Simply Pole Fishing

 Guido Nullens Open - Albert Canal 1.11.2015  

 The Match 

This is a match that I couldn't fish last year so I have been looking forward to it after seeing some good catch returns from this stretch of the canal.

This is the stretch we fished

The Albert Canal is about 5 metres deep and a good 100 metres wide.

My peg on the canal - The draw was made in a cafe a few miles away and we got our pegs on the canal bank - peg 35 for me

There are not many boats on a Sunday so, as the locks were not being used, there was not a great deal of flow.

A bit tight with lots of bikes - but OK

You have to be very careful with your pole, as the bikes fly past at some speed - plenty of room for everyone though.

Bloodworm and Joker are allowed so Roger had ordered a kilo of Joker and a handful of Bloodworm for the hook.

I had Ingo for company on my left

Roger, Theo, Ingo and I were fishing the match, and Ingo drew next to me on peg 34B. I didn't chat much with Ingo - I think we were both trying hard to catch fish.

14 balls full of Joker - 13 too many as it turned out!

I had a plan to fish 3 lines tight together. I would put my main feed at 10 metres, then half a metre further out chopped worm, and half a metre closer in some bread punch. Completely confused myself and did it all wrong. Too much thinking for this match.

Liquidised Bread with small gravel - the bait was perfect, the weather was perfect - just no fish!

I was hoping that the hoards of Roach would go for the punch and the Perch would head for the chopped worm.

Good plan (not really), a lack of fish made it worse.

It didn't quite work out like that though - there were just no fish to catch. I tried hard on the Bloodworm line, the punch line and the chopped worm line, but it was really hard.

Everyone was really struggling - and when you have put in 14 balls full of Joker and a few casters, you can't take it out again!

Guido came along on his bike after a couple of hours and said he couldn't believe how hard it was fishing.

Soon we would all be struggling for a bite

I had a Goby after 30 minutes on a maggot, then after 90 minutes a Roach on Punch.

The last 2 hours I tried hard on the chopped worm and was rewarded with a pound Perch with an hour to go. It was a hard match and my 540 grams was good enough for 4th in my 10 peg section.

3 bites, 3 fish - 540 grams

Overall, I was 36th out of 90 anglers. It fished very poorly. Ingo to my left had about 480 grams with a few Roach and Gobies for 5th in the same section as me. Roger was also 4th in his section and Theo 9th.

Hopefully it will fish better next year. If I hadn't put in all that food at the start I might have had more fish. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I think next time I'll go down for a practice :-)

Cheers,

Steve