16th Feb - Canalised stretch of the Kennet and K&A canal

Back to the same stretch again, this time for a day with my Dad as we don't get the chance to fish together as much as we used to. Still fishing on the exchange permit as he's a member of the club controlling the opposite bank to the one I normally fish.

Same routine once again, bait a number of swims and fish them in rotation. Fished all of the swims that have produced up until now without so much as a sniff between us. Reached my favourite area and settled down for a cup of coffee and a rethink as they clearly weren't going to play ball. After a few minutes we decided to pack up and go to the canal and fish an hour at dusk for the perch, but before I did I wanted to try something slightly different. I took most of the shot off, leaving me with one SSG, put on half a slice of bread, lobbed it over to the far bank, payed off a load of line to form a bow and let the bait trundle around a little. 30 seconds later I had a knock and upon picking up the rod everything fell totally slack. The strike was met with surprisingly little resistance, and the 6lb chub I'd hoped for turned into a 3-4lb bream. No idea how it even got the bait in it's gob.

After putting him back we gave it best and headed off to the canal for the last hour of light. The fishing was fairly slow to be honest, but we had a few bites each.. Dad having 4 perch to around a lb and some colossal ruffe, before my swim came alive and produced 3 chances before the light was too bad to see the float, resulting in fish of 1lb, 1.12 and 2.4.

The 2.4 gave me a bite more likened to that of a barbel. I'd put on a whole lob rather than the halves or dendro's we'd used in the past, popped the rod on the rest while I turned round to get some maggots when out of nowhere the tip hammered down almost 2ft and the clutch started giving line .