Grand Union Practice

As the title implies it was off up to the Grand Union Canal for a practice/ coaching session with Alfie, as it had been a short notice trip I had left a few vital bits of canal kit at home, like keepnets and rigs but I would cope.  We met up just outside Milton Keynes and then travelled down to the Globe Inn stretch and I have to be honest I was very impressed with the initial look at the stretch with good parking and easy access.

We trundled down the towpath past a few boats and stopped in an area that Alfie had fished before, last time he had caught numbers of small fish on bread and other anglers nearby had caught bonus fish on worm, this gave me a few ideas on how to approach the area and we settled not far apart at the end of a wood line on the far bank.

  

I had cobbled together some rigs in the week concentrating on squatt and worm fishing, so these were my main plan, I mixed my groundbait and went about plumbing the swim up. I found that it was shallower closer and that the deepest line was at around 9m, then it shallowed up again towards the far bank but since I was still with only 13m of pole I decided to settle on a line that would give me room over if I needed it.  I found 4ft at 11.5m and decided that I would fish squatt there so I set up a couple of rigs for that line, then I plumbed up a worm line down the track at 13m to my right, this was for the skimmers and perch so Lobworms were the bait.

I made a 50/50 mix of secret dark and supercup that was on the damp side just in case there was a bit of boat traffic and as we started I cupped in 4 small balls laced with squatt and a few pinkie.  They were small balls as I had forgotten the cup for on the end of my cupping kit, and had to borrow one of Alfies!

Alfie started on bread and had a slow start and after half an hour or so I had 5 small Roach to his 1, so he moved onto his squatt line that he had a lot shorter than me in the deepest water but we both found it slow going.

The wind was proving troublesome so I started to feed small balls of feed rich groundbait and I cut out the loose feed completely, this sorted it out and I was soon catching reasonably well, I even had a small skimmer of 8-10oz along with some gudgeon and nice stamp roach.

I had a few early looks on the worm line, I had kick started it with 4 lobs roughly cut and I topped it up a couple of times in the first few hours, but I only had a couple of small perch off it all day. Since I had caught around 60 small fish on the pinkie line I decided to concentrate on catching a few lumps for the last hour and a half or so on worm so I started by plumbing up a second line down the track, short of my groundbait line and I then spent the next 30 minutes or so alternating these two lines for very little return.  Alfie in the meantime had a worm line across in shallower water and he managed a couple of small perch on this , so not being proud, I copied him and soon had a worm line as far across the canal as I could with 13m of pole, I was about a meter shot of where I would have wanted to be under the brambles but hey ho.  I fed it with 5 lobs and then fed a 150ml of caster and 15 lobs down the track line to the right.

It didn’t take too long for signs to start in the shallower water and Alfie had a couple of decent perch both in the ¾ to a pound bracket, in short order and then I managed a couple of smaller perch and a net hybrid.  Then as quickly as it started the feeding spell stopped and we were both scratching again.

We decided to call it a day just as it was getting dark, plus the rain that had been promised all day was starting to arrive, Alfie had managed 5-6lb of fish and I had managed to click 67 fish so would have had about the same.  We decided to hang around so that we could miss the traffic and this saw us popping into the Globe Inn for tea and it was very good, I will be going back.  Thankyou Alfie for a quality days fishing filled with plenty of laughs, I will bring a keepnet and scales next time so we can actually call it a return grudge match!

What would I do different?

Other than not leaving most of the gear that I needed at home I would have fished Dendrabenas over Lobs as the fish did not seem big enough for the specimen tactics I was using. Alfie had his better Perch on Dendy over lobs.  I will also take my whips if I go there again so I can fish a short line.

Tackle used:

Pole long Light:

Elastic: Yellow Hydro

Line: 0.13mm N Gage to 0.08mm Cenex

Hook: 22 PR311

Float: 0.2g AS3

Pole Long Bagging:

Elastic: Yellow Hydro

Line: 0.13mm N Gage to 0.08mm Cenex

Hook: 20 Polemaster Wide Gape (one of my last few)

Float: 0.3g AS3

Pole worm track:

Elastic: White Hydro

Line: 0.17mm powerline to 0.12mm Cenex

Hook: 12 B560

Float: 4X12 Drennan Dibber(Treack and across) and 0.3g Frenzee FP500 (Track only)