An afternoon down the canal

What a contrast to seven days ago. This time last week the UK was gripped by sub-zero temperatures and a covering of snow. Today was a glorious spring day and by far the warmest of the year yet. With some maggots left over from last week's perch session I decided to have a few hours in the afternoon sun. The Birmingham to Worcester canal was the chosen venue. In all honesty, I rarely fish canals these days but I fancied a change and was intrigued as to what might turn up.

I dusted the pole off, it's first outing for quite some time, and set up to fish down the centre of the canal. It was about 4ft deep. The single maggot was dropped into place and a little and often feeding approach was employed. Bites on the canal are not usually difficult to come by but today was different. After an hour, I was starting to doubt there were any fish present. However, in the warm sunshine with the sound of new born lambs not too far away there are worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon. I decided to go for a short walk when I noticed a 25 metre stretch of the margins was home to population of breeding toads (I think). As the afternoon wore on I was still fishless. In fact, still biteless. It had just gone 4.30pm and I remember setting myself a 45 minute target. I had still to register a bite I was going to call it a day. It was just so strange to have not encountered any fish after a couple of hours that I had begun to think the stretch was barren and maybe they had shoaled up somewhere else after the cold weather of the last few weeks. Then a couple of fish topped and restored my confidence.

The 11oz roach

At just gone 4.50pm my first bite of the day saw a dace landed. Only a few ounces but more than welcome given the circumstances. Then a steady trickle of roach appeared with the odd small chub and a solitary perch. Things were looking up at last. I then connected with a better fish which turned out to be an 11oz roach. It was in immaculate condition and much bigger then its predecessors.

The hybrid

It was heading for half past six now. The change to British Summer Time afforded me an extra hour of daylight. The sun had dipped now but was causing havoc off the water's surface meaning seeing my float was tricky. The bites continued. It wasn't frantic sport but a bite every so often kept my interest. The float dipped from sight one more time and this fish saw the elastic stretch from the pole tip with purpose. It was a much better fish but what was it? I caught a glimpse beneath the surface and it looked bream like but the fight was anything but bream like. Instead of coming to the net like a wet sack, this fish wasn't going to give up easily. Finally, it was beaten and it silver flanks showed it was a roach/bream hybrid. It was a bit of an ugly work of nature to tell you the truth but it did weigh 1lb 10oz so was a decent fish for the canal. I gave it another 40 minutes or so but the commotion killed the swim and I called a halt to proceedings on what had been an enjoyable afternoon.