Four Rivers, Four Short Trips.

After so much time spent on stillwaters, tenching, followed by a couple of angling trips to highly industrialised areas, I had need to once again see moving water.  As chance would have it, I made four trips to four different streams.   Barbel were still in my mind for the first trip, and although the river is NOT known for its barbel, and has actually produced very few of them for anyone, I was determined to have a try. There are several swims that, were barbel definitely present in the river, would definitely hold barbel.   Of course it is still me, judging the river by its cover, or surface, whereas any barbel would be looking at entirely different factors.  So take the word definitely with that pinch of salt. 

To give myself the best chance on river one, I arrived about midnight, edged cautiously down the steep bank, and hurled lead at two different areas of the swim.   The noisiest thing that then happened during darkness, was the totally silent bats flitting past, and them occasionally tripping over my line.    No barbel, no chub, nothing.   

I had time to ponder, and started to think about galaxies, and spiral galaxies in particular.    The spiral arms are a sure sign that the whole of the galaxy is rotating, that it has a large amount of rotational energy. But when the galaxy first formed it cannot have then shown any spiral characteristics.  They could only have developed as a result of the rotation  itself.   Initially though, there must have been some structure, blobby areas of dust or gas clouds or some such, from which the arms might develop.  As gravity drew it closer, so any inherant rotational energy would have formed the flattened disc, and as the matter structures condensed, they would tend to string out. In a manner similar to the planets in the Solar System, as the stars/dust/gas clouds got closer to the centre, so they would tend to rotate faster, in order to preserve  constancy of angular momentum.  Hence the spiral would be generated.   The idea I then had,  which I realise is certain not to have been missed by astronomers, is that somehow, it must be possible to use the tightness of the spiral to measure how old the galaxy is?  The mathematics is way beyond me ( and I am myself no slouch with numbers),  but I wonder if this might be part of how they calcualted how old the universe is?   Are globular galaxies far older, their spiral structures obliterated by time, or are they galaxies with little initial angular momentum?  No doubt I shall spend other biteless nights thinking about this one...and getting nowhere.

 Daylight, and I converted one rod to fish for smaller species.  This was a good plan and eventually I had landed 4 grayling, with a couple of the fish being about a pound.  Unusually: no trout.  In this area of the river I invariably see and hook a trout or two: but not on this day.  The river seemed far more devoid of fish than in any previous trip.  It also had more signs of angling pressure.   Worn banking, litter, and signs of someone being very obnoxious: toilet paper.  This was very near to a giant hogweed plant,  one of only two examples I have ever seen on this river.  I hoped, probably without much real chance, that the plant had managed to burn him seriously where it might hurt him the most. The first plant I had seen on the river was destroyed a couple of years ago by the council.  I destroyed the new plant myself, being very careful indeed to avoid the sap.

Trip two, and a different river, one I have fished very little these last two years or so.   I found a delightful little spot, and fished generally, not bothered as to the species I might catch.   Early morning dog walkers passed by and one stopped to chat, asking what fish the river held.   After a few minutes he asked whether he knew me.   I thought not.  But as he then appeared to correctly guess both my Christian and Surnames I concluded that, after all, he maybe  did know me.   He was on my university course, back in the late sixties!   I didn't recognise him at all.   Coincidence indeed, and a sign that my memory is not keeping up with others in my age group.  And he was a couple of months older than me.

The river is small, and I feel that, if I am not catching or getting bites, it is time to change swims.   As I prepared to do so, a large splash at the waters edge drew my attention.   I thought it a fish, but minutes later a rustling in the vegetation proved to be a mink.   No more than 4 feet away.  It wanted to get past me and move upstream.   I prepared the camera,   and when it did finally pass, took a quick shot.    Of course it is blurred from movement and poor focus, and is now deleted from the camera.  I was surprised that close up it was a deep brown, and not black.  Maybe a young one?     I was to see three more in different swims that morning, another single beast, and a pair that were obviously together.  They provided me with another blurred photo.   All were a deep chestnutty brown.    I am sure all I have seen before were black. Definitely mink though.   The last swim I chose was at the base of a very fast ripply section.  A "V" of fast water spiked on down into a large wide slackish pool, the "V" reducing in width as it went.    I decided to lob a bait into the far border of the fast and slow water.     It then started to rain: hard rain, and I sheltered as best I could under a standard sized gentleman's umbrella.   I was travelling a little too light again.  On the other side of the river was a concrete culvert, carrying little more than a drip.   Within 15 minutes this became a torrent, and I could see the river at the far side of the "V" turning grey from the new water.  It was motorway run-off: Grey and smelly water, made worse for being the first significant rain for some time.   I knew from previous experience that it would put the fish off, and so cast shorter, to the clean, closer part of the river. The first bite  had been some time coming, but finally a vicious bite.  On the strike a fair trout jumped, and soon a fish of a little under two pounds was drawn over the rim of the net.  The rain had stopped, but a goodly amount of water had been dumped in a short time.   Soon the rest of the river turned grey, as other motorway run-off slipways upstream, had added their own disgusting load into the river.   I knew it was time to go.    

The trip to river three nearly didn't happen.  I had planned an afternoon and evening session, but as I reached for my rods in the utility room, a crack of thunder preceded a huge short downpour.   Not knowing how long the rain would last I left the rods where they were, and settled down to read.  As I did so I heard a drip, then a lot more drips.  The ceiling over my bay window was leaking water...a lot of water. The rain soon stooped and I rushed to get the ladder and climbed up to find the two inch recess atop the flat roof was full of water.   The drain had become blocked, and the easiest overflow path was into my lounge.   Not difficult to resolve, but annoying when I had decided it was time to head for the hills and the river.  I arrived on the bank later than I expected. A young dipper, already free from the influence of parents, was messing about in the shallows nearby.  It did not yet have the white chest. All the characteristic actions of the species, but minus the uniform.

It was already 4 o'clock before my float made its first trot down.   Again grayling were my target.   A target  set and not achieved.  I could not get past the trout.  Around 16 or 18 of them, all between 6 and 12 ounces.   Apart from one.   I trotted the float down near the far bank , an upstream wind helping the light rod and centrepin keep the bait near the far bank, and as the float drifted under an overhanging tree, it bobbed and disappeared. A trout, looking all of 12 ounces immediately jumped, and then gave a truly virtuoso fight.   Down river, up the river, never showing itself at all.   I didn't quite understand how it had so much power and stamina.   Eventually it surface and splashed, and I could see I had underestimated its size.  But it was still no more than a pound and a few ounces, and the fight was more akin to  that of a four pound fish.  It didn't feel to be foul hooked either.   Once it had splashed it was to keep doing so, no matter how much I kept the rod tip down.  It ran back to where I had hooked it and splashed on the surface, quite heavily, for a good 25 seconds.  As I netted it a short time later, I had concluded that any more fish from the swim would be less likely than winning the lottery without having entered.     The fish though, had the misfortune to have been hooked in the adipose fin.   As a result the scrap was somewhat orgasmic,  it did not feel as if it had been foulhooked, and did not seem to get tired at all, always wanting more.   Even in the net, after an unduly long scrap it was still full of energy.   My very next cast though hooked another fish, also a trout ,in exactly the same spot.   The splashing had had no effect on the other fish at all, but seeing the float in the encroaching darkness was now getting too difficult, and I went home.  

Yesterday, trip four , river four.   Another small stream, one new to me.  I had walked the bank once, but without a rod to hand.   Most of these small stream are shallow when the flow is low, and, using polaroid sunglasses it is often possible to become absolutely certain, that there are absolutely NO fish present.  Odd though it seems, the fish have the ability to completely disappear at times.  Subsequent fishing will often completely dispell that, and swims that seem vacated of fish, become alive with them once a bait is stealthily introduced.

A pool below a rapid seemed as good a place as any in which to start, and a large lump of bread accompanied a single swan shot leger, was tossed in just to the edge of the fast water.  After a while I decided to recast, and as I started to reel in I thought I had a little knock.  My reactions were too slow, I was already winding in.   So I cast back to the same spot.  and a short while later the rod end rapped a couple of times, and a hard fighting fish shot up into the rapids above me.   It proved to be a chub, a little over three pounds.  Blank saved.    Next cast a little further downstream.  Whilst I waited, a dipper, an adult this time, did an upstream flypast,   followed a few minutes later by the return trip.   The bite, when it came was a small trout, maybe a half pound or so, but one that liked bread.    Time to move on, and things did not continue so well:  one swift, missed bite trotting maggots down a shallow run.  A couple of kingfishers flashing their way past.   I moved on, finding a deeper swim below a dangerously overhanging big willow.  The bread remained untouched, and I could just about see it on the bottom in the clear water, three or four feet down.    Any fish would have been invisible: havont not the colour contrast to highlight its presence.   The rod was resting immobile between my fishing stool and a willow branch.  There was a lot of hogweed nearby, some of the smaller plants being within a foot of my feet, and I confess that, after all the recent hoo-hah in the press about the dangers of hogweed, its presence made me quite nervous.

A sudden voice behind me, belonging to the guy who looks after the stretch of river, startled me, and

Sandpiper, White Wing Stripe Visible.

caused me to turn around.  Looking back, a couple of sentences later, the rod tip was curving downstream, it was bent but static.   Something had happened as I spoke my greeting.  I think it was a fish, the rod had been unmoving for far too long, but if a fish, it was already in the tree roots, and eventually I pulled for a break.   No more fish, but it was pleasing to see a sandpiper flying up and down a couple of times, to and from a bank of gravel, displaying a distinctive white zigzag across its wings, as I walked back to the car and the end of the session.    As all sandpipers seem to do, it flew fast and low, with very stiff looking wings.

Finally, did everyone see that match report in the Angling Times this week?  New match record.   Over half a ton on carp in a 5 hour match won the prize.   Half a ton of carp, averaging 8 pounds.  doing the maths, that is one 8 pound carp every two minutes, allowing the odd moment for rebaiting and casting in.  The fishery owner claims his fish are well looked after, but a carp every two minutes sounds like skull dragging to me.   Anyone wish to take bets on the lips of those fish still being irresistably kissable?
A quote from the article: "sometimes 75% of the stock is caught in a match"  So are we saying the fish are all caught every two or three days? Again and again?   Yet they are still hungry, despite hoards of anglers "feeding every 30 seconds...or else they move next door"  which was one quote I read.    It all defies realistic description.

 I am wary of being too critical though: when all has been said and done, waters like these keep the match anglers well away from the places I want to fish.

It has taken me a while to publish this and for that I apologize.  In the meantime a few more small river trips have materialized, and the catches of grayling have been improving, and the trout have been ever present.   More, maybe, in the next sermon.

A final, final bit:  one other blogger recently reviewed some tackle on sale at Aldi.   He particularly liked the cheap, small one man shelter.  Another item, unreviewed, was a case of floats.   My wife has just gone to the Ear East for a couple of months, and although she disapproved of my fishing whilst she is here ("The smells! The smells!"), it would seem that she is encouraging me to fish whilst she is away.   So she bought me the tube of floats.  Do I sense a suspicious woman? I shall not make comment on the floats themselves, but, included were some hooks to nylon and a circular, 8 segment box of lead shot.  7 different sizes.  Wonderful.  Look at the photograph.     Each segment contains exactly ONE shot, no more, no less.  I find that rather amusing, taking economy to its very  limits.

At Last: Back for the Grayling

Interesting day yesterday.  Finally, after some weeks of high water, I was able to get back on the river. Project grayling.  Still just a little high, but certainly very fishable,  the water having cleared quite well, and only a few centimetres above the normal level for this time of year.   I had decided to fish a few different swims for an hour or so each.  On any smallish  river it seems rather pointless to remain static when after grayling.   They are not too difficult to catch as a rule, and after a couple of hours without one, I usually conclude that they are either not feeding, not there, or else the Gods are against me on the day.  

  

I had intended to be at my first choice of swim as soon as it was light enough to see a float, but I misjudged again, and was perhaps 30 minutes too late.   But I don't find that grayling feed much better in that first half hour, so it mattered very little.  I travelled light,  tackle and bait in a small landing net, one rod, a long handled small landing net, for I would, in one swim, have to stretch over extensive bankside vegetation, straining to reach and net any fish hooked there.  Too good looking a swim by far to ignore.   And a small folding stool... a small folding stool... a small...Damn!   I reached the first swim and realised I had left the stool in the car.    I had travelled even lighter than I had wished.   The water is too deep for wading, and being on the sunny side of the stream I did not wish to stand up, illuminated in full view.   Glancing around I saw, on the bank, something bright pink in colour.   Investigating, it proved to be a Disney Store food mixing bowl.   In perfect condition, still with the sticky price label attached.   Someone must have thrown it into the river upstream.  No idea why.   Although a bit garish in shocking pink, adorned with Mickey Mouse graphics, it is now in use in the kitchen.    On the bank it became, upside down, my seat for the day.  Not very generous in its level of comfort, but better than sitting on the grass, which was still coated in the residue from recent spate conditions.   

Travelling light, with the rod already made up, my almost ubiquitous 12 foot travel barbel rod ( I use it for almost anything except barbel) , makes for a very rapid deployment of tackle, and I was fishing within five minutes.   I was playing a fish within ten minutes, second cast.    It was an out of season brownie of about three quarters of a pound.  But a very healthy and fit looking fish.   

No sooner had my third cast hit the water than the bait was taken, and a fish charged downstream against the four pound line.  I caught a flash of a fair fish as it turned sideways.   That was the last time I saw it for quite a while. It stayed deep, but was very lively, refusing to be drawn to the surface, and I had visions of a huge grayling in my head.   Only in my head though, for the fish, after a lengthy and utterly superb scrap, proved to be another brownie.  A brown trout of no less than three pounds eleven ounces.   Again, out of season, and looking rather thin,   but at that size it was my biggest trout from the river, and so it had to be weighed for interest's sake.   Its slim body did not stop it putting up that brilliant scrap.  Very entertaining.   After a photograph it was returned safely, swimming off strongly.  The small landing net was quite inadequate for the size of fish.  Another lesson driven home ( one I should have remembered well) : forget the size of fish you expect to catch, and gear up for the larger ones that might just appear unexpectedly.

I usually find that the trout are quickest to find the bait, and that unfortunately, even out of season you often have to catch a resident trout or two first, before the grayling move in.    Unfortunately the theory failed on this occasion, no grayling coming to the net from the swim.   

About 9 o'clock a jet black mink stole cautiously along the riverside edge other bank.  It was in deep shadow, and being black, a good photograph was out of the question, even had I had the correct lens fitted. So I still have not managed any good pictures of mink.   Seeing it though, once again emphasised how surprising it is that some people still mistake them for otters.    More like an all black squirrel.  I should probably apologise to all those who saw and groaned at the joke earlier in this paragraph, but I am not going to...so there,  tough!   .

I fished another four swims before heading home.   At about half past two my hands started to turn blue, and I deemed it advisable to retire gracefully, with all my fingers intact.       Three of those swims were to give me a single brown trout each, all around the half pound mark, but the grayling remained stubbornly absent.   The grayling are not prolific in the river, and so I shall not complain too severely.     

But to come back to the big trout.   Its spot pattern was very different to all other trout I have taken from the river.   Like the grayling the trout are not prolific, and to catch five in one day has quite astonished me. What a shame it was the close season.    They are most probably wild fish, none ever having been stocked into the stream locally. That I know for certain.  Ten or fifteen miles or so upstream is the nearest that any trout are likely to have been stocked, and I must suspect that the fish I catch have been born in the river itself.  

There follow four pictures of trout I have caught from this stream.  The first is an absolutely stunning looking fish.  Such gorgeous evenly spread red and black spots, all with white surrounds on a fabulous greeny gold background.  Not a huge fish but an incredibly beautiful specimen.

Utterly Gorgeous Brownie Looking Surprised

The second fish is a very spotty fish, lots and lots of black spots, and if those spots are encircled with white, then the white blends in as a background, rather than as individual rings.

Many Black Spots

The third fish is the three pounds eleven fish from yesterday. It carries an absolute mass of both black and red spots, all very small, and is most unlike the other fish. It is the only fish I have caught that looks even remotely like this.

Enough Spots to Make a 1960's Measles Epidemic Quite Jealous.

The fourth fish is the first trout I ever caught from the stream, and actually my first fish of any species from it. Different again. It was also the first fish I caught after a break of more than 30 years not touching my rods. At the time I caught it, I suspected it might be a sea trout, but I have little knowledge of sea trout, never having knowingly caught one.  I have had several fish that I thought might have been guilty, but always, when asked, a more experienced sea trout angler has diagnosed the fish to be brown.  I really don't know myself, and suspect that, until I have seen a definite sea trout or two, I shall remain confused.  But at least, to judge from reading the odd forum and web site, I am not on my own struggling for positive IDs. That makes me feel a little better that, after more than 50 years with a rod, I still struggle to identify some of our native game fish.   Then again, I might just be damned annoyed that I have yet to catch one!

Apparently not a Sea Trout. (note the fibreglass rod)

 So: four fish, all apparently brownies, all looking very different from each other with vastly different spot patterns, all from the same small river. The genetics of trout must be quite fascinatingly complex.  Look at the first two: the spots are all very distinct from each other, but on one fish, scattered quite widely, on the other, very closely.  Yet something has arranged the spots so that none overlap, and the spread of spots in each case is very even.  The genetics to produce such an effect must be very complex indeed.  The third fish seems almost to break these rules, with spots scattered willy nilly, every available space being taken up by a spot, each spot being much smaller, no room for the white borders, and many spots appearing to overlap.  

I tried to do a bit of research a while back, to see whether anyone had investigated how genetics governs these patterns on animals: tigers, zebras etc., as well as fish.  I have found that there is very little information to be found, although surely someone must be researching it?   Life itself is very complex, and mixed in with life as a general theme, are all sorts of little extras, like these spotting and striping patterns which add yet more wonder to the entire process.   Oddly the only name I could find, who had done any research on this was Alan Turing, the genius who more or less invented the digital computer, down in Bletchley park, during the war.    I have to suspect that somewhere within these patterns,  the concepts of fractals, and similar mathematics will be found.  It is obvious that the spot patterning must in some way be encoded into the DNA.  Each and every trout is different, and so it also is apparent that every single spot, its colour and its position cannot be individually coded into the DNA of the fish.  So the DNA must code  for the process, rather than for the generation of each individual spot.  Some algorithms must be at work which ensure that the spots are randomly, yet fairly evenly, spaced.  The DNA has to decide in some way, how many spots and where, their colour, shape and size, and to ensure, as seems to be generally the case, that there is no overlap. There has to be some highly complex, underlying mathematics , a university style maths text book, written entirely as sequences of 4 different nitrogen bases: Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Guanine (G) and Cytosine (C). You may think that 4 is not enough...but all the data, in all the computers in the world, is just stored by TWO different numbers, or representational states: One and zero.  The four bases also code for the species, how many leaves, fins  or legs a creature or plant has, how it grows, all the biological processes going on inside its body and indeed anything it is able to do for itself following its birth. For a fish everything it needs to survive is coded into its DNA. Very few species of fish get any help from their parents. We might refer to it as instinctive behaviour, all encoded into the DNA.  DNA and the way it is coded into full recipes for life is way beyond my comprehension, but is obviously one of the wonders of our world...if not its greatest miracle.  I see things written, about our having sequenced the human genome, and tabulated it in, ( I think), about 20 thick volumes. Sequencing it is the simple part, just a listing of ALL the bases in order.  Decoding exactly how that translates into Fred Bloggs, or even that solitary hair on his little finger, is a whole other ball game, and the best anyone yet seems to have come up with is that certain genes, affect certain characteristics...say eye colour, or the various genetic diseases. The process of how the DNA within that gene specifies blue eyes will probably never, in my opinion, be fully understood.
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If anyone reading this should know anything about how the leopard really gets his spots, I should be grateful for a few tips, as to where I need to look next.    

Expedition Zander

I don't think I have written anything about zander to date. Certainly not much.  But of course, as I age, my memory remains just as  dreadful, certainly not getting anywhere near that instant recall that competitors on mastermind have. So I might have already written reams of highly entertaining stuff about zander...but I doubt it.

There are no zander anywhere near my home, but there is no doubt that zander are spreading about the country. I read that originally just 23 fish were taken from Woburn Abbey and transplanted into the middle level somewhere in the fens, in the early sixties, maybe late fifties.  Nothing was heard of them for a while, until "fishing" magazine, now a defunct publication, had some correspondence and maybe an article or two as well, about strange "V" shaped marks being found on livebaits. As I recall, again probably imperfectly, it was about another year before the culprits were found to be zander.   The original gang of 23 had evidently bred very successfully.  And zander now, fifty years later, cover a very wide area, including, as we all know, much of the Trent and Severn catchments, and the canal system in the Midlands.  Once zander start to breed in a water they seem to do so very successfully.   But of course there will always be the odd angler who helps them on their way, and I was informed this week that zander have now been found, by both anglers and the EA, in the Sankay Canal ( also known as the St. Helen's Canal).   This is a long way from their established bases, and will undoubtedly become another centre for the distribution and spread of the species.  The North West will probably not remain zander free much longer.

I am a little concerned about how genetically strong the UK zander population might be.   Just 23 fish, being the mothers and fathers of all our UK zander is a very small population of fish, even in the highly unlikely event that all 23 were actively breeding.   Any other species breeding with such low numbers would be causing grave concern amongst biologists, who would have fully justified fears about the amount of genetic variation in the species.  Especially so, as the original Woburn fish were most likely of limited genetic variability themselves.   How many individuals were introduced into the Sankay Canal?   It is highly likely that only one pair have successfully bred there, resulting in a mass of sibling fish, and more future genetic weakness.  Each new irruption of zander into fresh areas is likely to be degrading the genetic variability still further.  It may be argued that the EA, and others will not be overly concerned about how genetically weak any invasive species is, for it might, perchance, give them a crevice, a small window, through which a successful control or extermination method might be placed. Those who would like to see the zander genes more variable could easily campaign for the introduction of fresh genetic stock brought in from the continent.    The fish I see do look pretty healthy, and maybe they have got away with it.  I see far less zander photographs showing deformities than I do of barbel. Yet many of the barbel introductions have been legal, and bred at EA fish farms, where one might assume they know what they are doing. Deformed barbel are still caught with some frequency though, and I suspect that a lack of genetic variability is the cause.

My first zander was caught about three years ago, and came as a complete shock to me.  Having taken a 30 odd years sleep, well away from fishing, I had no idea how far certain species of fish had spread.   The numbers of carp I saw everywhere horrified me.  I had no idea that barbel were present in my local stream, let alone being so prolific in the Trent, until I caught one locally. And until I reeled in that very first zander, I had no idea that the Trent held them.  Even as I reeled it in, I initially thought it to be a somewhat oddball small pike. But there is no reason on this earth for a zander on the bank to be confused with any other species, despite frequent attempts to cause such confusion by naming them pike-perch.

Zander in Sharp Focus

  This picture shows the head of my first zander.  The teeth come as quite a shock at first sight, and although the zander's dentition may not come close to that of the magnificent tiger fish of Africa, it still has a sufficiently impressive set of teeth as to make me want to keep my fingers well away.  I kept this vampire fish pointing firmly North, whilst staying in the deep South myself. The teeth seem to be, in my opinion, well designed to grip and hold slippery, lively prey.  And so, although deadbaits are so very often quoted as the zander bait supreme, I am not so sure.  The other interesting feature is the eye.  Note its cloudy appearance.  A closely related species in America is known as the walleye, and it shares that same blank look in its eye.   It is probably due to the fish having a reflective retina, so as to improve its night vision, and it is this eye, above all other features that identifies the fish as being primarily a low light feeder.  

Catching ONE zander was of course never going to be enough for me, especially as that first fish was an entirely accidental capture.  So a second trip, specifically for a Trent zander was planned, albeit a year later.  The results would show, a) whether my ideas for seeking zander would work, and b) whether there were many more zander in the river.  Pleasingly that trip did indeed result in the river giving up of itself another zander.  Not huge at about five and a half pounds, but neither was it tiny.   My wife has always moaned that we never eat the fish I catch, and so, knowing that zander are supposed to be very good eating indeed, I phoned her and asked her to look up a zander recipe.  Her enthusiasm for me as a hunter/gatherer crashed immediately, and she refused point blank to have anything to do with cooking the fish.  Women!  The dogma of many years reversed in an instant. Perhaps that is what they mean by being good at multi-tasking?  Maybe the teeth  in my earlier photograph had put her off?   So, the fish, which had been recovering in the landing net, went back into the river.   Recovering?  Well hardly, as the fish had not given any sort of Olympic performance when hooked.  It had limped effortlessly to the net. I was quite disappointed.   The lack of scrap has probably been a factor in my not having fished for them since.  

The Very Perch-like First Dorsal Fin

I watched an angler fishing for grayling yesterday, in a river that I thought was not at all in the right mood for the species.  It was high, very coloured, and flowing a little too fast for comfort.  In such unsuitable conditions I would go and fish elsewhere.  This chappie soldiered on.  He complained of frequent bites but no fish hooked.  I suspected he was having other problems entirely, and suggested to him that the "bites" on his leger gear were perhaps not from fish.  He disagreed and so I suggested that there was one easy way to find out.   Maybe it is symptomatic of the spoon fed modern angler, but he was unable to see, without my helpful "hints", that if he fished without any hookbait and still got similar bites then they were not from fish. I despair at times for the modern angler.  So many are little more than pre-programmed robots in their approach to angling.   The river was, and still is very high, and full of leaves swirling past in the current. The river is very coloured, flowing at speed, and not easily fished at the moment.
  

 This lack of decent river fishing for grayling during the last fortnight, due to the regular, repeated rainfall, and consequential highly coloured water, has left me with the need to look elsewhere.   I looked for pike yesterday along the local canal,  My lures were ignored, or perhaps did not pass anywhere near to the resident pike.  And it rained, rained in repeated heavy short storms.  Some decorated with added hailstones.    I wandered along the towpath with a standard gents' umbrella stuck down the back of my coat, in a very "look, no hands" manner, and was able to fish efficiently, if for no actual reward. I got some very odd looks from the four man ladies' rowing teams that were sculling up and down the canal.  But at least I was dry,  whereas they, in their team T shirts, looked absolutely saturated and were quite obviously, even to the untrained observer, freezing cold.  Never fails to amaze me how some people will quite stupidly go out in the cold and wet to do sports.  A couple of the young ladies must be anglers as well, surprising me with their enterprising storage of 12 mm halibut pellets.

So despite the very definite attractions of another day's local pike fishing, tomorrow I shall once again head off with a zander in mind.   The aim will be to intentionally catch a zander, any size, any shape, any colour. The target will be a new water for me, one I have yet to see, never mind fish. I have been assured that it is a day ticket venue.  So, small zander with luck, and maybe I'll play with the bigger specimens at some time in the future.

There will now be a short commercial break, whilst I bugger off with my rods and you slip into something more comfortable to watch Coronation Street.

                                                                   ..............................

OK.  I have returned.  All on the edge of your seats wondering how my day went?  Well not badly to begin with,  the 100 mile journey was made in darkness, early morning, as I hoped to be fishing by about 3am.  Clear empty roads, no rain.   Until the exit from the motorway all was fantastic. Apart from the extensive road works of course...and those average speed cameras.   My SatNav cut in and "Jane" said
"Take the exit."
I did,
"At the roundabout take the 5th exit."    
There was a fair bit of traffic on the roundabout, and so, by the time I realised that the 5th exit would take me back along the same motorway, but in the opposite direction, I was stuck,  and had no option but to rejoin the motorway.  Travelling the wrong way.  At this point I had one of my frequent conversations with Jane.
"Stupid bitch!  What on earth are you thinking, you idiotic woman?"
And as I looked at the screen I realised that if I followed her next instructions, we would be doing another U-turn at the next motorway junction.   And so on ad infinitum, except that the biting fleas would all be the same size!   In order to avoid going round that loop again and again, I reprogrammed the SatNav to avoid motorways, and with a few more cutting remarks to Jane, I reached the first of 4 possible fishing spots I had chosen with Google Earth.  
I often end up having arguments with Jane.   And when by myself I can get away with all sorts of misogynistic comments, without any danger of retaliation, or prosecution.   I can say exactly what I like to the silly bitch.     Not so back home, but, having had a massive disagreement with Jane, I can treat an argument with the wife very differently.  I can stay calm and quiet, not shout at all and just respond logically and sedately to any of her shouted accusations.   It might still end up as a "3-day no speaking", but I just pretend it is not happening and speak normally.   BUT, all our female friends say that my tactics are unfair, and that I should really be shouting back.   Unfair!   Unfair it may be, but shouting back would still get me that 3 day Coventry treatment.

The other game you can play with the SatNav is to choose the "use shortest route" option.   All those trucks that get stuck down tiny lanes have chosen the shortest route option.    They may well have saved themselves three and a half miles over a two hundred mile journey, but now they are stuck, and it has taken them an hour longer to get there as well.    By car you don't get stuck, but you do get to see all sorts of new and unexplored places:  " Nether Wallop in the Wold" and similar.    I have found two previously unknown tribes in deepest Staffordshire whilst on shortest routes.

But, now two hours late, I finally cast in my two rods, each floatfishing with a starlight atop the float.   One close in, and near to a moored boat, the other near the far bank, and under a tree.   The location did not look at all like it did on Google Earth.   A series of apartment blocks have appeared since the aerial photograph was taken.  My eyes looked left and then right continuously monitoring both floats,  and after only twenty minutes the right hand float had moved a couple of feet.   I watch it slowly move a bit more, very stop-start, nothing definite, but my eventual strike made contact with a small fish.  It splashed briefly on the surface before shedding the hook.

In the dark I could only assume that it was a zander, and it looked not more than a pound or so.    Daylight returned, and I could see in detail a small footbridge over the water.   A metal sculpture was attached to the bridge, and featured birds and fish.   Surprisingly one of them appears to be a zander:  two dorsal fins, with the front one quite spiny. The photograph will pinpoint my fishing location to any local readers, but my meagre captures on the day are unlikely to have anyone rushing out there with their rods. The rain, which kept off during the journey, started as soon as I got out of the car.   Not heavy, but persistent.  I waited for a gap in the rain, brief though it was and then, after taking a small perch on a livebait and losing another 12 inch fish on deadbait, I moved a few miles down the road.  Here in the daylight the floats remained quite stationary.   The rain was a constant drizzle, not so fine as to be called mist, yet fine enough that it seemed not to fall, but to travel quite horizontally despite minimal wind.    The umbrella therefore did little to keep me dry, and the situation became thoroughly miserable.  Not many birds to watch either, although a female sparrowhawk flew by carrying a small prey bird in one foot.  One bright spot was provided by a pest controller, who was out trapping mink.   He was also not having any luck, which was a good thing, as he told me I was fishing an area which had a prolific population of water voles.   I didn't see one though.  Not seen a water vole for several decades.
There was some activity in the depths: a couple of deadbaits came back obviously suffering from the attentions of signal crayfish.   Finally a real  bite, and I struck into very momentary resistance.   Reeled in to find that my wire trace had given out.  A friend who has just stopped fishing had given me some gear, including some traces.   I should have checked them, for the wire had come adrift from the crimp, losing me the fish and a single hook. Memo to self: make up my own wire traces in future!
But eventually another run materialized, as tentative as the others and resulted in a zander on the bank. It almost seemed as if the fish had become exhausted dragging my very small float about  After catching a couple of the world's smallest grayling, and some minuscule pike in recent weeks, I can now lay claim to the nation's smallest zander too.

Tiny, but Already an Effective Predator.

Cute little fellow, taking a minnow deadbait half his own length.   I fished on three hours into darkness, but the lack of runs and the constant drizzle eventually took its toll, and I packed up and drove home.
So  200 miles driven, a day spent immersed in the drizzle, for a tiny perch and an even smaller zander.  Was it worth it?  Of course it was.   Was it worth you reading about it?  No idea.

All Grebes, Swallows and no Crucians

Set out very early yesterday, still dark as I left home, no glimmering of daylight, although the heavy cloud cover may have blocked out the impending dawn.  I reached the lake, a pretty reed fringed shallow water, with the first rays of light now penetrating the cloud, and I could just about see my float, some ten yards out.  Rigged up in a sort of lift method crossed with float legering.  With bread baited  and bated breath I had cast out into the gloom.  On the grass, in a field to my left were a couple of rabbits.  Black rabbits!   Only seen one black one before, near Manchester Airport, on a grass verge, but maybe they are becoming more common now in Cheshire.  Too far away for the camera.

Bites soon came, tentative little knocks that I assumed were from my chosen quarry: Carassius Carassius.   Crucian carp, another species I have caught very few of lately.  Tenacious little scrappers, Carassius Clays which don't just float like butterflies when hooked.   Hooked? Not a chance, and I missed quite a number of bites before finally connecting with...a two ounce roach.  And so it continued, regardless of bait changes, all that came near my bait were small roach and bream, the best of which would have struggled to register a pound on a set of scales.  And the rest were far smaller. 

But it was a pleasant day, for a moment at least.  Swallows arrived with the light, and drank by gliding on stiff wings, lower beak scooping up water.  Later when the water became rougher, the birds changed tactics, and set down briefly to take that drink, causing a moment's hesitation in the flight, a minor hiccup and splash. They appeared to have a number of regular flight paths, along which they spent much of their time.   It became quite noticeable when swallow after swallow flew past, along the same compass heading, and always exactly over my float.  I picked out several other regular routes, some of which were parallel to the bank.    I wonder if they in some way choose their flight path along routes which optimises the insect count?    Later in the day they had time to play, and chased each other in pairs and at speed.   The reactions of the following birds were incredible, with changes of directions in the tag game, in order to follow the "on" bird seeming to occur with millisecond precision. Some military pilots can experience G-forces up to about 9 Gs.   I wonder how many G the swifts and swallows are pulling during their own aerial dog fights?   Whatever the value, these birds have a good life, certainly enjoying themselves, and each with a long African holiday planned for later in the year.

There was a family of great crested grebes on the lake as well.  Four birds in total, although this was just one adult, with three 3/4 grown chicks.   Another lake I fish also has four, but that family comprises two adults and two young.  There I quite often see them in pairs, with both adults often having just one of the young in tow. And that lake has plenty of suitable fish, together with very clear water to aid the grebes' fishing. I saw as many as 40 or 50 fish fed to the young in a single day, and probably missed others.  The single adult on the other lake has life far more difficult, as the water is quite turbid, with maximum visibility as little as 10 inches. The small fish population in the shallow water is also probably less, so with three mouths to feed the adult was having a hard time coping with the incessant cheeping of three hungry young grebes.
  
After a couple of hours the largest of the three young attacked the smallest and drove it away.  The bird tried to return, but was again attacked by its eldest sibling, which literally had it by the neck, possibly trying to drown it.   And then the adult joined in to chase off the chick.  The youngster made one more attempt to return, but then wandered around the lake keeping a good safe distance between itself and the others.   Later in the day, the adult was to drive away the second chick.   The largest stayed very close to the adult, even making some amateurish attempts to dive and follow the adult. The youngest grebe kept wandering around the lake, coming quite close to myself and other anglers.  Which gave me an idea.  I offered it a 4 inch roach that I had caught, held the fishlet flapping in full view of the grebelet, which was maybe 5 yards away.   And it showed some interest.  I thought it was going to come and take the fish but it shied away when only a couple of feet away from my hand.    Maybe my camouflaged jacket has its limitations.   The roach was allowed to swim off. But it was all quite encouraging and I prepared my camera for a second attempt to entice the bird.  But it then kept a safe distance so no shot of me hand feeding a grebe. Instead, a shot I took a few weeks ago, before the eggs hatched.


I then suffered the first of 5 or 6 heavy and short-ish showers.   Cowered underneath my brolley and prayed for an absence of bites.   Momentarily, once, just once,  I dozed off...I had been up since 2:30 AM !   As I dozed a fish bit sufficiently well to drag line off the reel.  I struck, and was in contact with a good fish for 20 seconds or so before the hook pulled.   Damn!     As the light faded slightly, more due to heavy cloud than the lateness of the hour, a mink swam across the lake, and took up residence in the willow immediately to my right.   Mink do not seem very strong swimmers to me, and I doubt that they would have much success in catching fish.  This one did dive briefly once or twice, but I remain unconvinced that it had eaten many fish suppers.    But perhaps it did account for the second adult grebe?  So I staked it out for a photograph, but made an error.  I thought that, with the poor light I would need a flash.   The photo is dreadful, and a test shot I did a few moments later, without the mink, showed that I had errored in switching the flash unit on.  Oh well.  But I did get to see the mink quite well as it wandered through the lower part of the willow.

A little later a crow flying over the lake descended, and delicately, with its beak, took a small dead fish from the surface.  It scarely got its feet wet.   I have seen a crow do a similar thing on the River Trent a year or so ago, so maybe it is a quite normal behaviour for a crow.

After the 5th, or was it 6th, short shower, I decided to pack up, and as I reeled my line in, a pike grabbed the bait.   After a short tussle it either let go, or else bit through the line.   Either way, my float rebounded into the alder, from where I was just about able to reach and retrieve it.  

This is one of very few waters on which I have not seen coots or moorhens. Neither revealed themselves all day on this typical coot lake.   More mink action I fear.   The  willow had also harboured a pair of small birds, flitting about from branch to branch. I watched them for ages, thinking they were probably some sort of warbler, but the leaves were always obscuring the birds from my view.   I gave up hoping for a photo, and moments later they were sitting in good view, in the alder to my left.   They were very young, extremely fluffy, blue tits.   One other bird, a bird of prey, had flown across the lake, but with my poor ID capabilities of such birds I do not know what it was. Female sparrowhawk size-ish, but rather paler, and with a grey look to it, but I don't think it to have been a sparrowhawk.  Not an eagle, nor kestrel, nor kite nor buzzard, although one buzzard did show itself as I drove home, landing on the grass near the hard shoulder.  The red kite I saw last week over the same motorway, was no longer to be seen.

All in all, a poor day's fishing, with just  a dozen very small fish to report, but a day rich with other experience, and a day well spent by the waterside.  Just wish I could convince my wife that the time was not wasted.  Any time spent without a paint brush n my hand is time wasted...or perhaps  time to be avoided!