Canal bream fishing.

I feel as if there has been a subtle change in in my fishing recently. I suppose it's one of those organic changes that occurs throughout your fishing as time goes by. I can distinctly remember just wanting to catch any fish at all as a youngster, then as I grew older the natural progression was that I wanted to catch lots of fish and as a result of that I focussed more on that match fishing style. Then with the capture of the occasional larger fish I transcended to chasing specimens and that leads me to where I find myself now. You see right now I don't feel that urge to at any cost catch the biggest fish I can, but instead find myself more motivated by method of capture i.e. catching pike on surface lures, tench on lift floats, carp on alarms or as the case was in this recent session canal bream on the feeder.

What sparked this latest method quest off was a comment I made in conversation where I said that even though I had owned and been using a Shakespeare mach two wand feeder rod for many years, I had, instead of using at as feeder rod, been using it as a margin perch rod on the canal using its stiffest tip. The idea soon grew in the angling cortex of my brain to actually take my mini feeder rod and some micro feeders to a quite well bream renowned area of the Coventry canal and play out my bream fishing micro feeder fantasy, which I promptly did.

It just happened that I also had a new multi feeder arm for my chair I thought would be great to try out as well and with both arm and rod in tow I nipped off down the cut and parked myself opposite the infamous hawksbury marina. I figured to go gently at it and after clipping up the feeder set right in the mouth I the marina I made five casts with a loaded feeder to get my eye in and kick start the session before I found myself setting the rod down with a gentle curve and waited for the bream to appear.

I didn't have to wait long for the skimmers to show and within fifteen minutes the tip pulled round and I landed my first close to a pound. Three more identical ones followed before the shoal moved off.

Although I was already targeting an area  around a meter and half wide it soon became obvious that the fish seemed happier to feed in the slightly deeper water at the bottom of the shelf (spot A). They seemed to occasionally come up onto the shelf (spot B) if I waited long enough but the bites took ages to materialize, as where on spot A there was instant interest. This became so evident, that if I missed the sweet spot by even a foot and a half I would recast straight away.

By keeping on this specific spot and cast regularly the skimmers a perch kept coming intermittently and I hoped it was only  matter of time before I hooked into a better bream. I think the slew of boats which had been conspicuously absent all morning pushed more fish off the main track of the canal and into the sanctuary of the marina, judging by the string of liners I got soon after they passed. Soon enough my scaled down helicopter feeder rig snagged something better and the tip wretched round. The little wand must have looked very impressive bending right over as I played the wet sack in and the rod nodded occasionally. before I slipped the net under a nice looking bream between three and four pounds or so.

I was really pleased with how this session went. It was only a short session as the boats once they got going soon forced me off the canal, but in the time I did get to fish I had ten or more small 10oz -1.6lb skimmers, a hand full of perch and roach and one single proper bream. Most importantly though the scaled down canal feeder method worked a treat with the tiny feeders, helicopter rigs and super light rod. I definitely want to get back to the same spot again to chuck a few feeders around as this area is well renowned for tench as well as bream up to very respectable canal sized fish, especially as I had so much fun on this occasion.