Pb but no soaking!

Date fished 17/7/2021

6.30am until 3pm

As with many things in life, social media plays its part. Ellis and I both saw a post from an angler who enjoyed a bumper day, catching over 100lb of Bream on feeder tactics.  Seeing this was enough to make us go and fish the canal at Pollington today, as that's where the angler in the above example was fishing!! We were after Bream. 

An early start is needed here, not that its a problem (for me, wake Ellis up please Carole!), but its 2.5 hours away, so until they get cars that drive themselves, I kinda have to be awake first to get here. The alarm was set for 03.30. 

The trip started, as ever, days before with some prep. For this trip that meant "bait". I was on bread and pellets, Ellis on corn and worms. I blended 4 loaves of bread and combined with all things tasty to develop 3kg of groundbait - was this enough?!?

That was only 2.5 loaves 

Two white and two brown

Plus corn, pellets and dead maggots that I had in the freezer

I set off and headed south. I arrived at Mcdonalds at Newton Aycliffe at 4.45am, perfect time for breakfast. I ordered but was promptly told, "we are not serving breakfast yet"

"Ok, a quarter pound with cheese and a cheeseburger" my instant  reply. 

Breakfast of kings!!

We lugged the gear to our swim. We had alot more gear than we normally would, plus I had 5 litres of water. This proved to be just enough! 

The groundbait certainly was enough for a good start. We baited an area and got ready to fish. We both had feeders on, clipped up to fish a baited area from each side, worm on the hook. Every (nearly) cast was spot on. It is so good being clipped up, we both commented that we dont do it enough. 

Soon the rod was showing a bite, a small Perch in my net. Then another and then two for Ellis. We were happy to be off the blank but wanted to tempt a Bream. Suddenly Ellis's rod showed a proper bite, this was pulling back. A super Perch graced his net, which we later weighed and at 1lb 10oz was a new pb for Ellis. Well done mate! 

I went back to my swim and carried on. My rod swung round and I had a proper fish on. To my amazement, it was a Bream. Not massive, but later weighed and at 1lb 13oz it was a proper Bream on the feeder, on the Canal! 

We both agreed that if we caught nothing more all day then we would still leave happy. A few hours later we both agreed that was a lie! 

Plenty of bites followed for the rest of the day and a few Perch were caught. Ellis ending up with just under 4lb and me a little shy of two and a half. 

We tried all different baits, different areas and different hook links. We tried everything, stopping just short of jumping off the bridge with the lads doing it downstream. In the end, the heat finally made us give in. We had been beaten by the lack of Bream and presence of over zealous Perch. 

There was one interesting bite though. As Ellis had resisted setting up a lure rod, finally it was too much and he did. He cast it out and his feeder rod indicated a bite, he swapped rods and played the fish. It was no Perch, it was a different fish but sadly came off before he saw it. His line was left with the tell tale sign of Bream snot on it though! 

Even that did not dampen the spirits, another different tactic tried and accomplished, with a new pb too. I wished I had some water to pour over Ellis in homage to Carp monster pb style, but sadly we had drunk my five litres!