Fishing with Mr Lane & Mr Mitchell

October's fishing began much the same as September's, with a distinct lack of fish. Although the weather was also distinctly similar, with the warm temperatures of September continuing into October. I fished at Willington on the Trent & Mersey canal with a Billy Lane Swing-tip rod and Mitchell 300.eel

Session number two was back on the Trent & Mersey canal, again with Billy Lane and Mr Mitchell, this time at Swakestone...

My third session this month was again with Billy Lane, but this time I took a Mitchell Match along. I fished the Trent & Mersey canal again, however, on this occasion, I went to Shardlow where I'd thought about going for years, but wasn't sure where you could fish due to all the marinas and boat moorings.

Shardlow was recommended to me by a chap I saw on my previous session and he'd told me where you could fish, and inspired by the recommendation I found a good fishy looking spot between some reeds, where the tow-path was wider, opposite a row of moored narrow boats.

I had some red maggots and chopped worms leftover from my previous session and I'd bought a loaf of bread, some of which I mashed into small balls and threw in for groundbait. After plumbing up a small balsa waggler to the bottom of the near-side shelf I was into fish quite quickly, including Small Roach, Perch and Roach/Skimmer hybrids.

I fished further out and found a better stamp of Roach and as I watched the water it was obvious there were plenty of fish in this stretch of canal and some looked a good size. The afternoon wore on and a few times I thought about changing to a larger float to cast out further to reach the bigger fish. But as I was enjoying the day and the fishing I never got round to it and thought I'd save it for another day.

October ended as it started, with a blank, but it was a nice autumn day to blank. I went Carp fishing at Heatherton Pond where I'd caught a 19 pounder back in early May. I got up early and it was lashing it down with rain, I got soaked just putting the rods in the car! I waited a few hours for the rain to stop and when I got to Heatherton there were a few other piscators who'd been there since early morning, but none of them had caught anything.

Although once the rain had stopped the weather conditions were just right, low pressure, a south-westerly wind, warm and sunny, but the fish just weren't biting. I did see fish over one of my tiger nut flavoured boilie bites, on a bed of crushed boilies, chickpeas and pallets. However, there was a lot of weed, which didn't help and after about four hours and a few other piscators packing up, I decided to call it a day. Even though the fish weren't biting, it was a pleasant afternoon, sitting in the autumn sunshine watching the swans, moorhens and ducks. And as I was daydreaming I was frightened by a water rate jumping into the water just to the right of me before he swam over to the island. You cant have a bad days fishing!