Summer

Thursday 19th December 2019. Llangollen Canal.

A sharp spike in temperature meant this place had to be visited today. As I pulled up, the car thermometer was reading 11 degrees Celsius, which, let’s face it, means it’s basically summer. For a few hours at least.

Summer

I arrived at approx. 13 bells and lo and behold there was another angler present, pole fishing just above my usual position. After the usual exchange of pleasantries, he said it had fished slowly. The canal was noticeably calmer than I had ever seen it, no howling wind, a flat surface, and with it being warm and overcast, it looked spot on.

I carried on up the towpath and settled in approx. 50 yards higher up than I’d normally fish. I opted for a slight change of tactics from the usual. For the ‘downstream’ swim, I fished chopped worm through an open end feeder but for a change tried a small amount of groundbait (betain green) with lobworm, or half a lobworm on the hook. The upstream tactic was the usual large piece of bread, having introduced the equivalent of about half a slice of mashed bread upon arrival.

First cast lobworm, bite, strike, miss. Second cast, bite, strike, miss. Today was going to be good fun. I cast a few feederfuls of chopped worm into the swim, let it rest and went onto the bread line where I had a fish first cast in the shape of an 8oz roach.
Back onto the worm line, bite, thud thud, then a bream is landed. Over to the bread swim, nothing. Next cast on the worm line brings a skimmer. Back onto the breadline, nothing. Back to the worm swim, skimmer. So in the first hour I’ve probably put 5lb of fish in the net.

At 1400, the heavens open, I’m warm and waterproof, but the bites stop. At 1430 it’s still falling, and heavily, so I do something I rarely do, and put brolly up. The wind gets up and I have a further hour with little in the way of a bite, save for the odd tentative pluck.

Eventually the wind drops and the rain subsides but the worm swim has died a death. An upstream cast with bread gives me twitches a plenty and a decent fish is hooked at 1545. It’s kicking hard and a good roach surfaces two metres from the net. A good roach then slipped the hook two metres from the net.
#
Another last cast, another bite, missed. A final last cast and a 6oz’er is in the pan and with the light all but gone I decided to call it a day. Upon emptying the keepnet, one of the bream looked a tad like a roach. Hybrid. 2lb 5oz worth.

Can’t complain about that first hour, regardless of species, but the rain seriously knocked them back in that middle 90 minutes for some reason. However, regardless of that I think that bread swim should have given me a few more fish, big chance missed there today I reckon.