asking me to get him a pint of milk for his coffee I was going to go, but you can't leave a mate stranded with no milk, it isn't the done thing and so I sacrificed Slimming World for a mates urgent needs.  An act of selflessness that anyone would do in the same position that I found myself in.  Armed with the aforementioned milk I headed off to Earlswood via the M5 and M42, arriving about 30 minutes later at about 08.00 to find Luke and the kids set up on Pool 2.

Luke and his tribe

I walked down to the bankside and was met with the news that Lauren had claimed first blood and was off the mark with a small Gudgeon already.  I was also told that the cafe they said was at the fishery on the website has closed down and isn't there anymore.  Bang goes a nice bacon and sausage roll then.

It was the mere mention of that Gudgeon sent shivers down my spine and I was gripped with the fear that I was in for a day similar to the day I had with Paul Pountney at Awbridge and I was going to be plagued by these tiny fish.

I set myself up after handing over the milk and had a look at the chosen spot.  As you can see from the picture, the reeds and other plants on the margins are not yet fully established yet and the lilypads in the middle of the lake were just starting to develop, but they should provide some cover for the fish and I decided that it looked like a float rod sort of day.  I unpacked the trusty Maver Abyss X 12' Match rod from my holdall and set up with a medium sized clear loaded waggler with 4 x No 11 Shotz weights down below the float.  My next task was to plumb up and so I started off about 3' from the margins and found it to be around 18" to 2' deep, I slowly moved out towards the lilypads and went out about a rods length and it dropped down to about 4'.  Further out it dropped again and by the time I was just in front of the lilypads I was looking at about 4'6" of water.  It was at this point I wished I'd remembered to bring a marker pen from the van to mark the line with the varying depths and I suppose I could have walked back to the van to fetch one but I figured I could remember.  If truth be known I couldn't be arsed really, though as you can see I didn't have far to go to get to the van.

Not too far to walk really

My laziness won the day and I was soon making my first cast of the day to a point about 3' from the edge of the lilypads, into a little area right in front of me.  Luke was set up with his feeder rod and said that he'd had a few line bites but nothing else.  I was sure it was a waggler type of day and so decided to stick with my choice despite Luke's choice.  My first few casts were a little wayward but I eventually hit the spot I had intended to and began throwing little amounts of maggots out to draw the fish in.  I was aware that I hadn't done this on Thursday and I was going to concentrate on the one particular area as Paul had instead of chasing the ripples.  Having to throw the freebies out with my left hand meant that they could go just about anywhere so I went for the trusty catapult and was putting down a nice steady amount of 4 or 5 maggots every 30 seconds.  One of the things the professional match anglers tell you in the magazines is too feed little and often, so I was going to do just that.

It wasn't long before I had my first bite and I reeled in the first Roach of the day.  It was a stunning example with ruby red fins and in wonderful condition, one of the best examples I've ever seen.  The colours were stunning, the silver scales really popped and the contrasting fins and tail gave it a HD quality.  It really was an impressive fish and not too bad in size either being about 5 to 6 inches long and about 3 inches deep.  Luke looked up from his peg and even he commented on how nice it looked.  I now wish I had taken a photo of it but it slipped from my grasp as soon as I had removed the hook from it's mouth and was back in the water.  My next fish was a Bream and again the silver sides and dark fins really stood out in the subdued light of the day.  I quickly followed this up with another Bream and two more Roach, all the same wonderful quality as the first.

During this period Luke had swapped his feeder rod for his float rod and I suggested he tried fishing just in front of the lilypads on the edge where it swept around in front of him.  It felt like a real "the student becomes the master" moment, as if Luke Skywalker was tutoring Yoda.  My suggestion worked out and he was into his first fish and I had a little smugness type of feeling.  Luke then said something which really lifted my spirits when he said that I'd become an angler, a proper angler.  Up until now I'd considered myself a real novice but he said I had a natural ability for the sport and was getting good.  After Thursday, when I couldn't get past the small fish, I had resigned myself to just being one of those who catches small fish all the time, but some of these Roach were amongst the largest I've ever caught and I'd worked out that by using a bigger hook size, a No 16 rather than a No 18, I was able to bypass the smaller fish who would be spooked easier by the large hook.  Now my confidence had been given a really nice boost.

After about 3 hours we had a walk up to the top pool and had a look there after Rhys came back from one of his expeditions and had watched the only other person fishing land a decent Carp.  He wanted to fish up there after seeing this, especially as he had been having little joy on our pool.  We agreed it was far less windy up there and so we all made our way to a new location.  Luke was first to catch a Carp from the reeds next to his peg while I was setting up and pretty soon I added another lovely looking Roach to my haul which now totaled 19 fish for the day so far.

After an hour or so of fishing I had managed just a few more Roach and a Gudgeon and I was beginning to regret the move but then I caught the most beautiful golden coloured fish.  I thought it was a Golden Orfe at first and then thought it may have been a Crucian Carp, but whatever it  was, I'd never seen one before.  I'm still unsure what it is but after looking in my species guide when I got home I think it may have been a Rudd.  The photo isn't the first one which was a much more colourful gold than this one.  The first one was perfect, no discoloured scales like the one in the photo, just a uniform colour all over.

Is it a Rudd ?

Luke had to leave early because he was taking the kids to see the new Disney film, Beauty and The Beast and Rhys had been having an almost constant whinge about the cafe situation since he'd found out.  It had become like a white noise that Luke was doing a sterling with and just ignoring.  At one point Rhys had asked me if I had been born in Birmingham and when I said I had indeed, he then followed it up with "Where is the nearest cafe then ?"  I began to explain that Birmingham, compared to Burton-on-Trent, is huge but he had a far away look in his eyes and I was a little worried he was looking at me the way cartoon characters do when they're hungry and all he could see was a giant bacon roll.

Luke left about 2.30pm and I had the whole complex to myself.  I toyed with the idea of getting the pole out and having a go with that to see if I could get a bit more confidence using it but figured that I was having so much success with rod and float that I could ruin it.  I did get my Maver Abyss X 12' Feeder rod set up though because I could just leave that out there on the rod rest and carry on with the float rod.  I had a few knocks on the feeder and the tip did a few violent bends but I was using an old D.A.M. Cammaro reel which needs a good servicing and a new line.  The bearings must be dry or need replacing because the action was very jerky and I lost every fish that had been hooked.  Time to pack that away and stick with the float rod.

I stayed until I couldn't see anything in the dark and finally left about 7pm but in that time I had caught a total of 35 fish:

Roach - 22
Bream - 4
Gudgeon - 1
Rudd (?) - 2
Common Carp - 4
Mirror Carp - 2

Some of he best of the day

It really is a lovely little complex and very much suited for the sort of angler who just enjoys catching fish, any fish and one I will definitely be visiting on a regular basis in the future.

No fishing planned for next weekend and the weekend after Luke and I are off to the Northern Angling Show, so I am going to have to try and sneak a quick session in when I can over the next few weeks.

See you on the bankside....

A New Challenge....

Thursday 16th March 2017
Awbridge Lock, Trysull, Staffordshire
Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal 
(Main Line: Stourton to Aldersley)
Weather: Overcast with the odd burst of sunshine
Temperature: Cold

I usually have a bad day on canals and either blank or catch very little. The only exception to this was the session I had with Luke over at the Moira Canal on the August Bank Holiday Sunday last year, and considering that was my last fishing session of the year and I haven't been near a canal since there was a certain amount of trepidation on how I was going to do.  Add to the mix that this was the first time I'd fished with Paul Pountney, it was also the first time we'd actually met despite having been "friends" on social media for some time and so that fear of social interaction element that comes with depression was also a factor.  However, it has to be said that unlike before when I would cancel at the last minute with some pathetic excuse, I did not have the stomach churning nerves that I used to have either.  I was quite calm as I prepared my flask and got myself ready.

I had agreed to take Jake to work on the morning because he was on the early shift at the Costa Coffee where he works and was opening up.  He wanted to be there at about 5:45am. so that was great for me because I could head straight over to Trysull and get an early start.  Unfortunately things did not exactly pan out that way, not that they ever do for me anyway when being on time for anything is concerned, and after returning home and thinking a quick 5 minutes snooze on the sofa would be a good idea, I woke up 15 minutes before the time I had told Paul I would arrive at the venue.  I now had just 15 minutes to finish my by now stone cold cuppa, brush my teeth and drive the 12 miles from home to the canal, and to do this slap bang in the middle of the morning rush hour traffic.

I eventually chipped up 45 minutes late after driving around some winding country lanes but eventually found this picturesque little stretch of the canal in the middle of nowhere.  I did a little bit of reading up on the place beforehand and discovered that it has featured in the local history publication "The Black County Bugle" who ran a feature on the canal in it's ghost story section that the spirits of those who lived and worked on the canal still haunt the winding tow-path.  Descriptions of the canals ghostly apparitions along the stretch north of the tiered Bratch locks at Womboure is said to be renowned in ghost hunting circles for its mysterious atmosphere and many locals claim they have seen ghostly figures along the canal, especially around Awbridge.

The canal was designed by the famous engineer James Brindley, the man responsible for building the first canal through Smethwick, and which enabled the town to grow rapidly from a few scattered farms dotted along the Birmingham to Dudley road and become one of the Industrial Revolution boomtowns as factories sprang up alongside the canal.  The bridge at Awbridge, over the Staffs & Worcester, is thought to be his first attempt at combining a lock and a bridge into a single structure and this would become a style which is seen all the way around the canal network.

Awbridge Lock from the bridge

Legend has it, that it was not the usual immigrant Irish Navvies who worked on this stretch of canal but that it was French prisoners of war captured during the Battle of Trafalgar, in 1805, who were set to work on the bridge. It is thought that one Napoleonic sailor carved the picture of the ship into the stonework. 

The bridge itself looks unusually ornate compared to most of the other bridges along most stretches of the canal network and instead of the usual plain solid brickwork, a balustrade is formed by brick columns topped by stone.

It is into this stonework that a rough carving of a French warship was chiselled, even though this area of the Black Country is over a hundred miles away from the coast. There is no record of who the sailor might have been or how he ended up in the Black Country so many miles from home, the only clue to his existence being an eerie picture of a French Man o War, but some say his spirit still roams this isolated stretch of canal.

The carving

When I first arrived I had noticed a strange looking figure dressed in blue and topped off with a black hat and did wonder if I had indeed witnessed this ghostly spirit, but through the very light mist that was rising from the water came the unmistakable tones of a Smethwick accent.  "I've saved yow the best peg" and I knew then I'd found Paul.

The enterprising farmer who owns the land around the bridge allows vehicles to park in the farmyard for £1 all day and the money is deposited in a small red box as you walk out of the yard and down to the canal side.  With the nominal fee duly paid I set off for a day of fishing.  I had prepared for the day by getting several types of bait ready and had a pellet and ground-bait mixture in my grey Sandwell Council waste food bucket, a good supply of maggots (red and white mix), a tub of dead maggots (reds), three slices of Hovis medium sliced white bread that had been microwaved for 15 seconds and rolled flat and two tins of pork luncheon meat.  I wanted to be ready for anything.

Because I knew I would be coming fishing again this week I hadn't bothered to take my float rod apart after Monday's session at Hunnington and so I was tackled up from the off with the Maver 12' float rod all set up in the back of the van.  I just had to plumb the depths and set the loaded waggler for the correct depth and I would be good to go.  Paul had set up opposite a moored up narrow boat and was fishing with his Maver pole and told me that he'd been hearing good things about this stretch where 28lbs of Chub had won a match the week previously.  Paul is a member of The Bell Otters Fishing Club and fishes matches most weekends and with The Otters visiting the canal in a few weeks this was a sort of recce visit for him, though they will fish further down the canal on their contest.

My peg was within the 25 metres to a lock entrance that the Canal & River Trust say it is not to be fished as boats have to moor as they wait for the lock to fill with water but this stretch is supposed to be a quiet section between September and April with little traffic, maybe a few working boats every now and then so it seemed safe enough.  I was opposite a tired and sad looking little boat that just needed a bit of TLC to bring it back to life and Paul advised me to fish just to the side of the bow of the boat, where he reckoned the fish would be.  My first cast was spot on and within a few minutes I had a bite and my float disappeared beneath the surface.  My record of not blanking since my my first attempts at fishing the Smethwick Engine Arm and Old Main Line canals continued.  Since those times I had, as mentioned earlier, only fished one other canal and had done well on there.  My problem now of course is that the tension increases with every session now as I await my next blank day.

The weather wasn't brilliant but it wasn't too cold to start with and I was catching quite regularly for the first few hours but the types of fish were very small, mostly Gudgeon and one Minnow, a first for me and one to tick off the list.  I have had a pole for a while now but not really had the confidence to use it.  They say it's the easiest way to learn how to fish and so I decided to give it a go and unpacked it.  They are easy to set up and I can see the benefits of using them because you can't always hit the same spot when casting with a rod, but with a pole you more or less drop in the same spot every time.  Add to the mix a small feed pot fitted on the end of the pole and you can build the swim up with loose feed and attract the fish with your freebies exactly where you want them.

Throughout the morning there had been quite a few boats come through the lock which had been unexpected and it did mean having to stop fishing every now and then as they passed us in both directions.  There is a mutual respect between boaters and anglers as they both understand each others rights to be using the canals and for the most part the boaters will pull up short of the angler and walk a few extra yards to open the sluices on the lock or open the lock gates.  There was one though, a bearded bloke with his dog, who seemed to aim for Paul's peg on purpose and tied his boat up ight between us.  He had an arrogant look and attitude about him that immediately pee'd me off and I was just waiting for him to say something.  His boat had come in really close and scraped Paul's keep-net along the side of the canal wall, luckily not causing any damage to it, but it was his attitude that had suggested he'd done it on purpose and the air he had about him.  The majority of the boaters had been really friendly and asked us how we were doing as they went past us, one even telling us that he'd seen a huge Chub come from these very pegs the week previously.

The fishing seemed to die off a little and I was starting to get frustrated with the pole because I was getting the bites but my strike was all out of kilter and I was missing them.  I decided that I would go back onto the float rod just to start catching again.  I started off with a nice Roach about 4 inches long, still a small one but so much more satisfying than the Gudgeon and then this was followed up with a juvenile Chub about the same length but then those bloody Gudgeon returned and I was into those again.  While all of this had been going on in my peg, Paul had stuck to the pole and remained in one spot, just feeding that area up and not deviating or being distracted from it.  He'd had a few small fish as well but he'd also had some nice Chub and Roach.  It was at this point we heard someone shouting down the canal "You shouldn't be fishing there" and "You're not allowed to fish in mooring areas.  These white mooring points are for us to use when going through the lock".  It was one of those know-it-all types who thought he could quote the rule book to you.  He made no attempt to stop a little further up the towpath and just headed straight for Paul's peg, dragging his keep-net along with him and ripping it from Paul's seat-box.

I was next in his sights but I think when he pulled the keep-net off he realised he'd gone too far and stopped short of my net but I had started to drag mine out of the water by this time and was safe.  The keep-net disappeared under the water and I was amazed at how calm Paul was.  He didn't get angry, he didn't get riled, he just remained calm and got his landing net handle and tried to retrieve the net. I was okay but the boater was stating to really pee me off, worse than the other one did, when he kept quoting the rules concerning fishing in mooring areas.  Now if he had been correct I would have accepted it but I don't think he expected one of us to counter his claims that these were the rules.  I listened to him for about 5 minutes and then chipped in with "Actually Paul is well outside of the 25 metres that the Canal & River Trust say someone can't fish in around a lock entrance.  I'm well aware that I am inside it and I am breaking the rules but Paul isn't" The boater tried to say I was wrong and he didn't know which rules I'd been reading, well lets just clear this up right now...

"Fishing is not allowed in lock chambers, within 25 metres (one boat length) of a lock approach, within 25 metres of a water point or in the vicinity of overhead powerlines." - Canal & River Trust - Updated 26 November 2015

The keep-net was caught on the propeller of the boat and it took a while for it to be untangled, but it had been ripped apart and now lay ruined on the towpath with Billy Bellend still claiming he was not at fault and arguing with e that I was looking at some different rules.  Well I wasn't and I wish we'd taken his photo or the name of his boat because what he did could be classed as criminal damage and he would be liable to buy a new keep-net for Paul.

Anyway, after that little bit of excitement the fish in my swim more or less disappeared but Paul went on a bit of a roll and all of his patience and feeding paid off as he began pulling some really nice big Chub out and finished off with a contest winning bag full.  The temperature had dropped and I had started to get cold and even the sun trying to break through the clouds later on did little too warm me up.  I had also realised that I had started chasing the fish around the swim instead of concentrating on one area.  If I saw a disturbance in the water I started casting there, I wasn't leaving my float in one place long enough and was beginning to get frustrated.  I made one last attempt with the pole and watched what Paul was doing and tried to follow his lead but the fish were having none of it.

All in all it was a great session with great company and Paul had kept me amused with the occasional outburst from his peg as he checked the results from the Cheltenham Festival and one of his bets hadn't come in.  The occasional expletive could be heard followed by some indistinguishable muttering coming down the towpath.  What I learned from the session is that I really need to be more patient and maybe start looking towards catching some bigger fish rather than the smaller varieties I tend to catch regularly.  I think I need to buy some bigger hook sizes and stop using No 18's all of the time, so I'm off to Angling Direct for some No 16's and 14's and a 20g plumb for my pole.  Tomorrow I'm off to Mereside Pools by Earlswood Lakes with Luke and his tribe so hopefully the lessons I learned will start to kick in.

See you on the bankside....