Monday 4 March 2013

An Unwelcome Bream

The rivers are very low, at least for a Winter month, and so I decided to have another go for perch, in one of my favourite areas. I know from previous captures, that perch over two and a half pounds are present, and therefore armed myself with some huge lobworms.  Attached a float and cast in just upstream of a fallen tree, where it remained quite stationary in the slack water
Not for long though, and after about 30 minutes the float sailed off.   A good fish was hooked, and I had exciting visions of a 3 pound perch, or possible one even larger.   Of course it was not to be, and the first time it surfaced, I could see it was a bronze bream that had been performing very well in the current. I had not, for one instant, expected a bream so close to the riverbank, under low water conditions.  Things then took a turn for the worse, with not a twitch until after 4PM.      5 chub then came to similar tactics in about 90 minutes.   All in nice condition, none less than 2 pounds, nor was any over 3.       The second rod was also tooled up with lobworm as bait, but with a swimfeeder full of maggots on the line.    Very odd, both rods producing the same number of enquiries, but all that the leger rod produced was single rapid taps on the rod tip. Nothing I was able to strike at.    The float rod produced confident bites, from the same area of the swim.  The perch made no sign of still being resident.  But 6 fish in early March is not too bad I guess.
The bird life was fairly active, a kingfisher flashing past low over the water a couple of times.  Other water birds included a dabchick, heron, a young great crested grebe, the usual mallards, moorhens and cormorants. Unseen woodpeckers drummed in the trees behind me, and a couple of buzzards circled overhead.  Canada geese and crows of course, wrens and tits, but the star of the day was probably the tree creeper which worked its way up a trunk a few yards away from me. 
Treecreeper

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