General Course Fishing advice please ;)

[AaronB]

Hi Everyone , hope your all well !

New around here and just looking for some advice really =]. Sorry if this is in the wr section!

Only been fishing for a few months and really enjoy it! It's really nice to be out on the bank side fishing for 5 or 6 hours!

Really just looking for advice on how to get a few more fish out on the bank side! Went fishing today and was useing luchon meet feeding pellets and magots, managed to catch a very nice roach (2 ilb!) by legering first thing, then went dead for a while - my hookbait was either falling off or i was missings bites!

Changed over to my pole - fishing tight in to the margins , still sticking with the same bait - manged to cath 6/7 carp to bout 2/3 ilb ;) very quickly! felt very pleased best run id ever had! Then the fish just stopped having the bait - started to rain 15 muns later not sure if related or not but been chuckin it down since - dint get so nuch as a nibble for the resr of the day no natter what i tried ;( had some issues whilr using the pole - missed a lot of the bites and had 4 or 5 fish come of between 5 and 20 seconds after hooking them ;(

Pole rig was a size 14 hook on 4ilb line eith a no 6 elastic and a very sensitive 4 x 12 float - has a long stem but is set v. Sensitive!

Leger rig was a 1.5oz quiver (most sensitive one i have - struugling to see bites, most if the time i dnt see anything!) with a 6" hoolink and a running 1.5oz flat pear lead.

Was they anything i could of done to get more bites? Tried diffrent baits after a bit but nade no diffrence ( maggot & sweetcorn)




Sorry to make this a bit of a lenty post but have also been having troble on the local canal - in 3 or 4 session only managed to hook and land 1 fish ;( catch more leaves than anything else - anyone fish the long eaton canal on the tamworth road section have any knoledge on the best tactic to get fish out - i know theirs some in their - ive seen them!

ThankS in advance ;)

Sent from my iPhone. Apologise for any spelling / grammar mistakes ;)

[BoldBear]

Hi Aaron,
Welcome to the forum,

It sounds as though your canal is a typical type of canal although I haven’t fished in your area.

I don’t think you are doing too much wrong but heres a few things that you could try to get a few more bites and hopefuly more fish in the net:

First of all I would look for any features such as far bank cover or weedbeds or places of santcury from boat traffic. If you are fishing a match then you can’t choose where you fish so you would need to rely on the bottom profile of your swim more especially if there were no far bank features to fish to; but when pleasure fishing you can afford to look for these far bank features.

I would setup a Pole for fishing the middle channel and the far shelf and also setup a light float rod or leger rod for fishing tight against the far bank, this would give me an alternative spot to fish after a boat ploughs through my swim or the bites start to dry up, but I would still keep feeding both lines regularly even while I wasn't fishing one of the two lines.

On the Pole I would start off with a no 5 elastic with 3lb line and 1.7lb or 2lb hooklength and a hook of size 20 or 18 baited with a single maggot or caster or small hook-mounted soft pellet; fishing so that I am just tripping or an inch above the bottom; (unless I was after Bream when I would be fishing with an inch or two of line laying on the bottom).

Plumbing the depths of your swim is very important if you want to get bites consistantly.

I would start feeding the bottom of the far shelf or as close as I could get to it so that if I decided to fish on the top of the shelf my feed would still be roughly in the same place; and I would feed around 6 to 12 maggots or caster every trot through increasing this once I get the fish feeding confidently. But I would also remember to feed the other line occasionally as well even if I wasn’t fishing there at the time.

After contilually trickling small ammounts of loose feed in I would expect to start getting bites developing but if after doing this for a while no bites arrived I would switch to my other line but I would still continue to feed on both lines.

Using too strong an elastic can miss you a lot of bites as can using too strong a line and/or too large a hook. If the fish you are after are less than 3lb then the above should be plenty big enough if you want to continue getting lots of bites on the canal where there are few obstructions in the way.

If I were catching lots of small carp around the 2 to 3lb mark and losing a few then I may step up slightly to a line/hookline strength of 3 to 4lb max especially if there were lots of snags in my swim and I was starting to get line breakages, but I would also expect far fewer bites.

Often dropping down to a size smaller hook or drooping down a pound in line strength can make a lot of difference to the numbers of bites that you get.

Also have a quick read of this article as it may give you a few further tips on fishing the average canal:

< A beginners Guide to fishing a canal >

I hope this gets you a few more consistant bites.

Perhaps someone on here who fishes your section of canal can give you more local advice.

Tight lines

Keith (BoldBear)

[AaronB]

Thanks for the advice Keith, Some very useful infomation thier !

Sorry to ask yet more question but i'm just trying to learn as much as i can =)

I'm Planning on fishing a Venue Called Barkers Pond in long Eaton tonight, I've Never been their before but i know from my Local Tackle shop that The bottem is very very Silty, any advice for fishing in Silt?

I did ask at my local tackle shop but sadly the guy at my local tackle shop while being very helpful and very knoledgable in genral about fishing, will not fish over silt if he can help it as he's never found a consistant way of catching =( Althought he did say that what he hear about the venue that if i can work out a good method it should be a nice session!


Anyone on here ever fished Barkers? If so any specificic advice for it

[BoldBear]

Originally Posted by AaronB

I'm Planning on fishing a Venue Called Barkers Pond in long Eaton tonight, I've Never been their before but i know from my Local Tackle shop that The bottem is very very Silty, any advice for fishing in Silt?

I did ask at my local tackle shop but sadly the guy at my local tackle shop while being very helpful and very knoledgable in genral about fishing, will not fish over silt if he can help it as he's never found a consistant way of catching =( Althought he did say that what he hear about the venue that if i can work out a good method it should be a nice session!

Hi Aaron,

Heres a couple of tips I use for when Im fishing over thick soft silt.

Plumbing the depth over soft silt:
Buy yourself some small < flat bottomed plummets > which are designed for use on silt.
You can also buy flat bottomed plummets with 1” long stems which help you to accurately plumb when you want to fish an inch off the bottom.
NB. you can make your own silt plummet by glueing some foam to a 2p coin.

Some suggested Baits for use on soft silty bottoms:
Use baits like soft bread flake together with soft squeezed bread crumb or dried breadcrumb. (these have different consistencies and properties).

Use Pinkies instead of maggots which will sink a little slower and settle on top of the silt and take a little longer to disappear into the silt, or use loose-feed scalded maggots mixed in with a few live ones.

Or use a < soft 'semi buoyant' grain of artificial sweetcorn > which is soaked in flavouring.

If legering try a < balanced crust > which will settle on top of the silt.
(use 'Fish-meal paste' or 'Bread-paste' to balance the crust).

Hope this has helped

Keith (BoldBear)

[AaronB]

Thanks very much for that advice =)

Will take it all into account later today when im thier =)

I Have some artifical sweetcorn somewhere thought never had much luck with it ... But then again i've not managed to catch a fish on sweetcorn no matter what i've tried so far so definalt wont hurt to give it Another go!
Will have to buy some of the stuff in Glug later as that may very well be the secrate to actully catching something on it =) Always room for more stuff in the tackle box! ( Have been a tackle tart in the making since day 1, already have roughly ...... WAY TO MUCH ... and yet still want more lol)

Will let you know how it goes =)

[AaronB]

Hi All

Just got back from a very enjoyable 3 1/2 hours fishing barkers!

As i was warned bittem was very silty!

Decudes to start fishing with a light waggler setup just so i could see if they were actually some fish in here!

Feeding maggots & pellots and fishing with 2 maggots in the hook, 3or 4 every 60 seconds at tge start then after not seeing a lot of action for 4 or 5 mins cut back the feeding yo every othet minites

Not long after this caught a nice little fin perfect roach ;) was very livly and didnt want to let me unhook him!

Cast back in and got nothing for about 25 mins when about a meter to the left of where id beeb feeding i started to see lots of bubble and they seemed to be 3 or 4 places generating the bubbles .. I recast very ligjtly into the middle havung read that this can happen when tench are feeding .. Had a heart stopping moment when the float dipped abd what must if been 5 or 6 meter of line ripped off the clucth before i had chanve yo do anything! Took quite a while to get any where with the fish as it kept trying yo dove into the roots of the tree to my left, and every time i got him away from their he ran out onto open water - dint want to bully him as only had light line and a light float tod and didnt want to pull out or snap off

Eventually landed him ;) and a new PB tench for me(well my first ine really lol but a very very nice fish!) Dont know it exact weight but wouls put it around 5 ilb ;) will post a pic onxe i get it off the camra!

Dint see any action after that ;( think the fight with the tench probably spooked the local area as my fishing buddy in the next peg blanked anfter missing a few bites before i caught the tencg, we where un a shelted corner but neither if ys realky munded, was just niceto be out and the ickle duccie swimmin left and right on the pond was quite nice ;)

All in all a good few hours!

Would of been nice to of cauggt more thought , even if it dint reallt matter anyway ;)

[AaronB]

Hi all

Pics should be attached - hope this works!

[BoldBear]

Lovely Tench Aaron, well done mate.

[AaronB]

Thanks, Was very happy when it crossed the net! Was good as gold to me too - was quite happy to sit their, have the hook removed and a few pics snapped, dint try to escape even once!

Going to see if i can get another few hours down thier tonight ... Can't belive i've not been before as it's litrally a 10 min walk from my house even with lots and lots of kit! Though probs wont take as much this time ... It bloody heavy lol

[BoldBear]

Originally Posted by AaronB

Going to see if i can get another few hours down thier tonight ... Can't belive i've not been before as it's litrally a 10 min walk from my house even with lots and lots of kit! Though probs wont take as much this time ... It bloody heavy lol

Hope you have another good night tonight.

Like you I got fed up with taking everything but the kitchen sink with me so I just take what I know I will need and leave the rest at home. Makes it a lot easier to change swims as well.

Best of luck tonight

Keith (BoldBear)