Simple Match Fishing Forum

question
at the weekend we fished a league match on a canal the other side of Leicester and one section fish really hard now the conditions seamed to be OK but nine anglers blanked am sure the last two pegs caught and the first two caught so all the middle pegs blanked
NOW your not telling me there isn't a fish in theses pegs and some of the anglers are top canal anglers OK you could say its winter canal fishing
but what i want to know is have any of you got any ideas or methods to entice a bite on a rock hard day surely some of you die hard northerners have a few ideas i just don't want to draw the DNW peg 
BY THE WAY ITS NO B/J ALLOWED
lets have some proper answers first ::) ::)
i'm interested  

.

Wished I crappity smack knew

Joff,

one method i've used in the past is to bomb the peg with 7 to 8 balls of damp leam....... this tends to bring a few roach in the peg.
Thing is you need big man balls to play this card

ithere are fish in theses pegs bill i'm right but what makes this happen thats a long length of canal
your a bread man come on you must have some idea
chopped squatt used to fine a bite or two

i think you do gibbo but its a thought no one has done that and thats a fact

stay out of this one Queenie you've never seen a bad peg come to think about norr has diddy

the best I've seen at getting a fish out of a peg is Mick Hatchard, he ALWAYS catches a perch and its usually a good un!

OK here goes.
Personally I think there are fish in your peg all the time.
In these times of excessive cold weather they can shoal quite heavily in areas, hence you get the occasional exceptional weight on a cut in the winter. When one or two fish start to feed it always seems to encourage more to follow suit.
It can be very hard for bites at times especially in very cold water where bites themselves can be a simple 'stop' of the float. It may take a while to get a bite on the bread but you must keep at it and the key thing is to look for any signs.
These signs can often be obvious in the form of a boat going past although that ain't always a good thing.
Try dragging you plummet on the bottom where you have fed. Always look for the odd single bubble, it may sound daft but something is causing that.
Try the tiniest of punches as a change or indeed a bigger one.
Personally, although probably a 'confidence' thing I would keep feeding.
The first bite is always the hardest on punch but when that arrives you should get more even if it only a few; they do tend to come in a purple patch though as you have probably found.
As matches wear on in time these roach can be caught in very shallow water, even if you can see the bottom but I would always start at the bottom of the far track. It ia always worth trying a squatt over bread feed; although it don't seem to work as well as it use to, perch are always a possibility.

Be careful of using too tiny a hook though even with a diddy punch; the roach are only after the bread, not the hook.
Failing that little lot you can always ask Woodies to get some Banks beer in

Another point to remember is that I firmly believe fish, more so skimmers and not always roach, associate danger with getting caught; that ain't hard to work out.
When they are put back would go to the same place as you've just had a hook in your gob?

Some bits of canal tend to look totally devoid of fish life at this time of year when I am sure they are not. Quite simply these 'bits' of cut are possibly hit more by the icy wind leading up to the match making things much harder to catch them in those areas.

TOP ANSWER BILL thanks i'm sure others will appreciate that anwser
right i'm off just had me sausage cob and cuppa with the tank commander i've got till three before i pick the dumper trucks up from school  kits in and i'm away

Stick everyone in the base-on ! ....... sorted !!!

ok

BY THE WAY ITS NO B/J ALLOWED

don't bother going then!

:-[begining to think that