Canal Roach on a Mayday Evening

Unusual as it was for a Bank Holiday Monday not to be a total washout, I thought I'd make the most of it with a few hours on the canal last night. I headed down the towpath to an area just past the fancy housing enclave that is Haverbreaks. This is where the grand houses back on to the canal and some people even have their own boathouses.
Once past this exclusive area the canal is bordered by farm fields. There's a huge amount of sheep to the West and more sheep plus a few horses to the East with a couple of what appear to be rare breed sheep that make the strangest noises - a guttural grunting that is almost frightening. It's a rare old cacophony as dusk falls once you add in the ducks, moorhens and all the other birds.
I've been fishing a spot along here for the last few weeks and have even popped down a few times to feed it up with mashed bread, corn, chopped worms, prawns and maggots. So far all my catches have been to either maggots or bread. The fish seem reluctant to take either corn or worms with only tentative bites on both despite cutting grains of corn into quarters and chopping the worms. Prawns just don't seem to work at all at the moment but I keep trying them.

There's a pair of swans that have made this stretch their home and over the last couple of weeks the female has built a large nest on the far bank some 20 yards or so below where I fish. Tonight she was at last sitting on it so I can only assume eggs have been laid. The male doesn't seem to have been a lot of help with the nest building and seems to spend most of his time wandering the stretch. He was sat on the bank for a while tonight eating grass and scaring small children that passed by.

However, he wasn't so brave when another swan came along. He hot footed it back into the canal and proceeded to run across the surface with wings flapping which in turn encouraged the interloper do the same. They were last seen rounding the bend at the end of the stretch.

Bread was my chosen bait for the evening fished on a size 12 hook beneath a homemade antenna float. I introduced some mashed bread in the area of the near side drop off a couple of yards down to the left from where I sat. Bites started almost immediately and a procession of small roach found their way to the bank. The flow was quite strong tonight and the surface was littered with chewed up plant material as a result of the boat traffic. These floating bits and pieces kept snagging the float and line so I dropped the float a little to the right to avoid a tangled mass that was heading my way. Within seconds the bread had been snapped up and I found myself connected to a better fish, Safely netted was a beautiful roach that I thought must be half a pound. With the bloggers challenge in mind I weighed and photographed the fish. I fear I will need every point considering some of the early catches.

It went to 9 ounces on the scales which is my best roach so far this year from the canal.
For the next two hours the bites came and went with some quiet periods and then a flurry of activity as dusk fell. I had another roach of around six ounces that looked like it had been in the wars with a nasty gash on one side near its anal fin. The result of a meeting with a pike or maybe a heron as you see plenty of them along the canal. Most of the other fish were in the two or three ounce bracket and as it became too dark to see the float properly I called it a day.
Walking back along the towpath the bats were out in force darting around the branches above my head which got me wondering where they live during daylight - I must find that out...