stevetheangler

OK… weather’s looking good! And forecast even better for tomorrow too! And so it seems that a man needs to set his alarm for 4:00am in order to set off for the local canal at 4:30am :)

Spent this morning sorting out my tackle and baits and bar making a flask of coffee and putting the chilled baits in the bag from the fridge I reckon I’m ready now.

I have used my ‘new’ Hardy Marksmen Smuggler Carryall as my main bag with my scales, camera, knife, and other general items – and haven’t used the main compartment or one of the side pockets at all! :) although the side pocket will probably house my flask and some chocolate bars to tide me through the morning and the main compartment some of my baits. Also ready are my bucket and seat (as described in previous post) with my landing net folded into the seat for carriage, and the bucket containing some groundbait and my catapults and will also contain some baits too.

Rods, banksticks, rod rests and landing net handle are all in my Korum 3-rod quiver – taking 2 rods, my 11′ Des Taylor System 3 Avon fitted with the softest quivertip and 6lb line which will be my main weapon and as a ‘spare’ I’m taking a Syntra 10′ feeder rod, again soft tip and 6lb line. Tied up a few hooklengths with hooks of sizes 10 to 16, all to 6lb line which I will connect to link swivels on the end of my main line thus allowing fast changeovers to accomodate different baits.

Baits… I’m taking some groundbait left over from my last session out that was frozen and now re-thawed – contains breadcrumb, some commercial ‘silver/bream’ mix, maggots (now dead after the freezing), hemp and maize. For hookbaits I have maggots, prawn, worm, cheesepaste, and sweetcorn… and also I purchased some perwinkles in shells (now nut crackered to break the shells) which will be used as loose feed and cockles for hookbait with a few for free offerings.

Also just remembered, as I forgot on the last canal session, that I must add my box of artificials to the bait bag. Useful for critically balancing baits – and also for keeping lively baits (eg maggots and worms) on barbless hooks. My box contains many types of artificials such as pop-up and sinking corn in various colours, floating bread, squatts, pinkies, gozzers, red worms to lobworms, mid sized larva, etc… something for all occasions really!  :)

Anyway, the quarry I’m hoping for tomorrow are either good sized chub or perch – so the baits in use will be generally dictated by those. Initially I’ll start off with meaty baits (maggot, prawn, cockle, worm, etc) and then depending on results I may move over to cheesepaste and sweetcorn which are in favour for the chub but really remove perch from the likely captures.  And, of course, carp, tench and bream will also be possible temptees of all the listed baits and will not be snubbed – and neither will the lowly gudgeon either although I’m hoping to avoid too much interference from those.

Oh well, that’s it for now… need to pop to Go Outdoors shortly to top up on some Kamasan B981 barbless hooks in a few sizes.