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| Venue - Loughborough Canal, below Bishops Meadow Lock |
After the heavy snowfall and sub zero temperatures so far of 2013, the first warm weather to move in was definitely a good time to go fishing, despite having loads of coursework to do. The significant snow melt had caused the river to rise and colour significantly, so there could only be the choice of fishing the canal. Walking down from the town centre towards Zouch, the water was heavily coloured with significant surface drift caused by a strong easterly wind. However, below Bishops Meadow Lock (shown above) offered a good shelter from the wind, so this became the venue for the day.
I chose to float fish maggot as there are significant numbers of small/medium sized fish in the canal that will greedily take a maggot when the water warms up after a long cold spell. I should also mention that I use a 6 foot telescopic fishing rod as opposed to a pole, for reasons that I will explain in later posts.
Pluming the depth of the pool, I identified a deeper channel on the towpath side obviously cut out by the flow from the lock gates, which I chose to present the maggot over. I loosefed 4-5 maggots over the channel area every 30 seconds whilst setting up, and presented a single white maggot on a size 20 hook. Within seconds of the float settling I had my first bite, which turned out to be a nice half pound roach.
From then on, I continued loose feeding little and often and built up the swim nicely, pulling a fish out every few minutes. Over the two and a half hour session, I caught well over 50 fish, the majority being young roach with a few larger fish almost reaching a pound.
As well as roach, caught species included bleak, silver bream, dace and a couple of roach/bream hybrids. The fish of the day went to a large one and a half pound perch, shown below.
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| 1 1/2 pound perch |
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| First fish of the day |
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| Silver bream |
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| Dace |
I would highly recommend fishing this part of the Loughborough canal, as it is stuffed with good quality fish that are very easy to catch, with a large variety of species and always a chance of a large bonus fish.
The Loughborough canal north of Loughborough lock (the first lock north of the town centre) is controlled by Loughborough Soar Angling Society. Day tickets are available. Details can be found on their website:
If anyone has any questions, please feel free to comment. I will continue to log my fishing trips in detail, and hopefully provide some useful information to fellow fishermen in the area. I hope you enjoy reading.
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