Koudumer Far 

Another canal venue, this time the Koudumer Far near Koudum. This is a much shallower venue with only about 1.3m to 1.5m depth. We went here to keep the wind on our back, as there was a possibility of more bad weather.

A very shallow canal today. It looks OK, but I don't think we will catch many big fish.

I have a feeling that it might be a hard day today. Although there are concrete platforms to fish from, I don't think this area is fished a great deal - perhaps only by a few anglers from the local Koudum angling club.

Another comfortable peg with the car right by my side. My kind of venue.

We all set up our poles and I also set up a light waggler. I set up the pole to fish at just 9m - and used top 2's (2.4m) for the rigs. Others went out a bit further, but at 9m the water got a little deeper - I think the local anglers are always fishing at 9m, so the fish have kept the bottom free of silt in this area.

Not a bad looking swim, but I still had a bad feeling.

A light 2g waggler was all I needed to fish across the far side in just 1.3m of water. The 2 pole rigs that I set up were a 4x14 Preston Chianti and a 4x16 Preston Inter Carbon. I scaled down to 0.08mm bottoms and went down to a size 16 B512 hook - might even have to go smaller today to get some bites.

Nico was to my left on the end peg.

As you can tell, I was not confident about catching much from this area. I mixed up just 1 kg of groundbait - a mix of VDE Secret and Expo, and some Super Crack Roach. I started by just cupping-in 2 small balls of groundbait with nothing in it on the pole line, and I threw in 4 balls over onto the waggler line.

My new Preston pole rest kit is first class. Great for every top kit from top 2 to top 4.

When I started on the pole with the Chianti rig, I had a small Roach on the first put in. Promising. Then after 10 minutes another small Roach - and that was that. It was a real struggle to get bites.

I went over onto the waggler line after an hour, but it was still really hard to get bites. I was catching the odd Roach across, but I could never get more than 2 bites within 15 minutes of each other.

It was harder than I thought it might be. The others were all on the pole and really struggling for bites. Marco set up a waggler rod and had a few bites, but overall it was really bad.

This was not what we came for. Really low weights today. At least we were going out for a big Pizza soon!

The water was sometimes still, sometimes flowing to the left, and sometimes flowing to the right. When it flowed to the left I got some bites. I have a feeling we have just not had enough rain to get some proper movement in  the water. I rained hard a few times as well, and the wind was still swirling around quite a bit. Not as pleasant as it could have been.

Nico had a late Bream to take the win.

We didn't fish as long today as it was so hard. I only managed to put 20 fish for 1,100g on the scales, Nico caught some Skimmers late on the pip me with 1,280 g.

Marco weighed 580g with a few fish on the waggler, Theo had 280g on the pole, and Roger brought up the rear with just 120g.

It was a real struggle for bites today with just 20 fish and 1,100g. The concrete platform was perfect though.

Not what we had hoped for. Hopefully it will be better tomorrow.