19/02/2010 - K&A Canal - Clarke Pound

Weight – 23lb 0oz
Catch – 22 Roach, 16 Bream, 1 Tench
Weather – Cold bright start. Snow & sleet showers. Cold breeze.
Water Temp – 6.0c > 6.0c

An e-mail from Mark and story's of 100lb bags of skimmers, had us hastily arranging a days holiday. To be honest I was glad not to be in work, broken promises and general inactivity has made me quite grumpy recently, so a complete change of scenery was very welcome.

Due to the late decision to go, neither of us had time to get any bait, but fortunately I had a pint of maggot in the fridge and Mark had some groundbait. When I woke up I had to really question my decision to go, with ice and clear skies forecast, not exactly classic skimmer weather. As previously mentioned there had been some big bags of skimmers early in the previous week, because a load of fish had been moved into a couple of pounds due to maintenance work on the Caen Hill locks.

We settled on Clarke pound, were I saw my dream house, called Foxhangers Cottage. A cracking looking house on a private bank on the opposite side of the pound. Good fishing when ever you want – prefect. Just need the lottery numbers to come up, been waiting a while now.

With ice in the puddles on the tow path, Mark & I weren't really sure how it would go and decided we would be happy with 20lb. We both started on the grounbait feeder, whilst priming the pole line, with grounbait, micros and maggot. Despite a few knocks and liners, it wasn't until an hour gone that I got my first fish, a 2 lb skimmer, but no further fish.

Mark had already switched to the pole and managed a small skimmer and a roach. My first drop in on the pole, produced a 3½lb bream and over next couple of hours I got regular bites from skimmers, roach and a near 4lb tench. Feeding a tosspot of bait every 3-4 fish was working, because my first fish after feeding would be a skimmer, but feeding a larger amount didn't really work and as the session progressed the swim began to slow. The feeder only produced 1 skimmer, so I stayed on the pole.

With 90 minutes to go I had a good lead over Mark, however his pole swim started to get stronger, with regular skimmers, whilst I was mostly catching roach. By the end, I thought had done enough to beat me and so it proved when he weighed 29lb. Unfortunately for me a lost a decent tench and a decent skimmer in the last 15mins, proved decisive.

Whilst it wasn't quite the massive weights that had been reported, both of us were really pleased to get decent weights, on a canal on what was at times a freezing cold day.