Although I've just had the hassle of moving house again, the silver lining is that the Shropshire Union Canal runs right through the back garden of the new house. There is a nice overhanging willow and some close in rushes as well, so my own private peg looks very promising....I've had a first go a couple of days ago for an hour or so and there was plenty of bits about but tonight's the official record attempt for Big Fish Diaries' first gudgeon. I've raked the swim an hour before fishing with a double headed dredge made from two aluminium rake heads from B&Q and baited up with 1/4 pint of red squatts and the same again of fluoro pinkes. No groundbait today as it's the mighty gudgeon we're after, rather than hoards of micro roach or skimmer bream. I'm to be ably assisted by the family Westie, Derek, who is an experienced fisher dog.
It's about 2.5 feet deep at 8-10 feet out and I'm using a 4x14 fine bristle pole float with the styals all bunched at 3/4 depth to get the bait down. A size 20 B520 Kamasan microbarb hook to a 12oz hooklength finishes off the rig and I've bronze maggots and some floating casters for hookbait backed up by squatts and pinkies if it gets tough.
First put in and the No 7 elastic's straight out to near max so I've either broken the world gudgeon record or something quite different is on the bait. After a short but enjoyably dogged fight up props a bream of about 1.5 lbs. Interesting start.
From then on, it's roach of 1-3 oz; perch to 3-5 oz and the occasional little runs of micro gudgeon which I'm too embarrassed to consider weighing. Quick change of plan with a few casters flicked very close in on the edge of the margin reeds and we're in business, a couple of monstrous gudgeon looking every bit of 10g are "landed" and we've our second PB for the big fish diaries.
Five minutes later the big moment comes though, with an absolute horse of a gudgeon taking a caster and weighing in at an epic 23g (3/4 oz). It's twice as big as any of the others so merits a trophy photo shot for the website...
Job done, so the pole goes away and out goes a 3 swan chubber with a 2oz roach on a size 6 to see if we can break the perch PB of 1lbs 4oz. I fish for another two hours until 10pm but surprisingly not a sniff...Finally, another PB then and with a two day trip to Hampshire coming up in two weeks to fish two of the UK's top big rainbow trout waters, hopefully we can start a bit of a roll!
Cheers
Mr Fish
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