Tuesday 3 June 2014

Prophetic Premonition of a Big Roach?

Well maybe.   Certainly today's trip has been quite prophetable.  (Oh dear! Oh dear!).    Or was it just another case of predictive text from the blog's built in word processing system working very well, exceeding its brief, and actually affecting my fish catch?  Read on.  Whatever it was, I arrived at the lake again, very early, to find the tench ignoring me completely.   I saw a few roll, scattered around the lake, but none appeared to hunger ravenously for my baits.  

The lake had been calm all morning, no tell-tale bubbles anywhere on view.   One or two carp jumped, well out of my casting range, and nowhere near to the baits of a long range carp angler in a nearby swim.   The grebes swam around, followed by their young, which were still bleating incessantly.  Occasionally the adult would dive suddenly, or even "run away" across the lake surface.  You could almost hear it say "For God's sake shut up for a while, you noisy little brat."  I was saying something similar myself.  But their young all seem to be doing well, taking short dives, and the larger ones amongst them are even starting to grow their crests, although their heads remain striped. A coot, taking a lesson from the individual that chased the flying jay a few days ago, chased a crow away from its young.  The crow flying five or six feet above the water, the coot treading water as it flew in pursuit.  I was surprised by the bird chasing the jay, but maybe they chase anything near the nest or young, including the crow family.

Once more there had been two or three splashy rises of fair sized fish.  Yet again I did not think them to be tench.   In an earlier, very recent blog, I thought they might be good roach and even wondered how I might attempt to catch them.  My premonition/prediction, if that is what it is,  appears to have borne fruit.  On this, my very next trip to the lake, I caught a roach.   My left hand indicator zoomed up, and a fairly quick strike caused the rod to bend nicely.   But the fight was not typical of those recent tench, the fish came quickly up in the water column, and was guided towards the bank rather easily.  It was soon in the net, ( 7 pound line) and I could see it to be not just a roach, but a damned good roach.   It had initially looked far bigger than it
actually was, once I had weighed it.   But at two pounds three ounces, not a fish to be sneezed at, not as a fish from up North anyway.  It had had a minor altercation at some time, either with a pike or a cormorant, and was missing a few scales, but very definitely a roach.  Occasionally as an angler, you may find yourself trembling after landing a fish.  It has not happened very often to me, just five or six times.   But today made it six or seven times.   This fish meant a lot to me.

Any two pound roach is very special.    My last two pound plus roach was also a big lake fish, and was also exactly the same weight:  2-3.  But that fish looked to be newly minted, absolutely gorgeous.   I have high hopes that most roach in this lake, if there are indeed more where this one came from, might also look in similarly perfect condition.    I need to have some more sessions, with at least one roach minded rod active.

Later I missed a bite on a big lobworm.   The rod was aimed at a perch, but a missed bite tells me little of the species.   I wonder....... 

I have never been fazed by big waters, and they have produced many excellent fish for me over a lot of years.  I have known a large number of anglers who take one look at a huge water, especially one with great clarity of the water, and no fish actually visible, and they either back off and go elsewhere, or else give it an hour or so.  You cannot give a big water an hour or so and expect success.  It usually takes more effort.  After a while and with the experience of several big waters behind you, your attitude changes.  It changes from "Oh my God I'll never catch anything here.", to "I hope I catch something today."  Eventually you do reach that third stage where you expect to catch something most days on the lake.  It is a good feeling but needs serious work to get there.

 This lake, and perhaps a couple of others similar to it, may well give up some truly astonishing fish.  Big Perch? Huge Bream?  More carp, roach and tench?   Who knows?   The lake still has that mystery, in that I just do not know how big the fish, of any species, in here grow. And I hope that no-one has the information that might tell me.  And if you have, please keep it to yourself. I simply don't want to know.



1 comment:

  1. Great roach JZ, good luck with the quest. Do keep us informed!

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