The Eclipse of March 20th, and Other Photos That Day...and NO FISH!

Firstly let me apologise for not yet having written the rest of the posts about the mahseer fishing trip. This is not JUST due to laziness on my part but also because some things relating to the trip are still going on in the background, which make it inadvisable for me to post just for the moment. Since my return I have caught the odd trout, grayling and bream, but nothing really worth writing about has happened, so I will mention them no more.  So today is all about a few photographs, with minimal commentary.  None of the shots are great, merely reminders of the day.

Friday the 20th of March started very early in the morning as usual.   I didn't.  I waited until it was nearly time for the eclipse to start, and then went out into the cold onto a small balcony on the top of the bay window of the house a little after eight o'clock.   It was of course cloudy, and I was expecting very little would be there to be seen.  The last time I remember seeing a solar eclipse, also a partial, was back in 1959, I was at school at the time, and no one warned us against looking at the sun.   I did, and was probably lucky to have suffered no eye damage.   Friday's eclipse was, or so I read,  about 93% coverage, as viewed from Manchester.  And it actually took quite a long time to progress.  From first contact to the end was well over two hours with the maximum being at 9.32 A.M.   Despite the cloud I did manage to take quite a few photos, and although the clouds were never completely absent, I actually think that they give additional interest to the pictures with an almost rainbow-like colour effect infusing into the clouds.

Neither of these pictures was taken at maximum coverage of the sun, and I admit to having been disappointed that the world did not turn very noticeably darker at any time during the event.  The birds did not exhibit changes in behaviour, and the traffic did not stop in panic.  It was just quite cold up there and away from the central heating.  Nice to see it though and it could well be my last view of one, unless I live much longer than anyone wants me to.  Myself excluded of course.

Having got the camera up and running, and having otherwise used the best part of the fishing day, I ventured out to the river, camera in hand, rods in utility room.  I had decided to have another go at photographing the dippers, and was soon sitting precariously on the river bank, overlooking a spot where I knew the dippers were often to be seen.  Today they weren't, but after a while a pair of grey wagtails arrived on the far bank.   They did what grey wagtails always do, pottering up and down the edge of the stream, waggling their tails like mad.  All the while the scent of the newly sprouting wild garlic filled the air about me, probably because I crushed a fair few leaves as I worked my way near to the river's edge. No white flowers yet though.

Grey Wagtail

The dippers though did not appear and so I drifted downstream a short way, and caught sight of a pair of goosanders through the trees.  They were, as usual, very shy birds, but allowed me a couple of pictures as they patrolled up and down a short stretch of river.  They dived for fish several times, but to date I have never seen a goosander catch anything at all.   But maybe they are secret eaters, swallowing their prey beneath the surface and out of my sight?

Female Goosander

Male Goosander

 Moving further downstream I came to this pretty little spot, and one of the dippers was suddenly visible on the far bank.  

I clambered down again to the edge, not as close as I would have liked to get to the bird, but again, I managed a couple of  shots at distance.            I waited for a long time, hoping for him, 

or perhaps her, to enter the stream, but the bird remained a strict landlubber.  

I then decided to see how well the video function on the camera worked, and so took a short clip.  But still the uncooperative little creature would not dip into the water.  And then I found that, once placed into the blog, the video would not play.  I am still working on that problem. The video may appear later.

A couple of mallards completed the river's bird collection.  

En- route back home I stopped by the lake, one I fish a few times in Spring.   It is still very bare, few signs of new growth either from the trees or the water plants. Deep water, so it warms up slowly. But a pair of grebes were keeping each other  close company, so nesting, mating and chicks are getting near to being on the week's menu.  The male swan, the cob, has already started his own duties: chasing away any Canada goose or mallard that comes near,  with near meaning "anywhere on the lake".  It all seems a bit pointless, as, whenever the cob gets near, the chased bird just takes off, and flies a few yards further away. Silly swan, it has no chance at all of actually catching one of the trespassers.   I wonder if the displayed aggression is in any way related to that phrase "getting a cob on"? 

Annoyed Swan

Threatening Swan

 On returning home a few more species were visible around the feeders in the garden, goldfinch, greenfinch,  bullfinch, several tit species, dunnocks, woodpigeon and robins visiting in their turn. The bullfinches are very faithful to each other.  I never see the female without the brilliantly coloured male being in fairly close attendance, regardless of the time of year.  A new addition, not seen in the garden for well over a year was a lone blackcap. It may have been taking lessons from the swan, in that it was very aggressively chasing any and all small birds away from the feeders. 

Stroppy Female Blackcap

None was allowed to remain.  But what was most surprising is that this bird was a female: grey with a brown cap: perhaps a chestnut would be a better term for it than a blackcap.  It is alone, no male seems to be resident nearby.  But so much aggression must be unusual in the female of almost any species.

Goldfinch

Greenfinch

Bullfinch

Woodpigeon with that Typical Staring Eye.

...and of Course  a Robin, looking Perky and Intelligent as Ever.

Nina went to clear out one of our nestboxes a few days ago, and was surprised, as she put her hand into the box, it touched feathers, and not old nest material.  The robin that had been sitting there flew out, surprising her, such that she nearly fell into the pond. The robin returned to the nestbox a few minutes later, and so we must expect some young robins fairly soon. I myself went to look at a second nest box, also open fronted, robin style, and as I neared it, a woodmouse ran out.   I am sure he will return too.

The crocus planted with the aid of the Black and Decker have done well, and there are hundreds of flowers now.  sadly not a single white crocus amongst them.  

I should have retained the packets, as I am sure they pictured white ones.  Even the yellow are few and far between, purple prevailing.  

The evening arrived and to complement the eclipse of the morning, the moon and Venus were both present in the evening. By over exposing slightly I was able to include the full disc of the moon lit rather poorly, whilst the crescent remained bright. Almost like a second eclipse.

And finally, back to the warmth of a good old traditional coal fire.  No fishing, but quite a good day.

 

Puddling About...and Another Good Roach

I didn't immediately rush back for another go at the tench and roach as caught in recent trips.  Nope: a few short trips to local and club ponds were needed, to balance the excitement of the bigger trips.   Several pond sessions were involved, and were a nice low key alternative to the more serious business of bigger fish.

The first pond, two trips.  Trip one, using a light Avon rod, 4 pound line and a float.   There was a fair bit of needle bubbling going on around my baited area, and tradition indicates that these are always caused by tench.   Factually I doubt the truth of that, but with even the possibility of tench in the swim, the nerves sharpen and the hand hovers above the rod butt.   When the bite came, the only bite, it was no tench,. but a lively little common carp of about four pounds. Always nice to catch carp using bread flake and a float.  I had started early in the morning, about 4 am,   just a short while before the two illegal night anglers let their fire burn out, ensured that they had dropped all the litter they had, and cleared off at 05.30, well before the bailiff was due to make his rounds. I informed the bailiff of their presence later, but was not, after my recent foolish involvement with other wrongdoers, going to tackle them by myself this time.   By 8am the clouds were gathering, and looking a little threatening, and at 9 the first drops started to fall.   I was fishing very light, with no brolly, so managed to pack up within about three minutes, and was in the car as the rain began to fall with serious intent.   I drove the mile or so home, and then had to sit in the car for about 20 minutes, as the rain hammered onto the car roof.  I returned the next day, just as the bats were beginning to stop flying, and this time the short trip was rewarded with a short tench, a little chunky fish of rather less than two pounds.  

A number of carp cruised the surface, in this very muddy watered pond of maybe 90 yards square.   When cruising, they never seem to get nearer to the bank than about 15 or 20 yards.   They can have no idea where they are based on bottom features, and so MUST be using the trees as their SatNav device, ensuring they stay fairly well clear of any danger at the pond's edges.  One carp looked to be over twenty pounds, and another was a pale coloured yellow koi.  As I sat there, from a tree directly above my head, a heron came swooping down, and dangling its feet in the water grabbed a small roach in its bill, from the surface. It left the characteristic grey stain on the water.  Herons plumage is coated with a grey dust that acts as a defence against its being stickied up by fish or eel slime.  Quite a sniper like attack, none of this patient and stealthy stalking of its prey.  ( I always wondered why that word was not spelled as "storking", the herons and stork families being so good at it) .  On this same pond a couple of years ago, I saw a heron land in the water, and paddle its way back to the shore, using legs that were very ill designed for the purpose.  Very odd to see one sitting on the surface swimming.  On another nearby water a heron used to sit atop a small ornamental weeping willow, and then dive in, head first, to attack any small surface fish, even the fish on the end of your line.   It was a bit of a pest, but very inventive in its attack methods.

On Sunday, with the football world cup getting ever closer, I decided at about 4pm that I just had to get away from it all.   My wife would be insisting on watching it, and thus monopolizing the TV.  So I headed out to a smallish club pond that was rumoured to hold a few wild carp. A new water for me.   I settled down in a corner, and the very muddy water suggested a big head of fish might be present.   So on went the breadflake again, being cast out into 5 or 6 feet of water.   I suppose three seconds had quite fully elapsed before I found myself playing a chub of about a pound and a half.   The next hour was quiet, the odd missed bite on halibut based paste, but my bread was now being ignored.    Then the switch was suddenly thrown, and from

Crucian/fancy Goldfish Hybrid.  An Ugly Fish IMHO.

about 7pm, every cast produced a bite.  All on bread.  And there was a hell of a variation in species.   4 carp, a couple of mirrors, but with the biggest being a common of about 4 pounds.   A few small roach, a couple of rudd, one small crucian, a dozen or so tench to about a pound and a half, one more chub.   It was serious every egg a bird territory.   Added to the pure species were four F1 carp/crucian hybrids to about 3 or 4 pounds, one fantail crucian/goldfish hybrid, and another hybrid, whose origins I can only guess at.   It fought very hard, weighed a little under a pound or so, was flattened

Weird Hybrid:  Bream/Your Guess as Good as Mine

heavily side to side, with a very bream like anal fin, yet was quite golden in colour.  The head still carried the remains of spawning tubercles.  The photo does not really do the fish's colour full justice.  Bream/rudd hybrid would be my best guess, but would not really explain, to my total satisfaction, the bright golden colour.  Small bream in my experience are silver, and so it seems inconsistent that their hybrids should suddenly shine out in a blaze of colour. No wild carp came to the net.

I also hooked and played a 5th carp, a mirror, of about ten pounds, to a standstill, but it became snagged right at my feet at the base of a fishing platform.  I tried to free it with the landing net, and also tried to scoop it up, but all I succeeded in doing was to free the carp, the light line breaking about an inch away from the hook.  After this minor disaster, and because a few carp had been taking floating crust, late in the evening I moved the shot up very near to the float and lobbed out a bit of floating bread.   It was snaffled, almost as soon as it hit the water, by a fish that proved to be the second chub.   It has been many years since I last caught a stillwater chub. They don't look any different to those in the rivers.  Then it was time for that last cast.

You must remember the old Rolling Stones hit:

"This will be my last cast,

This will be my last cast,

Maybe the last cast

I don't know..."  

Sing along if you want, just don't expect me to join in.  Regular readers may know why.

To try and avoid chub, I placed a very large cube of bread onto the ridiculously small size 14 hook and made that last cast.   I did not have long to wait before my inch and a half cube of crust was taken....by a twelve ounce rudd!  How on earth it took so much so quickly I have no idea.   But I did make that my last cast.  My final last cast. Quite a change, I am very unused to such frenzied activity, but on that light Avon, and four pound line  it was a pleasant change and very good fun.

Dawn

But not so pleasant as to keep me away from big waters, which is a shame as my next overnight trip was to be a total blank. Not so much as a twitch disturbed the session.  But the dawn was quite lovely. 

Parent and Young Grebe in Silhouette

As the light intensified, the grebes ventured out, parents with their young in tow, now largely grown, and well able to dive themselves, if not to actually catch their own fish yet.

 So the day was spent bird watching, and after a long time trying, I finally managed a poor shot of one of a family of young blackcaps. They were constantly moving in and out of some nearby willows, never keeping still long enough for me to be able to point the camera at them.  But finally: peering out of the foliage at me:

A Young Blackcap

Having blanked miserably on one water, I had little choice, my next trip had to be back to attack the roach, if there were any more to be attacked. I set up my rods so as to be intermediate, rigged such that they had a chance with either roach or tench.  A little too heavy for the roach maybe, and a little too light should a tench decide to bury itself in the weed. Baits were also chosen so as to appeal to both species. And guess what?   I ended up with one tench and one roach. Who would have expected the plan to come together so well as that?

/rant on...  Blogger has decided to rotate my tench through 90 degrees.  Every so often it decides randomly to do this to one of my photographs, and I struggle for about ten minutes messing with the photo and finally sort it. Today, Blogger, I am not going to bother.  The damn photo can stay rotated, so there!  But I wish I knew why it happens. 

/rant off.

The tench was to go 6-2 and gave a good old fight, despite it having quite obviously spawned very  recently.  

The roach was another great fish, 2 pounds 2 ounces, and probably the most gloriously coloured roach I have ever seen.  Like the previous big roach, until it finally laid on its side near the landing net, it seemed to be far bigger that it actually was, and for more than a moment or two, its colour had me thinking that I had hooked a big rudd. It therefore gets a big photo in the blog.  What a stunningly coloured fish this was.  But catching it gives me great hope that others are present, that they CAN be caught, and that they might well be present in somewhat larger sizes than the two landed so far.  The year promises to be very interesting.

A Particular Change in the Whether?

Well, there has not been much change in the weather, the last week has been both wet and warm, and the rivers are still a little bit too high for my liking, and so the answer to whether grayling? on the river remained the same.   So a change was needed  and  whether I might have a bash on a stillwater came into the frame.  But what stillwater, and what to fish for?

I decided that, because the weather has been so mild, at least for the time of year, I would have a go for a Winter tench.  Water temperatures in both the rivers and lakes locally seem to be about 5 degrees.  I don't think that I have ever caught a Winter tench before, carp yes, tench no.   In the good old days of tench fishing I would be poised to cast in at midnight on the Glorious 16th of June.   The close season used to ban all coarse fishing between 15th of March and June the 15th.  A good thing? A bad thing?   I won't be drawn on that today, but the 16th of June was always very special.   It no longer is. We usually were successful in that 16th quest for tench, and the thoughts in our minds were that the tench had started to feed maybe just a couple of weeks before the season opened. That they had only woken up in late May.  Most tench used to be caught in June, and by the end of July, they were getting hard to find.  Anglers thought that they fed very well to produce the spawn and then again  to recover their condition, but that after July they mainly changed their food intake to much smaller items, and thus became hard to catch.  We all now know that not to be the case, as I confirmed it myself , having caught a few tench in mid April over the last couple of years.  But how early in the year would they feed?  January still seemed a wildly optimistic prediction.

Yet I felt strangely confident, for despite the cold, 5 degree water, it had been unseasonably warm the last few days, and it was quite cloudy, and had been so right through the night, and consequently I did not have that "today will be a waste of time" thought in my head.   No, I actually had the idea that I would be in with a chance.  I arrived at the water at first light, and was not too surprised to find it a good foot higher than it had been back in June. There is still much water in and on the land that has yet to flow back into the rivers.  Donned the wellies and made for a swim about half way along the lake, one that would give me a good view of the entire water surface.   In the almost complete windless conditions, that lake surface was flat calm, and  as the day progressed it never got to more that a very slight undulation.  It never managed to break into a ripple, but the surface moved fractionally with that "oily" look,  just enough to blur the reflections of the trees on the far bank.   Unlike during the Summer, the lack of leaves revealed to me that the lake was very near the town. In Summer little evidence of dwellings and other buildings is visible.   Within minutes a carp jumped near to the far bank, It jumped four times in quick succession.  Even after much thought and considerable reading, I still have little real and convincing ideas as to why fish break surface in this way, jumping and rolling.   I didn't have the chance to further that investigation, for the fish was the only one, of any species, that I was to see on the top all day.

A flight of birds passed overhead in a "V" formation.  About thirty of them.  They were not geese, but

Cormorants on the Moon

cormorants, and I mentally trained an ack-ack gun on them as they passed.   Thirty is not the most I have seen at one time,  a few years ago a flight consisting of several branching "V"s passed over near to my house. I estimated that there were about 500 of them.   Here is another picture I took a couple of years ago.   I had to run so as to get the moon in shot too, and actually ended up invading the pitch of the Lacrosse game I was watching at the time.  I was lucky to get the picture, and probably lucky not to lose my life in the mêlée  of jolly hockey sticks and heavily armoured players.   Vicious game, lacrosse. Probably why my son likes it so much.

A young great crested grebe positioned itself over my bait.   It was to remain there, seemingly at anchor, for over two hours.  It looked like one of those raised in this last year's brood. The lake being so quiet, I settled down to read  Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms".  I find that, on slow stillwater sessions, I am able to read, whilst still watching the dough bobbins from the corner of my eye. Hey! Proper dough bobbins mate, made from real bread! The day was slow enough to enable me to read half the book.   About 11 o'clock the left hand bobbin twitched a bit. Nothing more, just a twitch.  I reeled in a couple of minutes later to find one sucked maggot, the other one missing.   The most likely candidate was a small roach, but I still had a tinca in mind as the culprit.  My two rods were fishing about 25 yards out, ten or twelve feet apart, and I had chucked out 7 or 8 small feeder fulls of maggots.   The maggots had languished for over two weeks in my bait fridge.  The fridge is probably a little too cold, and when I first opened the lid, the maggots looked to be quite dead. I compensated by not clipping the lid down on the maggot feeders, hoping that, on hitting the water, the maggots would be spilled and scattered immediately.  The maggots did recover and start to wriggle, but it was a full three hours or so before they showed any visible signs of life.   Note to self: back off the fridge thermostat a smidgeon this evening.  The fridge though has been a boon. A freebie from a friend who had had quite enough of both her student tenants, and Manchester council's heavy handed rules for landlords.   She gave me two small fridges, and one now, with the wick turned up full, acts as a bait freezer,  the other has reduced my maggot costs tremendously.

So at about eleven, I had a bite on my maggots, maggots which were lying in a thin small carpet of maybe two hundred other similar maggots. This is worthy of some thought.   How likely is it that a particle bait is picked up by a fish, from amongst an area of scattered, similar particles?  It is possible that only your hookbait has been picked up.   It is equally likely, or perhaps equally unlikely, that yours was the very last to be eaten.  Neither is the most likely scenario.   Provided that your hookbait is no less attractive, nor more attractive than any other particle, then on average, half the free bait will have been eaten before yours.  Some days a quarter will have been eaten, on others 4/5 might have been consumed. There will always been minor, or perhaps major differences in how your hookbait is seen by the fish, when compared to the free offerings, maybe the hook will put the fish off a bit, maybe you have presented it in a way that might make your hookbait more attractive.  Therefore it will never be truly rigorous to apply statistics in this way, but it most certainly can give a general idea.

So, ignoring such bait/hookbait differences we can say:

1) When you get your first bite, the most likely scenario is that only half of your freebies remain. 

2) When you get your second bite, the most likely scenario is that a quarter of your freebies remain.

3) When you get that third bite, the most likely scenario is that just 1/8th of your freebies remain.

4) Regardless of accuracy of the statistics, by the 4th or 5th bite, very little feed will be left.

Is this important: Yes it is.    One other obvious conclusion is that on a stillwater, if you are getting NO bites at all, yet have thrown in what you feel is a sufficiently attractive bait pattern, then there is no point in throwing more in. Just a waste.   Either the fish are elsewhere, not feeding or they don't like the dinner you have provided for them, and maybe they are away getting another of their five a day.

The consequences get harder once you start to get bites: do you feed more, and if so, when?  If you do feed more to enthusiastic fish, how easily and quickly might you overfeed, or might the splashes scare off a feeding shoal?   One thing that is certain when adding bait, the number of bites you have been getting is another factor to consider, along with how many fish are expected to be in the swim, the time of year, how warm the water is, and are they feeding hard or just peckish.  I cannot give precise answers to any of this, it is just one of those questions about which the experienced angler will think, and then strive to get the right answer on the day.   There is far more for an angler to consider, than there is for a golfer facing that 6 foot putt on the 18th green. It is the infinite variability that makes angling so wonderfully fascinating, and which  also gives rise to the mountains of absolute rubbish talked (and written!) about it.

So I put in a small amount of extra feed: two more feeders full.  I was rewarded, if not instantly, by two line bites.  A few chapters later, in the early afternoon, a good bite on the left hand rod, and I hooked into what I initially thought was a perch.   But as the fight progressed it intensified, and was unmistakeably a tench...or a carp...    Tench it was, a nice slim fish of 4-6.   Always a pleasure to see that tench shade of green.   It fought no worse than any Summer fish, although it was initially sluggish.   I had expected a poor fight, but in a cold-blooded creature it might be that the muscles get more efficient as they warm up with use?   The fish was no slouch and gave an excellent account of itself.  My first Winter tench. In water of just five degrees Celsius.  So pleasing when the plan works out.

There were no more bites.   A kingfisher  flashed down the length of the lake, eighteen inches above the water and at speed.   It landed in a low overhanging tree a couple of hundred yards away, just a tiny orange-brown point of light in the distance. It looks as if quite a lot of them have so far survived this Winter, as I see one or more on most fishing days.  A bunch of about twenty finches flew over, each bird flying very randomly in the overall group.   Very untidy looking assembly of birds, each bird exhibiting random motion within the group:  goldfinches? greenfinches? 

There is more thought that can be applied to bite frequency.   In the lazy hazy days of Summer, bites can be frequent.   Even without the use of groundbait of any kind.    It is common for anglers to get dozens, in some cases hundreds of bites in a single day.   So what can we read into this?    Certainly that the fish are hungry....but look deeper.   That single maggot on your hook has been seen and taken dozens of time during the day.   And that means that any other visible food item in the same area of that lake will have been seen by the fish too.   And almost certainly eaten by them.   So the conclusion is simple: there can be very little natural food easily available to the fish, if you are catching fish regularly.    There may be food there, but it must be hidden in the weeds or buried in the silt.    Every small handful of bait you throw in represents a very large increase in the local food supply for the fish.  I may have said this before, but any heavily fished water becomes a fish farm, with MOST of the fishes'  food being hand fed by the anglers. Cold-blooded creatures like fish have a very low requirement for food outside of the breeding season,  very little is needed to retain their body weight constant.  Once anglers supplement that very low food level intake, then the fish can grow easily to the huge sizes we now see in our waters.

All this may explain why, in the past, large fish were seen as hard to catch.  Before the introduction of heavy baiting, large fish were only present in very rich natural waters.  Waters with a lot of readily available natural food.  And so, unless you were able to introduce food that they liked better,  catching the fish was difficult.   All this changed with the introduction of various modern baits, when suddenly there were available a large choice of very tempting items for these fish.   So big fish became far easier to catch, at the same time as they have grown larger and become far more numerous.    And as long as anglers continue to pay for the bait, so they will keep catching. 

Female Blackcap

Not too much news in the garden,  except that all those bulbs I drilled into the lawn are sprouting very early.  It will not be long before we have crocus flowers and snowdrops.   Unless a sudden frost gets them.   Our male blackcap has been joined by a female.  The only female blackcap I have ever seen.  It may have been around for some time, as I initially thought it was just another dunnock...until I looked closer.   Its presence is not universally welcome in the garden, as the bullfinch chasing it away in my photograph clearly shows.  

Blackcap Being Chased Away by the Male Bullfinch

First Fish of the Year...and...Do Squirrels Ever Fall Out Of Their Trees?

Yesterday, January the 5th: And I just had to go fishing. 

There had been some worrying developments over Xmas and the New Year.   My occasional readers may remember that I had been impressed by my son's attitude to women and to his girl friends in particular.   Which was basically:  dump them well before any occasion requiring a present.     Well,  he has disappointed me.   His current girlfriend has lasted right through Christmas...and she received  the obligatory present that such entails.   I am just not ready for this.  Only this year did I become a full blown pensioner.  Something I am still practising to be, and still not getting  right.   I am not ready to be a father in law, not even a virtual father-in-law, as defined by today's preferences for living together.    It is all such a threat.  And I have laid down the law that I am in no way old enough yet to become a grandfather, but he has taken such a major step in that direction. Keeping a girlfriend through Xmas!  If you are reading this, you know who you are!  I see my non-grandfather future as being under some serious degree of threat.  It is the apocalypse.  I am just not ready yet, no way,  too young to be a grandfather and too old to do babysitting.     You cannot take a baby fishing.   Far too noisy.   And if it came back smelling of halibut pellets and  garlic luncheon meat my wife would ensure that I should be dead by the next morning.

So I went fishing to try and restore some sense of sanity to the world and to myself.   The river was even higher than last time, but I chose to fish a swim in which I have been successful before.    So a fair degree of that old confidence was present.    Took a few casts to decide whereabouts in the swim looked good,   not too fast, deep enough for Winter grayling, and without too many of the tackle claiming snags that the previous three casts had found.    The bite was not immediate, but 'twas not too long before the rod tip rapped a bit.   I was legering, the river being a too fast and erratic for a comfortable float session.  The fish was hooked about fifteen yards downstream   and immediately started to jump and splash on the surface, maybe a couple of times.    Trout  thinks I. Good scrapper, but a fish which, as it came closer, proved to be no trout, but a grayling.  A good one for the river at 1-9.     A small trout completed the short session a little later, a trace of a sucked maggot being the minute tell-tale of a third, unseen bite.   I will not post another grayling picture, nice though the fish was, it was of a very similar size to other recently posted  fish.  Perhaps there is a lesson there.    I have now had 5 grayling from this swim, all being either 1-8 or 1-9.  Grayling in the river generally seem to have got bigger over the last three years. I used to catch a lot around 10 or 12 oz, but now few are under a pound.   Maybe in a couple of years two pounders will be commonplace, but in the meantime, I may have to try elsewhere for a two pound fish.  I fished on for a couple of hours after the last second fish.   Plenty of nuthatches and great tits to watch.   A plop to my left was made by a kingfisher diving for fish.  I had not seen it, or else I might have managed a very close up photo.  The bird had been about three yards from me, but I had not seen it fly in.   After the dive it headed upriver.  A grey squirrel gambolled in the trees opposite, and I found myself wondering whether they ever fell.  Both grey and red squirrels seem to be able to scamper around a tree trunk at an  astonishing rate of r.p.m.   "Do they ever fall?" is rather like asking "Does God exist?".  You cannot prove it unless you either see a God, or see a squirrel fall. 

Why grayling you may ask?  Well, you might not ask, but read on in any case.   How would I describe the pleasure of holding that freshly caught grayling to any non angler that might have strayed into this page by means of some sort of tragic accident. Like fresh still-warm newly baked bloomer bread, with butter? Like raspberry jelly infused with brandy?  (Try it!).  Yes: but also, have you ever, when seated or maybe whilst lying in the bath, let go a small SBD, a tiny gas bubble that slowly, ever so slowly, curls its way out from between your cheeks, and then, diverting slightly, continues its slow path up between leg and certain delicate areas?  That ten or twenty seconds as the bubble makes its leisurely break for freedom can be quite delicious, and catching a grayling is similarly delightful.  I doubt that I could draw a better comparison. The grayling is reputed to smell like thyme,  and the SBD may also have a herbiferous outcome, although a hint of late night coriander is perhaps more likely a flavour, than that of thyme.  Is herbiferous a word?

So I joined another club today, one with waters higher up the same river.  With grayling in them.  And maybe bigger grayling?  A local tackle shop sells the cards, and for we OAPs the price charged is ridiculously low.   Don't read that as a complaint,  I can now join twice as many clubs at the same total price that I used to pay last year.   I offered to show proof of age but was told  not to bother as: "We trust all our pensioners"     I tried to explain to him, just how silly it was for him to say that, for of course a pensioner is a pensioner, and in the words of the wise Walker, they have no need to lie.   By definition anyone lying about their age whilst applying for an OAP ticket, would not have actually been a pensioner.   I don't think the tackle dealer understood the fine point I was making, or maybe he was just cheesed off with smart Alec OAPs.

Today's buzzphrase in the TV news is "the never had generation" referring to youngsters who have never had money, never had a job....

But it all depends upon how you describe that  "never had".    My generation never had computers, never had Playstations, TVs. mobile phones  (Nor any phone without its own coin slot in a tall red box, near the local Post Office). I never had a bicycle.until given my aunt's forty year old ladies 4 gear Sturmey Archered machine  (very embarrassing!).  No internet,  no email,   We never had a lot of things,  exotic foods, restaurants, holidays anywhere other than at Butlins.  So who are the "never had" generation really?  Odd how it is we, as the parents of the new "neverhads" who were lumbered with paying for all those rather nice things that the new "never had" generation have recently had in such profusion.

More important is what we did have.   The freedom to roam, I went wandering the fields alone from age about six.  And paedophiles did exist before the age of Jimmy Saville. I was once approached by one such, on the pretext of helping him look for a toy plane lost in a field. But even at that tender age I was bright enough to realise that he appeared to be looking for the toy plane in a very odd place, I could not understand how his suggestion to drop his trousers might help find the missing aeroplane, and so I quickly legged it.  Jimmy Saville's young friends, in many cases, seemed not to know that they had that option.  We had grammar schools, the ability to play outside,  very few toys, so we had to invent games and toys ourselves. It was fine making catapults, and bows and arrows, with arrowheads made from nails flattened by the passage of trains on the local railway line.  But I did get into immense trouble one day for making a slingshot.  My dad appeared, Goliath-like, and gave me hell for making it.  I still don't know why it was so much worse than the catapult. It had no where near the same accuracy. Let me assure you: David would have got nowhere near Goliath with his sling.

I nowadays blame much of the UK's ills on the Sony PlayStation and the loss of those grammar schools, together with the fiery discipline that came with them. The grammars were certainly a social leveller, and enabled kids like myself, from working class parents, to move onwards and upwards.  Most of today's kids are not much good at being kids, lousy at being teenagers, and not exactly brilliant at being young adults either.

But also I confess that I am not much good at  being a pensioner,  I do things wrong,  I feel out of place amongst my contemporaries whilst using the free bus pass.   I cannot just stare disinterestedly in front of me, or engage in totally trivial conversation en-route to my destination.  Why do so many pensioners appear to have no interest in what makes life tick, how the universe works, why insects have six legs rather than five etc?   I continue to get this part all wrong.  Do I also look as old to them, as they all seem to look to me?  Why do I feel far more at home with younger people?   I just don't understand any of the rules of this game.  I don't even feel that I deserve the government pension...but thanks very much.  Am I a generational outcast? 

A Pair of Kingfishers. A Shame They Were Not Closer.

Of course there are exceptions to all those OAPs in that bus pass mould. Some OAPs really do enjoy life. And oddly those exceptions almost all seem to be anglers. So I would advise any one getting near their pension date to take up fishing.  It may well keep you young...or possibly just ensure you remain daft.

Today's fishing:  complete blank.   But I did see a pair of kingfishers once again, so the day remained in profit.

And on getting home, a few glances out of the window revealed a song thrush, an occasional visitor to my garden. It was not singing.

Song Thrush

Blackcap

And a male blackcap: a very rare visitor to my garden, and one which is sometimes informally called the Northern Nightingale.   This was only the second such bird  I have seen in 25 years at this address. The blackcap wasn't singing either. So the birds don't think it is Spring just yet,  and neither do the frogs from my pond.  But the squirrels in next door's garden are either certain that Spring has arrived, or they wished specifically  to answer the question posed in the title of this post.   For there were a couple of grey squirrels chasing each other and mating in next door's trees.   And, I can now confirm that squirrels, at least during mating, quite often fall out of trees.  I saw them fall as much as twenty feet, several times.  The falls left them unhurt, and seemed not to dampen their ardour one bit.  Quite coincidental, as I really had been wondering whether they ever fell out of their trees.