Does Size Always Matter?

Spring crashes on, its signposts are everywhere.  The roads I drive on are now littered with fox cubs in the early mornings,  although as I get nearer to the venues I gradually see less foxes, and far more white flashes from the scuts of rabbits clearing the road in front of me.  I wonder whether the words scut, as in a rabbit's tail, and scuttle, to run away and escape, are related  Scuttling perfectly describes the actions of the rabbits as they see and run from my headlights. Neither the rabbits, nor the foxes have featured in the roadkill I have passed.  Hedgehogs also seem to have escaped death,  but badgers seem to be very poor at avoiding cars this year, and several have lain dead by the roadside this past month.   It is supposed to be hedgehogs that freeze, confident that their spines will prevent any harm coming to the animal itself, shortly before their being flattened.  Maybe they are getting very scarce, although I still see them in the back garden at times.

I was wrong about the swans.   I never expected that they  would ever lose any cygnets.  The cob, the male swan, is always so very aggressive, and has that "I am the boss on this lake" look about him.  But the family is nevertheless two cygnets short this week.   I doubt that they just died,  all of them looking perfectly healthy last week.  And I don't think they got lost.  The lake is not so big that the swans can't circumnavigate it all several times daily.   So a predator must have claimed two victims.   Poor tactics by the male swan, who, rather than looking after the kids, has spent most of his time chasing geese around the water.   Oh, and annoying the angler in the next swim by swimming through both his lines, as he lay dreaming away in his bivvy.  I always shoo the swans away from my own lines, and am usually successful, although I do get some pretty  vicious hisses from the male as I do so. Occasionally I might have to wave the landing net at them.  It is all for their own good, as I would not want their legs tangled up in my lines any more than they would want my lines wrapped around their legs.   

No signs of the grebes having hatched any young yet.  One spent several hours diving in exactly the same spot, an area of two or three square yards,  just off to my right.   A lot of effort and I only saw him catch one small fish during that time.  The water is fairly deep, and I wonder whether, like the fish, grebes lay their eggs late on such waters, waters that are slow to warm up.   In contrast, in the shallow local park lake, the young grebes are already several weeks old.  It would maybe be to the bird's advantage to lay eggs at a time that is related to the hatching of the year's fish fry. In much the same way that blue tits seem to know when the caterpillars will be most plentiful in the oak trees.

 Other visitors to my swim included this woodmouse, totally oblivious to my presence, and this cheeky, chirpy little chap.

If the alliteration does not help you with the bird's ID: tough!

Most of my days' tenching continue to provide fish at the rate of one bite a day, and I cannot yet seem to find a consistent way to improve this.  Some good fish, some less so, but the recent highlights up until a few days ago,were another at 7, and a fish of 8-11.   Both well worth the wait.   A few males showed up as well, each being a little under 5 pounds but great fighters, as are most male tench.   I seem to catch fish of two very different looks.  One is pale green, almost Granny Smith's apples in colouration, sometimes with quite an orange belly.  The others are dark, almost metallic green, with a belly that is best described as greyish.   I have no statistical data to actually back this up ( so far) but I feel that the darker fish are smaller, and that they fight far harder.  I will leave that as a theory: work in progress, for the moment, and I will see whether future fish help to support the theory.

Having had a number of such zero/one fish sessions, I chose to spend a morning on a farm pond, A change is as good as a rest, and fishing lift method with bread, catching a mixed bag of tench, crucians, roach and one bream, is a very pleasant change indeed.   None of these fish topped half a pound, but there were plenty of them to play on the light rod and centrepin reel.  The pond does hold carp as well, up to at least ten pounds, so there was always the chance of some greater drama.   

During this session I somehow developed a lip ulcer, quite a bad one, very annoying. So driving home I stopped by Tesco's medicine counter, and looked for some suitable cream.  Bonjela Cool was what I chose.  Seen it on the TV, must be good.  Back home I applied it liberally. Oh My God!    Cool?   How can they call it cool?  I almost screamed in agony at the powerful sting that went right through my lip, feeling as if had every intention of severing my tongue!   It was murder, Continuously hurt for a good thirty minutes. The TV adverts do nothing to warn of the near death experiences caused by application of this stuff.  The minty taste, (evidently that was the cool bit),  was just discernible, but the major impact was like having a baseball bat crash into the face.  So painful.   I had intended to buy Tesco's own brand version.  It would have been far cheaper...had it existed.   Tesco knows about this stuff I am sure, and do not want the blame, when their clients experience the excruciating effects of using this cream.  Not daft Tesco: now they can finger the Bonjela company every time.  The tube has lain on the table ever since, and only once more have I dared to try again.  I should not have expected a different result, and did not get a different result, It still felt much like a self inflicted decapitation must feel, except that the pain persists far longer.   A week later, and the ulcer is disappearing all by itself. The tube remains nearly full. How full?    About £2-95 of the £3-00 I paid for it.

One final long tench session produced two fish.  The first was a very dark female, no spawn at all visible.  At 5-15 it was not a huge fish for the water, but it fought as though it were being piloted by

A Gorgeous 5-15 Female.

the very devil himself.  Absolutely wonderful account of itself, and such a beautiful fish too.  Very metallic green.   I would have been happy with just the one fish, but decided to stay on through the night.   The lake remained as a mirror the whole time and very few fish, save the odd roach, moved. Sometimes I would swear there were no fish diluting the water in the lake.  I had one rod cast over a tight patch of bait, and another was equipped with a size 6 hook, three maggots and a lump of breadflake adorned it, and it was cast as far as I could into a weedy area. Maybe 50 yards, not much more, as I am no distance casting champion.  The night remained peaceful, with just the bats for company.  The fish had deserted me.  But at exactly 5 o'clock, certainly within 30 minutes of 5am, the distance rod had a bite.   I didn't see the dough bobbin rise up to the carbon fibre, it was far too quick, the bait runner was also too surprised to play any part in the incident, but the reel suddenly started to revolve rapidly backwards. I do not fish bolt rigs, but this fish was sure to have hooked itself.  I struck though, and feeling a heavy weight, thought "a carp".  The fish moved left, heavy and slow, and I was able to reel in the other line out of the way.   After I did so, the fish went quite solid, and stationary,  and I became convinced it

A Spawny 10-5 Tinca. Not so gorgeous.

was off, and that I was into some heavy weed.   Apart from one moment when I thought that a bream might have taken the bread, there was nothing more to be felt on the line, no movement and I slowly pumped in what appeared to be merely a massive ball of weed.  As it neared the net I saw some smooth green, the flank of a tench?     I quickly removed most of the weed, and the fish, which had been completely encased by weed,  moved out powerfully and bored deep several times close in. I have experienced this before: a fish with its head buried in weed will often lie completely still and not fight.  It was netted soon after, and was indeed a tench.  The hook fell out in the landing net, and I thought that maybe I should have netted the weed ball, rather than removing the weed from the fish, thus taking the risk of allowing it to have another swim round.  After a few quick photos I weighed it, and then weighed it again, and again:   ten pounds five ounces!   A new personal best, and my first double figure tench.  

But it had only gained that weight by virtue of at least three quarters of a pound of spawn, maybe even a bit more.  And so my excitement level was not perhaps what it should have been.  Am I my own worst enemy? Wanting all my fish to look perfect and pretty?  Dampening the experience for myself? The 5-15 of the evening before was just as exciting a fish to catch. So size is not everything for me. For many other anglers though, it is.   And I can understand that, although if they were being honest there is not really much more skill involved in the capture, as the weight of a fish gets larger.   If I were being cruel, and having another rant at them, I might suggest that they were fishing in grab-a-granny mode.   Only the weight (effectively age?) matters to them.  Me: I like them pretty.

There is a large barbel in the local stream. It weighs anywhere between 12 and 14 pounds, varying somewhat over the weeks and months, and has been around that weight for several years.   This fish has been named "The Big Girl", by those anglers who MUST name fish, and appears it to be something of a neighbourhood bike.  Everyone and his dog has caught it, some anglers several times.  It probably got to be the biggest in the river by feeding freely, and it seems to get caught at least a dozen times each year, sometimes on a weekly or even daily basis.   People fish for this fish, targetting it specifically.  I avoid the swims in which it lives, quite intentionally.  I don't want to catch it.   A representative from the EA thinks it must be 25 years old, and I assume he therefore thinks it was one of the initially stocked fish.  A great great grab-a-granny?  25 years is a ripe old age for any fish, and I am a little surprised it has not lost much weight from its maximum.  Or rather at 25 years, shocked it didn't die years ago. Do fish suffer from dementure I wonder? Is this a fish that cannot remember that it has just had its breakfast, and hence gets caught again and again?  ;-)    Apologies to Bill, Paul, Jerry, Steve etc. etc.....................etc.

I think I might now go and hide for a while. 

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.

 

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.

Drowning Maggots Whilst the Clouds Remain Gathered.

The weather has remained typical tench, and it has been difficult for me.  Trying not to fish and to give the wife some of my time at the beginning of June!  I held out longer than expected, far longer.  In the good old days I would have been back on the bank, in the exact same spot, casting to that same square yard in an attempt to better the excellent tench caught on the last trip.   Not so this time. I held out for two whole days before finding myself back on the banks of the same water.   And not anywhere near the same swim. The water has so much obvious potential, and I feel any spot on its extensive banks could produce a fish in the same league as my recent PB tench, or perhaps even bigger.   And if it didn't: no matter. Nature has taken over the lake full well, and only its depth now reveals that the water is entirely man-made. Trees, shrubs, reedmace and rushes all disguise the old contours.   The birds and other wildlife have been equally taken in, and are present in some abundance. It is a pleasure just to be asleep near this water.

I arrived just as night started to lose its grip on the scene, quickly set up the rods and fed the swim with a small amount of mixed feed. Then waited. A couple of fish soon moved over the bait, as seems usual with this water.  Also as usual, there were no more rises and no immediate bites to follow the rolling fish.  It would be seven hours later that the first fish would take the bait, and a bright green tench of a little under five pounds tested the rod.  Blank saved, I relaxed, and having helped me out, the fish also relaxed.  They might as well have disappeared entirely from the lake.  It was so quiet that I even struck up a conversation with a carp angler, who had been glued to the next swim for the last three days or so.  Decent chap, for a carp centred angler,  one able to hold an interesting conversation without littering each sentence with the "f" word.  It was appreciated.  He, soon after, was also to land a tench, "one of those green things", and so started a tench v carp banter session.  I congratulated him on the fish, and said he must be pleased, for it gave him another chance to play with his toy boat.    Quite the reverse of course, for the whole point of anyone inventing the boilie, is that it enables a carp angler to fish, and to blank, for a week at a time without ever having the need to reel in.  The lake, in keeping with many others, is usually littered with carp anglers, and on this water, in over a dozen trips, I had yet to see a carp landed. 

This carp angler was fishing at distance (don't they all?) and his baits were in the one area in which I have seen more than the odd carp surface.   On a couple of occasions I have seen quite a few "half inch" themselves out of the water, in the way that only carp do.   It was interesting though, to see the lake depth profile displayed by his on board echo sounder, as his bait boat made its way out towards the fish. His swim was shallower than mine, and very shallow, as little as three feet in some areas. I was fishing into about 14 feet.   I sometimes wonder whether the spots where the carp are seen to frolic and play, are actually the best areas in which to catch them?  The carp anglers seem to be more convinced than I am.  But who am I:  but a mere and insignificant tench angler.

Several pairs of the grebes now have young, some already  3/4 grown, and several times during the day I saw the parent birds perform their head shaking dance.   One pair danced quite close to me, and the dance went on for quite a long time.   I know that I should have grabbed the camera, but I was travelling light and did not have the long lens with me.   Which is a shame, for eventually they broke off their dance, both diving away and when they came back to the surface, each had a beakful of weed, and they went straight into the penguin dance.  Wonderful!   Those birds knew, knew before their dive, that they were going to go all Antarctic.  It was a planned dance.  Better planned than my choice of camera gear.

But this mallard came close enough for the standard lens to be able to take the usual  "awww!" shot of its

dozen newly hatched young.  By the end of the fishing session there were less of these young, four ducklings having disappeared. Probably down the throats of pike and herons.  A pair of little dabchicks swam past, only a little out of camera range.   They now have that chestnut coloured head, colour which is absent through the Winter months.

The swim depth was irrelevant through the night, neither of us having a nibble.  I had not originally intended to fish through the night, and was not really comfortably prepared. A folding stool was going to be my seat for the night until my carp angling friend loaned me his "guest chair".  Yes, it would seem that bivvies these days have accommodation for guests, and presumably spare bedrooms.  So my night, was completely undisturbed by

A Woodmouse. Ears and  a Long Tail.

fish, and was a little more comfortable than I had expected.   As dusk approached, a young woodmouse kept me company. It seemed tame enough to have been someone's pet, and largely seemed to ignore my presence, sitting just a foot or so away. The rain fell fairly consistently through both the evening and the night, but my brolly kept it, and the light wind, at bay.  Indeed it was the weather that prompted me to spend the night, in the erroneous expectation that it would be filled with fish.   Not to be, and by 0700 hours I had not has so much as a line bite.   In contrast to the evening, my morning pal was a little vole, a bank vole I think.  Less obvious ears and a shorter tail than the mouse. The vole repeatedly stole the odd bit of  

A Vole, the First I Have Ever Photographed.

groundbait that had been dropped as I baited up the evening before. 

There had been a few early morning splashy rises, fish the carp lads seem to think are tench.   I am not so sure and strongly suspect good roach might be involved.   There are few of them, in unpredictable spots, and short of casting directly at them when they rise, I cannot really see how to choose where to fish for them... if they are indeed good roach.  

At 0703  my right hand indicator slowly rose to the rod ring and I struck into a good fish, one that felt and fought identically to the big fish of a couple of days ago.   Another big tench was heading my way.   The fight continued to scream tench at me, I could feel it burrowing through the weed, the line coming at times in little jerks as the elodea stems broke off. It was a good tench right up until the moment I saw the fish. A mirror carp.  As a tench it had behaved itself impeccably, keeping to its own side of the swim. As a carp it decided to cross the other fishing line, and my 7 pound breaking strain was unable to prevent the attempt to exit stage left.   Luckily though, the lines did not become entangled, and soon the fish was in the net.

For the Carp Anglers Amongst my Readership

I weighed it at 15-6, and disturbed the sleeping carp angler in the nearby bivvy for a photo opportunity, but mainly to take the chance to add some more banter.  I wondered whether it would also have taken him three minutes to get out of his B&B ( bed and bivvy) if his own buzzers had gone off.  I complained to him about nuisance fish and having to recast my three maggots after landing the carp.   I said that mirror carp all look to have been built by amateurs from incomplete kits of parts, but that common carp, if painted green and photographed without the red-eye reduction set on the camera, would actually be quite pretty.   He admitted that I had taught him something, namely that carp could be caught in the margins, even on this water.   Margins!  I was fishing 35 yards out!   Almost as far as I can cast for God's sake!   Mumble, mumble margins!

As I write this I am listening to "Just a Minute" on Radio Four.   And I had to take a short break.  I love radio comedy, and occasionally they can, on these spontaneous shows, crease me up something terrible.  Today, the minute topic was "my favourite view" and one of the contestants, Giles Brandreth I think, said:
"As the great actress, Maureen Lipton once declared; "The worst thing about oral sex is the view.""  This caused quite a hubbub in the audience and also made me completely unable to type accurately.

Back on the lake, by ten in the morning, the light wind had abated, and the lake was nearly flat calm, with that almost oily look to the surface.   This enabled my to see two small patches of bubbles.  Small, but certainly caused by fish.  And a good  eight or ten yards closer than my hookbaits.  So one rod was recast, shorter, right on top of the bubbles.  Maybe even I  had been fishing too far out.  And maybe I had, for ten minutes later I was playing a tench. A tench I think may have been that bubbler.

Male 6-6, Post Spawning

 The fish was a spawned out male of 6-6. An excellent fish, and very big for a male, if I can say that without a snigger.  It had a small wound, spawning damage just in front of its pelvic fin, visible in the photograph.  After a small injection of bait into the new area, another tench, this time an excellent female of 6-14 was introduced to my landing net.

Another superbly shaped fish, with but a little spawn in it.

6-14 Female

I do wonder why the fish seem to be at vastly different stages in the breeding process.   The male had already spawned,  my biggest female was probably caught just moments before heading to the weedbeds, yet some females seem hardly to have started to develop the egg mass.  We have had a mild Winter, and I wonder whether some fish spent those months in deeper water, water which warmed up more slowly, and therefore held fish which first became active days if not weeks later than others.  Either way it means that I look like always having some tench to target, which are not bloated with spawn.  Some will be heavily gravid, but they seem not to come to any harm, surviving capture well, whereas bream, or male bream at least, do not look as if the close season should have been scrapped on stillwaters.

  

 

Tricky Tench and Trivia.

Well, I am back.  And "Why have I not been blogging?" I hear you ask in your thousands. Well, I suppose maybe half a dozen of you might have noticed my absence.  One or two might even have have missed the missives.  I have the best excuse of all time: pure laziness. Writing has had to compete with fishing, sleep, and idleness.  I have not been re-papering the front room, mowing the lawns, repairing the gates.  Nope, and the more I have been out with the rods, the more I have stacked up to write, and the more momentous that task has become. But finally, a few words are hitting the page.

Since India the fishing has taken a couple of directions.  The arrival of the trout season has ensured a few trips to the rivers, with Salmo trutta as the target.   And a few fish have graced the end of my line.  Nothing huge, with fish to three pounds.  But I am not going to spend too much time talking about the trout.   Much of that was effectively done whilst catching them out of season on trips after the grayling.   And of course, once the seasons switched from coarse to game, the nuisance fish switched too. A few grayling were caught and also a solitary chub.  The chub did not look as if it needed the close season.   A very good looking fish, and at an ounce over four pounds ( I was unable to resist weighing it), my largest from the river for a couple of years.  A shame it did not really count.   Actually two chub...I have just remembered another one, maybe half the size, which intruded upon the trout fishing.

Cormorant Damage on a Good Sized Chub

    There seem to be few chub in the river these days.   Massed black death: cormorants, have seen off so many of the bigger fish, with goosanders also dealing quite effectively with smaller species. Even the common roach is a rarity, and I have gone whole seasons without landing one from the river.

So it was then on to the tench, and my first few trips were to a banker water, one in which I suspected I would catch a few fish.  After all, I had caught tench there in January, February and March,  so April should not be too much of a problem.  And it wasn't.  One trip produced 5 fish, to just shy of six pounds.   Despite their  heavy activity in the opening months of the year, they were still showing no signs of holding any spawn, which pleased me.  All fought very well, as tench invariably do.   But I did have a problem, and not for the first time.  On this trip I was to lose three other fish, on consecutive casts, and all to hook pulls. Were these the only three fish I have lost then I would have dismissed this as a statistical blip,  but I have lost a few other fish, tench and grayling.     Losing the grayling I can fully understand, the upper jaw of the fish is very bony and hard.  A hook in the upper jaw will very often have penetrated only a millimetre or so, and, regardless of it being a barbed or barbless hook, that hold is vary precarious.  A with a fish of a lively nature, such as is the grayling, a lost fish or two is to be expected. There have been days when I have lost half of the grayling I hooked, usually immediately, and it is part of the game, it is to be expected, rule 1.  But tench are different, their mouths are tough, but not so tough as to prevent a sharp hook, and most modern hooks are very sharp indeed when new, from taking a good hold.    And those three fish losses were not immediate.  All were lost well into the fight, as much as a couple of minutes having passed, before the fish was off and away.  I have no explanation for this.  I am happy with my hook choices.  Those fish that I did land were all hooked perfectly, with not a clue as to why the hooks had pulled out of other fish. I feel that I can look at a hook, and taking into account its size and pattern, be confident with my choice.   Other times, with other patterns, or maybe a larger size in the same pattern, I feel that the hook is not perfectly suited to the job.   But my lost fish over the last two season have not all been with one size or even one model of hook.  I am reluctant to assign the get out phrase of "just bad luck", but I can think of no other explanation at the moment.    

The grebes seem to have also been hit by bad luck.   They had been nesting on my previous trip.   This time they were nowhere to be seen, and a coot had taken over the nest site.   Which was annoying as, one day I had driven there with just my camera...no rods...not intention of fishing.   And the damned grebes had gone. Such is life.

Having sated the lust for a few post India tench, it was time to move on to some more difficult waters, waters in which the tench swim bigger...some of them.    The "easy water" has given me fish to 6-14, the others have all produced fish over seven.   In my past a seven pounder would have been seen as more or less unattainable, but these days I am learning rapidly just how far the bar has been raised, and so, despite my vow not to return to being an all out specimen hunter, I have the chance to catch these huge fish with a more leisurely approach.    So water number one, a fair sized reservoir was home for a couple of nights.   The tench were partying elsewhere and my efforts were to be rewarded by a solitary male fish of about four and three quarter pounds.    I lost another fish, a carp which on being hooked came up seven feet or so to the surface, and with a large swirl of water, was away.    I suspect that it was never properly hooked.  It probably would not have been over about ten pounds, as I have yet to land a double figure carp in this water.   Swifts, swallows, house martins and sandmartins all made guest appearances over the water.    

Coot, Sitting on Huge Blue Feet.

Eventually I settled on yet another water, much closer to home than the aforementioned reservoir.  A water from which I extracted just three tench last year.  But their sizes promised much.   The first trip was an overnight session, in a new swim, and a very misty night produced just one small tench, probably less than three pounds.  A few fish were seen to roll, but I was unable to persuade them to come out and see me. In the early morning mist I did see a pair of the resident grebes perform the "penguin" dance.  A birdwatcher friend told me that the dance was so called. I have often seen pairs of grebes, alternately shaking their heads, occasionally dipping their necks down in a momentary preening of the back feathers motion.  But I had never seen the penguin dance, except on TV.   Both birds approached each other, and paddling away  like mad , chest to chest, they raised themselves up high in the water, bodies quite vertical.   Sorry no photo.     The coots, as ever, were being aggressive, chasing and squabbling with each other, often lying on their backs, kicking away with their ridiculous blue feet.

Coot, Being Aggressive With a Mallard

As I drove home along the motorway, I was surprised to see a pair of magpies, fighting on the hard shoulder.  Like the coots, these were lying on their backs, on the tarmac, kicking away merrily with both feet.  Something new, as I have never seen magpies acting quite so before.  "Two for joy?"  Far too often, I see things that are either too brief, or simply at the wrong place, wrong time to get a photo.   Hanging out of the passenger window, whilst driving at 60 mph pointing a camera, was a risk that not even I was prepared to take for you, the reader. So, in the absence of a "selfie", from said magpies, tough.

The next trip to the lake was to be a blank, just a dawn until midday trip.  Very few fish were seen, despite a flat calm lake surface, and a choice of swim that allowed me to see the whole lake.  A slow movement caught my attention though, and a three pound pike drifted slowly into the swim, a few inches below the surface.   Donning my polaroid glasses, I could see that it was many yards from any potential prey. But next time I looked, a second, slightly smaller pike had appeared three or four yards from the first.  They remained for an hour or so, basking in the sunshine.  As I watched them, I noticed something trapped in the scum at the lake edge, and fished it out with my landing net.  It was a cockchafer beetle....

"Yes, yes, I know!   I wouldn't want one of those in my underpants either".   

I thought it had drowned, but it twitched one of its legs slightly.  So, as I was not being disturbed by massed ranks of eager hungry tench, I placed the beetle on the handle of my rod to dry out, and brushed its back to clear off some parachute seed heads that had become stuck to it.  After an hour or so, it moved a little, turning around on the handle.  Eventually it flew off, rattling as it went.  I felt quite pleased with myself, having rescued it. But just take a look at those crazy TV aerials on its head.  The seven individual leaves on each side can by closed up from the fan shape by the insect.   Each leg has a twin hook at its end, and its grip on my finger, in the photograph, was very secure. A tornado would not have dislodged it. What an insane, superb creature.

The next two sessions both produced fish.  Simple legering tactics on the first morning resulted in two tench, a small fish of a couple of pounds and a very nice fish indeed of 7-8.   I was surprised that, given the very mild Winter, it was not bloated and fat with spawn.  Instead it was just a beautifully proportioned and

coloured fish. It has maybe a slight hint of being a two tone fish too.   Top secret bait, as you can see in the

7-8 Female

photo. (Note to the mat police: the fish was on thick wet grass, and came to no harm at all). The next day, also in the early morning I caught another tench in the upper half of the six pound range.  It though had a quite noticeable spawn ball, and I did wonder why all the fish were not at a similar stage of gravidity...gravidness?  Neither word passes the spell checker.  Another fish, which felt much bigger, or which may have been a male was lost to yet another hook pull, after an extended fight. I did not see the fish.

There followed three of four blanks sessions, in each of which a tench or few rolled right over my baited area.  I was surprised a little by the lack of bites in the presence of fish, fish that were obviously attracted by by bait, but, as ever, I would always want such events to occur.  Predictability would destroy much of what I seek from angling.  One session was a night session, float fishing in about 14 feet of water.   No bites at all...until about 11.00 am, when my float slowly lifted and lay flat.  My thoughts of a tench were soon dashed as a two ounce roach came to hand.  A large, probably very large shoal of roach had moved in and three more were hooked, on the drop, in three casts.   As I reeled the last one in, something grabbed it.  Pike, thinks I, but despite the size 14 hook, being already embedded in the roach, I thought I would try to gently bring it to the net.   I soon found it was not a pike, but a perch, with a 8 inch roach half into its mouth.   It spat it out as I looked into the clear water, but soon grabbed it again.   It struggled a bit, and I had to choose whether to strike, and hope enough of the small hook was exposed, or to wait and try to draw the perch over the net very slowly.  I waited until the roach was fully inside the fish's mouth and began to reel in slowly. Of course the perch ejected the roach and swam away.  Size: difficult to say, but well over two pounds for sure, maybe three.  Its stripes were really black, a benefit of life in clear water.  One rod quickly became a lobworm rod, and soon I had a bite.   But the culprit was a slightly disappointing three pound jack pike.

Eight Pounds Nine Ounces

Back to the lake for an early morning session in a new swim. 3.00 am start, and before ten minutes had passed after introducing a smallish amount of bait, two fish, probably tench rolled right on the money.   Very few other fish rolled anywhere, and so I sat, wondering why and how they could ignore my baits.  It was around 8 o'clock, long after the last fish moved, that I had my first bite.   A tench, to judge from the bend in

the rod, and a good one.   Two or three times I thought it had become snagged, but I suspect that it was merely swimming directly away from me, the pressure of my line in accordance with Newton providing an equal and opposite  force.  As it eventually approached the net I saw a huge flank, and knew it to be my biggest tench to date.   8 pounds 9 ounces.   It was well provided with spawn though, and would probably have not touched eight without it.    Would I have preferred it to have been 7-15, without the spawn?  Good Question. But the spawn did not stop it from demonstrating how displeased it was to be so disturbed.  An hour later, the indicator shot up, and the reel began to spin backwards faster than I could have wound it.  I struck and missed!    How could anyone miss such a bite? But as I reeled in a small roach

Super Strong Suicidal Roach

was revealed to have taken the bait.  I might have suspected it had been grabbed by a pike, but its scales were absolutely pristine.   It was just a very fit, suicidal roach.   I wonder what it thought as my strike brought it to a sudden dead stop, directly from warp speed three?  All quiet again, the only movement being from a flotilla of Canada geese with their young.  These geese appear to creche their offspring, and thirteen young were guarded by eight adults.

The guards did not deter the male swan, which now that his mate was on the nest, was attacking anything that swims.   Anywhere on the lake, even hundreds of yards from its nest, the swan was chasing anything that floated.  Geese, mallards, coots.  The coots were also with young now, and as I watched a jay flying very low across the water, dambuster's style, a coot flapped its way across the lake so as to try and intercept the jay.  Ambitious but brave.

Tench: Little and Large

Well, the tench are still calling me, to the exclusion of other species, so my apologies for the monotony of my blog at the moment.  I caught my first tench about fifty tears ago, and even now, when I have a tench on the bank, the sun shining onto its flank, I am still amazed by that green colour. Why does a bottom living fish need to have such fabulous colouration?  Anyway, I have had a couple of tench trips these last few days. But very different in their nature.  One to a recognised tench lake, the other to my Sunday challenge pond.

I arrived early, before the sun did, at  the tench lake.  The surface was half covered in the scum that accumulates in very still conditions, with it covering the far side of the lake from me.   Conditions during the previous day were hot and humid, and nothing seemed as if it would change.    I suspected that the fish would feed early, if at all, and concentrated on getting a baited area set up some fifteen or twenty yards out.  I chose to fish fairly light, with four pound line and 12 hooks ( small for me!).  Maggots, that ever reliable tench bait would be on the hook.    The first cast produced a bootlace eel, but the second fish was a scrapper, a very good tench of 6-10, which after only a brief journey into the lilies, was landed, photographed and returned safely.   A kingfisher flew past about this time, returning a minute or so later, speeding a foot above the water.   The light was still insufficient to show the electric blue of the bird, but its identity was obvious.
Three other, smaller tench were landed, and three lost over the next three hours or so.  One lost to the lilies, one to a hook pull and one to a careless angler from the past.  A few fish in this lake have damage to their mouths, caused by people who do not take proper care when unhooking their fish.   Consequently, what I thought was a hook pull was not. A small piece of tench lip remained on the hook after I reeled in, following the loss of the fish.  I must have hooked into a remnant of a lip.  Some say that carp anglers are to blame, anglers who care only for their precious carp.  I suspect it is more general than that, just anglers eager to get the hook out quickly, but not skilled enough to deal properly with a deep seated hook in a tench's tough lip.  I appeal to all anglers to take their time unhooking fish, and if they do not have the skill level needed, then they should stay with barbless hooks.   I had intentionally put out a few floating casters on the edge of the scum, and two or three carp were nonchalantly sucking them in. One carp, maybe a little over nine pounds, but under ten, came as a bonus fish, having taken my legered maggots.   It fought well on the tench gear, and I struggled for a while to contain it in a small clear area amongst the lilies.    It prompted me to try four casters, next time in, and another  slightly larger carp quickly took those, giving a reel screeching bite.  The baitrunner was overpowered, and the reel revolved rapidly in reverse as the carp scorched off towards the horizon.  It too was eventually played in the lily gap, but made a final and successful bid for freedom into the deeper stalks. Bites predictably dried up as the sun rose higher.

It's Ashes time again, and I wonder if, whilst sitting biteless, I should plug in and listen.  My memory has, so far, been unable to remember to  find the headphones and spare battery pack that came with my new-fangled mobile phone, and until I do remember, the test matches will remain well away from the lakeside.   Whenever I mention cricket, someone pops up and throws in the Brian Johnston commentary about "The batsman's Holding, the..."   You know the one.   But few remember the far more subtle, and far ruder comment made by  commentator Alan Gibson, who said 
"This is Cunis at the Vauxhall End. Cunis, a funny sort of name: neither one thing nor the other."   A very clever comment, and I forgive him the crudity. But poor old Cunis, I bet he has suffered from that remark.

But no headphones today, so I spent the biteless moments watching the great crested grebes.   A month or so ago they had 4 tiny chicks, which spent much of their time riding together on mum's back, whilst the male bird brought them an astonishing number of small fish.  The female did her guard duty with immense dedication, but did not fish herself.  A month later and the four chicks are


A Small Fish is Offered to the Piggy Back Chicks (Last Month)

four fifths grown.   The parents fish far less.  One chick has attached itself to each parent grebe, and defends that parent against all comers.   That includes the 3rd and 4th chicks, and even the odd coot.   Luckily the other two chicks are well able to dive, and although I didn't see them catch any fish, I suspect they are well able to succeed.   I watched a parent with two chicks last year on another water.   Again, one chick repeatedly drove away the second, thus getting all the fish for itself.   As the day progressed that parent bird joined in to chase away the other chick.  I suspect it did not survive.  I knew that adult coots kill some of their young, but had not seen grebes being less that perfect as parents before.  Better parents are the pair of resident mute swans.  For a month the cob has been chasing the mallards around the lake, with astonishing displays of aggression.   Even occasionally taking wing to chase the ducks.   The mallards are obviously not happy with this, but are easily able to keep well out of neck's reach.  The swan is not bright enough to realise that it is never going to catch a mallard, and is never going to drive them from the lake.  So it continues to chase ducks, and so remains a nuisance to all, including the anglers present. 

Things were different on the Sunday pond: a couple of herons jousted for position, but otherwise all was peaceful.


A Heron, Flying over the Sunday Pond.                                                                                                                                   .

  The young moorhens were very independent of the parent birds, rarely going back to them. Very outgoing despite being little more than half grown. I fished a tiny clearing in the prolific pondweed, casting a float into a clear space a couple of feet square. It produced a couple of three ounce tench, as expected, a mini rudd, a small bream and a twelve ounce mirror carp.   A second mirror carp of maybe four pounds ( nearly as big as they go in the pond) exited stage left into the weeds and was instantly lost. A second, a little smaller, shed the hook.   I have yet to see any tench over about a quarter of a pound from this pond. I was told that there used to be 2 or 3 good fish which spawned successfully two or three times, leading to the goodly numbers of tiny tench that I now see.   But, I watched three or four of these small tench chasing each other between the weeds in what I suspect was spawning related activity.  Maybe it was, or maybe the sun brought out high spirits.  most odd: I have always seen tench as being a serious minded sort of fish.

Cheek! Caught a Tench in MY Swim

I fished a new water today, not really expecting to catch anything at all.  The water is big, very big, new to me, gin clear, and I knew little of it  other than its name and location.   But it looked good for tench, and to me that is always enough to get the juices flowing.    And indeed, catching nothing is exactly what happened. The trip became, as expected, merely a reconnaissance expedition.  As such it was not wasted, and as with most of my trips, there were wildlife moments to see and savour.

I cast in as dawn broke, to much birdsong.  I am not the best of people to identify bird species by their songs, and that is possibly as a result of being tone deaf and never singing myself.  When I was eleven, on my first morning at grammar school, I stood immediately behind the music teacher, who played the pipe organ right in front of the row of new boys.   After the first hymn, he turned around    "You boy!  Name?"
  I told him.
 "YOU, boy, are banned from singing for the rest of your life.  I consider it my duty as a musician, to protect the rest of mankind from your intolerable caterwauling."
I have never burst into song since.  I quote him, word for word, and to be honest he was right,  Even if I try to sing to myself, inside my head, silently, I know the notes are wrong.    I didn't pass GCE music.  Wasn't even entered for it.    Ah well, I just hope the rest of you are duly grateful for what you have been spared.

A Songthrush: Listening for Worms.

I did recognise the song thrush almost at the very top of a nearby tree.   After all the easiest way to identify this bird's very variable song is to count the phrase repetitions.  If he usually sings it three times: song thrush....simple mathematics...I was good at maths.



Massed Toadpoles

But let me return to the lakeside.   Soon after dawn a little dabchick emerged from the nearby sedges, and slowly swam right across the lake,   several hundred yards.   He, or she, came back about an hour later.  This epic journey was to be repeated about 4 times during the day.   Why there was no suitable food any closer, I have no idea.  The margins seemed to be brim full of all sorts of little bugs and critters.   Like every other place I have fished recently there were massed toadpoles.    Not seen any frog larvae as yet, but toads are everywhere this year.  Toadpoles are blacker than tadpoles, smaller, and with a shorter tail.  There was more life in the margins than I expected, several times a great crested grebe came, and pushed its way through the marginal rushes and sedges.   Not seeing me it often came as close as a couple of feet from my couple of feet.

A crèche of Canada goslings drifted across the lake, and came on land quite near to me to eat the fresh grass in the field.   There were 23 young, along with four parents.  I don't know why, but most of the Canada  geese  on a lake do not seem to breed, but often those that do guard their offspring collectively.  I have seen three such crèches this year, each attended by four adults.
 Swallows swifts and house martins flew constantly above the lake.   The swifts, so aptly named, flew rapidly, higher up than the other birds, their uniformly dark brown colouration and thin swept back wings clearly identifying them. The swallows, with their thin v tail flew mainly near the water surface.  A speed, and with many twists and turns, they never let a wingtip touch the surface, despite being constantly as low as an inch or two.  The house martins, with that conspicuous white rump, flew at an intermediate height, below the swifts, yet above the swallows.  No sand martins, the smallest of the quartet.  They will be over the river, near their nest holes, and enjoying themselves in exuberant flight, more than any other bird species I have seen.  I watched some flies hatch, emerging from the water surface, and venturing tentatively into the air.  Most were caught by the swallows, who slowed down only slightly as they take the insects in mid flight. Occasionally they would drink from the surface, but also, something I have not noticed before, they often took insects directly off the surface of the water. 

Great Crested Grebe Sharing the Fishing: One for Him, None for Me.

The weeds near my feet moved again, the grebe was back.   But this time, he came back to the surface, with a tench held sideways in his bill.  About four inches the fish was, and as slippery as all tench.  The grebe swam off, all the time struggling to turn and swallow the fish.  Eventually he succeeded, but it found it far more difficult than swallowing a roach..  But the cheek of it: catching a tench, in my swim, on a day I remained biteless.

Heard a cuckoo as well on the day, somewhere the far side of the lake from my position.  Of course that could mean it being a long way away, as the call seems to carry very well indeed.   Odd how the two notes, repeated incessantly as they are, remain enigmatic, and of interest, whereas the five notes of the woodpigeon get on the nerves after a very few minutes.   I did think about going to look for the bird after I finished fishing, but forgot all about it...and it was raining, so I hurried the wet gear into my car and drove home.