26/03/10 - K&A Canal - Prison Pound

Weight – 16lb 11oz
Catch – 28 Skimmers, 8 Roach, 6 Perch, 3 Tench.
Weather – Mostly cloudy, windy & light showers

Another day off down the canal with Mark. With the recent mild weather we fancied a crack at some early spring tench fishing.

Because Mark had to be home by 3pm, it meant and early start, so by 8am we were both set up on Curry's Pound, but after 2 hours it wasn't exactly going according to plan. We had both potted 3 balls of groundbait with micros & caster at 11.5m, but only had a handful of small skimmers.

Since it didn't appear to be improving, we made the decision to move up on to the Prison Pound. I potted 1 ball of groundbait, plus a pot of loose groundbait. After a fruitless 30mins on the feeder it was time to try the pole.

Initially sport was slow, but started to get mostly bottle top skimmers, plus the odd hand sized one on single maggot. However it wasn't quite what was expected, but at least we were getting bites, although it was difficult to work out, because the fish seemed to be spooked whenever I topped up. Eventually found catapulted caster worked best.

With time pressing on, neither of us had anything bigger than 8oz, but in the quest to beat each our I reckoned I was slightly ahead. With 45mins to go, Mark hooks what was obviously a decent fish and 5mins later a 3lb Tench was in the net. With the year to date score between us being 4-2 to Mark, that Tench would take the score with to 5-2 and Mr Poppleton was loving it. With 30mins to go I pulled out of a decent fish, which Mark loved even more.

5 minutes later, I struck into a tench, which gave a good account of itself and at 3½lb was a decent repost. It went strangely quite to my left! 15mins later I had another of similar size. Ha ha - let that be a lesson to you!

After Mark left I stayed on for an hour, but struggled to get the fish back, although I managed another Tench, a decent perch and a couple of small roach.