stevetheangler

The morning of October 15th and I’m away at 0930 to the local stretch of the Staffs-Worcs Canal armed only with my Ron Thompson 8’ (10-30g) spinning rod and a few lures, sundries, scales, weigh net, camera, etc and a flask of coffee.

As I say the stretch is local and so I’m parked up and rod and net at the ready and on the bank within 15 minutes… and already 5 anglers are there, all fishing the pole and as usual in the 5 swims closest to their cars… and as I arrived back they were still there and so I sat opposite to them on a bench to see what they were catching… and turned out to be minnow sized silvers… and even smaller than my lures!! :D

And as you can see from the pic the rest of the canal was deserted until 50 yards away from the next car park where there were 3 more anglers.

Anyway, I fished along the stretch for about ½ mile with a silver/black with silver/red tinsel tail blade spinner having a few tugs along the way.

As you can see from the photo there were a lot of floating leaves around – and mainly willow ones as that seem to be the predominant bush type along this stretch. And I’m not particularly keen on willows at this time of the year. Summer and spring they are fine and productive due to the shade they provide but once the leaves start falling I try to stay clear as much as possible although I do try willowed places that ‘look’ appealing but to be honest never with much joy – and I think the reason for this is that as willow leaves contain aspirin naturally this leaches into the water as they decompose and sickens it – yes, aspirin is medicinal BUT an overdose is far from good… and with the amount of willow leaves then I reckon the dissolved aspirin is at quite a relatively high level especially in the vicinity of the willow bushes themselves. That’s my thoughts on it anyway….

Anyway, I’d almost reached my intended ‘U’ turn point to head back to the car when the spinner snagged some dead leaves again and as I pulled the spinner to me to clear it a ‘bit of stick’ slid down the line… although the ‘bit of stick’ then turned out to be the top 6” of my rod complete with tip ring…it had snapped directly at the 2nd ring down. However, as there was no protruding rod blank above the now top ring to cause problems with tangles I was able to take off the spinner and trace, remove the broken section and re-connect the spinner and use the shortened rod without problem. However, whilst doing so I replaced the blade spinner with a 13cm 6.5cm Savage Gear Soft 4Play lure in luminescent yellow (a few boats had passed and the water was now quite murky and so I was trying to make the lure as visible as possible).

As time had now slipped away a bit with the need to repair the set up I decide then to work my way back up the stretch with the new lure and back to the car.

Again, on the return journey I had a few nudges and grabs but nothing was hooked.

The rod may possibly be able to be repaired by splicing the two parts together – and with the break where it is I need to remove the 2nd ring to do it… which means that I may be able to replace that ring’s leg directly over the break and whip over to make a sort of ‘splint’. So may get away with it BUT it will take some time to do as I’ll need to source a fibreglass spill to act as a spigot between the two parts plus the time to do the job itself… but I’d most likely need the rod sooner than I could repair… so the only course of action was to get a new rod. So, on getting home, I picked up my Go Outdoors Discount card and my debit card and headed to Decathlon… HA HA HA!!! Gotcha there!! I said Go Outdoors Discount card so why would I go to Decathlon??? Pay attention!!! So off to Go Outdoors I go and head to the spinning rods… and I locate two potential new rods … one exactly identical to my broken one (make and model) and one of the same make but slightly beefier and longer being 9’ (instead of 8’) and rated for 10-40g (instead of 10-30g)… and as price for both was identical (£9.99) I chose the latter.

So I’m ready for canal action again soon :)

And so on to plans for later in the week…. Pool piking but destination undeclared!! :D ;)