Seeking Silver

I thought I'd get out for a couple of hours up the canal and after silver bream, as I do need to get the challenge point for them at some point between now and New Years Eve. It's a particular stretch that holds these fish, and I've never caught them elsewhere on the cut. I just wanted to establish that they were there, still swimming around at the place where I'd last encountered them in springtime.

When I started out from home on the half mile walk it was spitting rain, but as I reached the canal the heavens opened. I thought it was so very fierce that it must be a passing heavy shower but it was still coming down in buckets when I reached my peg. I hastily pitched the unmbrella and made myself a comfortable little bolt hole off the back off the towpath - not an ideal situation as I would be some distance from the rods, but in such a deluge, who'd care?



Bait was triple maggot and feed was a couple of generous handfuls of the same for each bait position. I was using both my wands, at eight feet and nine feet respectively, with three pound mainline straight through to size twelve hooks and a half ounce lead for each, both ledgered at the far shelf drop off and ten feet apart from each other.



These short rods are a boon for canal work, long rods being just too much of a pain in such confined spaces. The bites started straight away, only I missed a couple before the first connection to a fish. It was bream all right and silver too, but unfortunately not a genuine silver bream, just a skimmer.



I had another skimmer soon after and then a perch, but then the bites just stopped completely. Unfortunately the rain just kept on coming relentlessly ~



Eventually the rain eased and I even got a few little nudges on the right hand rod, but they came to nothing. When the rain stopped completely the sun came out, and so did the local fuzz, who'd been skiving under the M6 bridge for the last couple of hours or so, no doubt!



So, no sign of the silvers. I'll give it another go or three before I give up hope though.