Mersey Salmon. Nearly Christmas, So I Feel Entitled to a Rant or Two First, Then the Salmon....and a Couple of Rudd to Finish.

It has been a while...again.   I wrote the title to this before Christmas.  It is now April, so my rant mode has long since evaporated.  Far too long since my last blog entry.   But sometimes I freely admit to not being bothered, too much trouble, watered down by the feeling that at times, I have insufficient of interest to say.   Writer's block, I suppose a professional might call it. I'll call it laziness, if that is OK with you?

I have spent quite a time trying to photograph salmon in the Mersey and in its tributary the Goyt.  Over the past few years, maybe a decade or so, a few salmon have been seen running up the Mersey.  This is very gratifying, another sign that the efforts to clean up the local rivers is working.  The salmon have not bred in the river, but are strays from other rivers, or so the EA told me.    Contrary to popular opinion, salmon do not always return to the exact spot where they were born. Some get lost on the way, and stray into other river catchments. The EA informed me, a few years ago that fish from the Severn, the Dee, and even some french rivers had reached the Mersey.   There are not huge numbers, but enough that, at the right time of year, spending a few hours at the "hot spots" for jumping fish, you are likely to see one or two.   I have tried to persuade the EA that they should stock a few thousand parr into the headwaters, in each of several consecutive years, to no avail. I suspect they wish to see and observe how salmon naturally re-establish themselves into a river catchment. They don't want to contaminate the DNA that is natural to the river.  BUT, as salmon have been long extinct in the Mersey there is none of the original DNA remaining. It is all foreign DNA, so I don't really see that stocking should be a problem.   Ten years on and I have yet to see a single salmon parr in the river.  In the River Dee, there are many thousands. Not one have I seen in either the Mersey or its tributaries.     

Salmon Parr. and a Young Brown Trout.

And I know of no-one else who can say reliably that they have seen or caught one. Many anglers would have difficulty in identifying them from young brown trout.   I know I did: I had caught several on the Dee before I realized what they were,  that they were different: salmon parr. But why do they not seem to be breeding in the Mersey catchment?    Several reasons spring to mind.   Some of the weirs are very difficult for fish to pass, one or two being impossibly high, even when the rivers are running a lot of water, thus restricting access to many ideal spawning sites.    I don't know how badly floods might affect the eggs, or the newly hatched fish, but heavy rivers flows have been a common occurrence.  Probably their effect has not been completely devastating, because brown trout, of which there are many, both above and below the larger weirs, seem to breed successfully.   Maybe the water is clean enough to allow salmon to run upstream, but not so good yet, as to be suitable for young salmon parr.  There is another factor to the equation: cormorants and goosander.   The local streams are small, and generally shallow.   Goosanders breed near these streams, and have large broods of chicks. The most young I have seen accompanying a single female was seventeen, most of which survived to adult size.  That is a lot of small fish disappearing down a lot of avian gullets, and is, in my opinion, likely to greatly hinder the full return of salmon to the Mersey. So come on EA, give us some help!     

I took a few videos of salmon, but have been having immense  trouble trying to link them into the blog. I'll try again, but am not hopeful.   Any hints on how to incorporate videos would be much appreciated. Most of the fish I saw jumping were trout, maybe less than one in a hundred being a  salmon.  So this is a link to a shared folder. It contains three of my videos. You may need to copy and paste it into your browser window.

https://1drv.ms/f/s!AlLuA7bpQJftq1bN4YzqH8Rn2kef

A Mersey Salmon

The file "Woolston" is a concatenation of three salmon jumping at Woolston Weir. This is a condensation of over four hours spent with the camera pointed at the weir.   I consider this weir as impassable to fish, and the sight of a fish attempting to jump it, means that it has missed the fish pass. The weir is probably 80 or 90 yards wide, with a small zig-zag channel fish pass right at one edge, the channel being a foot or so wide.   It seems to me that this style of fish pass, on a very large weir, must be very inefficient indeed.  Two other video are of fish, one definitely a salmon and the other a good sized trout (I think) making it up a section of a newly constructed, and far better designed fish pass. I found it astonishing that the fish powered their way up INSIDE the waterfall, rather than jumping over it.

This still photo is of a Mersey salmon that was captured by the Woolston weir, when it was configured as a fish trap, rather than a fish pass.


I'll move onto the fishing now, and I would be the first to admit that the winter has not been kind to me.  The grayling have proved elusive, on the few days when the rivers have been fishable. No notable fish have fallen to my charms.  A few small ladies, the odd little chub and roach. All in all the rivers have been pleasant places to be, and so it has been lucky that catching every time is not really important to me.   But I even went carp fishing one day, successes in the flowing water being so rare.  I have not carp fished for over 40 years, and the 18 pound common I landed on the day did not thrill me the way it should have done, so I have to conclude that I am probably well over my carp fishing days. They are a species that appeals little, although I will probably have the odd cast at them, they are unlikely ever to feel important to me.   They used to have a "hard to catch" reputation, but these days that is no longer the status quo. They have become just another species, to me at least. Other than a couple of zander, largest maybe a little over five pounds, few other fish  have chosen to spend any of their time with me until recently. I would temper that by saying that the weather has been such that I often did not venture out, so I have fished much more infrequently than would be usual for me in winter.

But a couple of weeks or so ago, I went rudd fishing. Such pretty fish, and I have found that they can be very obliging, they look good, and often take a bait well. No need either, to resort to modern scientifically proved, chemically stabilized, weight balanced, vitamin and nutrition packed, and therefore highly EXPENSIVE, baits.   A loaf of Warburton's thick sliced toastie bread can often be all that is needed.  A quid from most good retailers.  Many anglers consider rudd to be a summer fish, and only a summer fish.  I have not found that to be the case myself.  They change their habits, and in colder weather are unlikely to be feeding on or near the surface.   Not being able to see them makes them harder to locate, but if found, they may still feed, albeit differently.   The water temperature being just 7 degrees, I decided that bottom fishing would be best, but  location might be a problem.   The first six hours or so were blank, completely so, and I was looking towards another session without any fish. 

Then the dough bobbin ( a Warburton's dough bobbin of course) on the right hand rod twitched. Just twitched, but it was enough to confirm that something was in the swim. I didn't think it was a line bite.   Warburton's bread has a confidence boosting texture. A texture that convinces me it is unlikely to fall off the hook, even after several hours. And so I waited.  A little later a two inch twitch had me striking, and missing, a bite. I didn't miss the next one. It too was a tiny twitch, no more than a half inch of movement, but something in that movement suggested I strike, and I was into a fish.  These little twitches were to be par for the course, and apart from a couple of fish caught on the float, all the bites on legering gear were to be very slight movements of the indicator, whether that was movement of a bobbin, or, as was sometimes the case, the rod tip bending slightly.  I suspect that the tentative bites were related to the low water temperature, with fish being reluctant to move at any speed in the cold conditions.  I was a little reluctant myself, and was well equipped with gloves, scarf and thick bobble hat. 

The First Rudd    2 Pounds 2 Ounces.

That first fish, a rudd, was my target species, and weighed 2 pounds 2 ounces. An excellent fishy reward  well worth the wait. But more and better was to come both that evening and during two more days spent chasing the rudd.





  






It was not long before a second fish, having also twitched the bobbin, was en-route and into my landing net.  This second fish was a true monster.  A huge fish by anyone's standards.   Three pounds ten ounces of beautiful, pristine rudd.

Three pounds Ten Ounces.

 That fish proved, unsurprisingly, to be the largest I caught over the three days, but it was not the only huge fish. No less than three (that's three!) more fish of three pounds plus fell to baits taken from that same loaf.

3-6

                     3-8

                              3-0














In what was to prove the most satisfying three days of angling I have ever experienced, I finished with a total of twenty rudd.  Four threes, the two smallest weighed 1-14 each, the other  fourteen were all over two but under three pounds.    All were caught on Warburton's bread, most on the leger but two or three on float gear, fished close in under an overhanging tree.    The fish then disappeared, bites drying up completely.  
Sad to see them go, but their disappearance could not lessen the elation of what had been, undoubtedly, my best ever catch of fish, of any species.  I know I should be back there, and do wonder whether a four pound fish could be on the cards, but I like variation in my angling, and the tench are now too big an alternative attraction. Too big did I say?  Hmmm, maybe not, as the first two tench this week were smaller than the biggest rudd.  ;-)
I have always liked rudd.  Sadly they have become either a rare species, or a species which has bred so prolifically in a water as to make even a 4 oz fish, a rarity in amongst throngs of tiny fish.  They have a talent for multiplying rapidly, especially in small waters.  Finding a good rudd water is never going to be easy, but I feel the larger waters are the places to go. 

Canal Zander and Other Stuff

We do not have any zander in the local canals. I can say that with 99.99% certainty. No zander, zilch zeds, zero...well near zero. That missing 0.01% is due to a single rumour I heard of one being caught a couple of years ago.  So far from any established zander populations though, that, if the rumour be true, it must have been a fish introduced by a zander angler, and caught elsewhere.  Since that rumour, all has gone quiet.   I mention this because I have read elsewhere that the Canal and Rivers Trust are seeking £5000 or so in order to try and eradicate, (or at least reduce the numbers of) the

A Tiny Zander From the Coventry Canal

species from the Coventry Canal. The Coventry Canal has plenty of zander, I even caught a few myself during a couple of day trips last year.  Nothing big, but if I can catch several without having spent much time down there, then they are present in good numbers.    I had been shocked a year or two before, when I caught my first ever zander, on the Trent. Never seen one before and I had no idea they were present. Thirty odd years away from angling and the grapevine withers.  A subsequent trip to the river with the specific intent to try for a zander was successful. So the Trent is another river in which they must be present in considerable numbers.

There is an infinitesimally small chance that such eradication tactics will work in Coventry. The species is far too well established for any control efforts to work.  Short of draining the canal, and/or killing all its fish, they will remain.  Even if removed, they will soon return from elsewhere in the system.  There are too many connections between canals ( and other navigable waterways) for that not to be the case.  It is far too late.  When those 100 or so fish were first introduced into the Great Ouse Relief Channel back in 1963, the wide spread of zander was guaranteed by their first successful spawning. It was an inevitable consequence.  I remember an article in "fishing" magazine some forty five or fifty years or so ago, wherein pike livebaits were being retrieved with V shaped marks on their flanks and no-one knew why.  I think that was on the Forty Foot Drain.  Soon afterwards the first zander were being caught, and held responsible for the marks on the fish.   Reactions varied from wild panic to gratitude that another predatory fish was there to be enjoyed.   The authorities were not happy, and a cull was attempted back in about 1980/81 on the Middle Level.  It was felt that silver fish were suffering badly. They reduced the numbers of both pike and zander, stocked roach, thus reducing the ratio of predators to prey, It worked for a while, but subsequently good breeding years allowed numbers of predators to once again rise.  An experiment doomed to fail long term, as will any new attempt to control the species.   I have no idea why the decision was first made to stock those 100 fish into an unenclosed water.   Looking back there must be those that have regrets.   The EA, the Canal Trust and others must regret that first introduction into the Channel.  The human race is unlikely ever to learn.   Cane toads, American crayfish, mink, balsam, hogweed, knotweed, wels catfish, topmouth gudgeon, ide, carp,  goldfish, all are chapters in a book that should be compulsory reading for anyone bringing any species into an alien environment.  And yes, I did say carp then.

We do not have zander in the local canals....but they sure as hell are on their way.  And as has happened with carp over the last forty years or so, anglers will be in the forefront of helping zander to spread. I don't approve of such behaviour, but the natural spread is unstoppable, and it matters little whether  I approve of that or not.   Uphill lock flights may help to delay the spread, but sooner or later, even these obstacles will be passed.    I once caught a flounder in the Shropshire Union canal.  It had come up from the River Dee, working its way uphill and through a number of locks in the process, probably quite difficult for a bottom living fish.   In a few years zander will find their way back down that same set of locks that the flounder had negotiated. And once here I will fish for them locally, and as with perch and pike, I shall return them alive.   It makes little sense not to.

Of course, zander are not the only thing that has happened to our canals over the last 50 years or so. My first serious fishing, from probably the age of twelve, was on a local canal.  It was very clear, and a hard water to fish.   Its clarity meant that you could watch maggots sinking.  Throw in a handful with your hookbait and you could see the roach and perch rush in, taking every maggot but one.   But I learned to catch those fish, and the canal in turn taught me how to be an angler. I mainly fished for the roach, catching many a fish between eight and twelve ounces.   Pound fish were rare, despite the bailiff claiming that he caught many a two pounder, and several over three.  My friends and I never believed him, never saw him fishing, never saw a photograph.  Had such fish been present we would have caught at least the occasional one.   But over several years I only had three fish over a pound, and was well pleased with the best at 1-6.   The bailiff sold the day tickets, probably on a commission basis.  Make of that what you will. I neither saw nor caught a perch of a pound or more: they just did not seem to be there.   

 

Another change is that much of our canal banking is now protected by metal shuttering driven into the banks.  It helps prevent erosion caused by the wash of boats.  I assume it is due to boat speed rather than numbers.  When the barges were horse drawn canals never seemed to need the metal shutters.  I feel that these metal edgings have contributed to the demise of the water voles: animals which I used to see daily.  There is no longer the bankside mass of reeds and rushes along both banks.  There is probably less food for the fish in consequence. The voles have nowhere to hide, little to feed on and no way of migrating along the canal system any more.  Mink may have had an effect, but I am sure they are not wholly to blame.

 There are now far more boats.  Fifty years ago "my" canal had about half a dozen boats clustered around a small boatyard. Last week I counted well over a hundred narrowboats and canal cruisers in the same spot.  A short distance away is another boatyard, one of several new ones that have been built.  As I fished last week, I admired the skill of one bargee, who turned his 60 foot long narrowboat through 135 degrees into his regular mooring.  He used minimal speed, few engine revs, but great control and slid in alongside his jetty beautifully. I was impressed.   Later a much shorter boat attempted the same process and made a right old signal crayfish of it.  The "captain" collided with other boats and jetties, surged to and fro, and gunned the engine at maximum revs for minutes before completing the task.  In doing so he churned the canal, or more specifically my swim, into large whirlpools, turning the water into a horrible black mess as the bottom silt was stirred and shaken. I moved.   But the end result of so many boats is that the canal is always a muddy brown colour, even in winter.     I used to see one or two boats pass by me during a summer weekend, now I see a dozen or so, even on a cold February day.  It must become unfishable during the summer months.

But is that muddy colour entirely a bad thing?         Maybe not:  over the last three years or so I have

A Canal Perch of About Two and a Half Pounds

fished five different canals nearby, none for  more than four or five trips.  Each of those canals has produced perch of two pounds or more to my rod, together with numbers of others over the pound mark.     My canal used to feel and look good, yet never produced perch of those sizes whilst the water was clear.  I understand many carp filled commercial lakes, churned muddy by the activities of those carp, also produce very big perch.   Can it be mere coincidence, or does muddy water allow perch to better ambush their prey, and hence grow much

Chunky Canal Roach

bigger?  I even had a roach of 1-4 from my canal this week!



Noisy Canal Nuthatch

All those local canals also hold plenty of ruffe, a species I never caught from them years ago. Ruffe must have used the canal system as a highway, and spread into my area of the country over the decades. One angler I know suggested that having ruffe in my canal was a sure sign there were no zander.  Another bemoaned the lack of gudgeon in the Coventry Canal.  Are zander predating so efficiently as to be eliminating these minor species form the waters?  The zander are now using the same highways as did those ruffe. Are my local mini species going to get a rough, sorry, bad deal in the future?  


I hear pike are less common in canals with zander. Is that competition between predators for limited food fish?  Or is it that young pike are also getting snaffled for a zander's brekkie?

Canals are indeed changing, but they are still greatly underrated as fisheries these days, and regardless of their mix of species, will probably always produce some worthwhile sport for those willing to spend time on the towpath. But apart from the odd lure angler, I see no-one on the banks.

Mahseer Mayhem! The Disaster Movie.

I began writing this post way back in December, last year.  I suppose I should actually say I am now writing this in mid December 2013, but by the time you, dear reader, get to see any of this it will be near enough April.  So today, being thoroughly cheesed off with recent weather, which has conspired to keep me further away from the rivers than I would ideally like,  ( and the forecast for the next month is more of the same.) I decided that it was time to go for another silly, long distance fishing trip.   Within 15 minutes I had booked it.   I'll tell the wife later.   No point in asking her to come with me,   fishing is just not in her vocabulary.

She spent 3 or 4 years moaning that all I did was to put the fish back, never bringing any home to be eaten. I prefer to put all my fish back, but when I caught a fair eating sized zander a year or so ago, I phoned her and suggested she get the herbs and spices ready.   The zander had a lucky escape, for, as soon as I suggested I would be bringing a fish home, she panicked, and said she would never eat anything I brought home.   A relieved zander was returned to the river.  But, as before, no point in telling her of my exotic trip to come, as she would never want to join me.     Saved a few quid there though!  

Deposit paid, I did tell her later.....

"You are going fishing where?"    "What on Earth for?   What's wrong with the canal?

Anyway, too late.   Next job:   get the visa sorted.    Luckily the local big city has an office for assisting easy peasy visa applications.    So I nipped in to their office, only to be told that they had no visa forms there, and I would have to print one off back home, on line.   Next day, back with the form and photo.  I even noted that the photo was a non-standard size:  not a passport sized picture, but a 2 inches by 2 inches photograph. Damn: I look far better in portrait mode.   As with any passport or visa photo, I still look like a convict, but at least I had the right sized picture.    But the plain door, in front of which I stood as my plain background was apparently too dark. The door was painted cream and is, it would appear, far too dark.    I'll have to have  a moan at Nina, get her to wash the paintwork a bit more often. All was not lost though, for the company has had the foresight to install their own photo booth.   Ten quid a throw!    I sense a rip off here.    Non standard passport size photos,  and the background has to be lily white.    Whilst I was in the queue, no less than 6 applicants were sent to use the photobooth.   And the details on the form!   Why on earth it needed my religion, I have no idea.   There was no tick box for atheist, so maybe as a breed we are not welcome . But after a minor correction to my form,  and only £104 quid later, my passport and visa application was en-route to the embassy, along with 40 or 50 others.

Three days later I had three different texts specifying three different delivery methods.  

1) come pick up your visa from the local office.

2) send money and we will courier the visa back to you from London

3) the visa will be in the post.

Aaaarghh!     So I decided to wait a couple of days, my trip is not until mid March, and luckily a courier arrived, bringing the passport and visa, without any need to part with further slices of pension. 

 Method 4). Actually rather efficient.  Totally out of kilter with the rest of the process, but I suppose the British did teach the Subcontinent all about red tape, and they have gone on to become world leaders in the art.   Why for instance, does the visa, glued into my passport have to hold my photograph, when my mugshot is clearly already visible by turning a couple of pages of passport?   Anyway, so much for the prelude....and now for the trip:

Well, the time for "The Trip" had indeed arrived.  Destination India, and target: the famous golden mahseer fish.  Surely this fish is the main, if not the only reason, that the upper echelons of the British army first went to India?  One writer, a century or so ago, even described catching a large mahseer as being more exciting than shooting a tiger on foot. A comparison I am unlikely ever to make myself.     This post is more about shooting myself in the foot...repeatedly.  I had intended to try and write this post in a similar style to that of the Victorian angling writers.  But I found that I just did not have the time to do so,  and so you will have to suffer my usual garbled scribbles. 

In my angling life  I have always been blessed by  pretty good flows of luck.   I seem to have a knack of choosing good swims, and so far,   in my entire angling career, I have never unintentionally got so much as a wet foot.  My dad probably only fished, in total,  a dozen times, but managed to fall into the Trent in February one year.   He was quite lucky: the Trent was warmed by several major power stations in the 1960s and he, in the water, was probably warmer than I was, sitting there catching small dace and gudgeon during the club match.  But this last week it seems that all my chickens came home to roost, all my coin flips fell on tails, every black cat in India converged on me, my fingers simply would not cross, and I had a completely disastrous week.

4.30am  and I am waiting for the taxi to take me to the station.  My wife gets up and decides she does not like my choice of trousers.   She insists I change them and gives me another pair.   I am going fishing, for Christ's sake, by myself, she will be several thousand miles away but she is determined. Her choice of pants does not fit me, and I rush to don my original choice.   The taxi arrives, and the driver, oddly enough, is an Indian gentleman.  He doesn't know whether mahseer will take bread.  The rail station platform is too cold, the waiting room is too hot, but by jamming my bag in the door I get as near to Nirvana as is possible on a windswept suburban station.

The Virgin train  approached and having reserved seat B12, I position myself near to where the front of the train would stop.   Wrong!    Four first class coaches, and then all the other carriages were in reverse order.  I started to run down the platform, pulling my bag behind me.   The guard told me to get on immediately, as the train wanted to depart quickly.   I was still at coach G.   So I had to struggle my bag through G, F, E, D and C before reaching my seat.    5 or 6 sleeping passengers were woken up by my Passage to India, and I also accidentally elbowed one guy's ribs in the restaurant car as I squeezed past him.  But £12-50 Manchester to London is not bad value I guess, especially when you get the chance to cause so much havoc.

The real troubles  began in Heathrow:  I tried to print my boarding pass. The machine asked me to scan my Indian visa.   "Please seek assistance".  Oh no!   Surely not a problem with my visa?   Luckily there was just some requirement to manually check all visas to India.   What the hell is the point of machine readable visas if they also have to be manually checked?  Another hurdle jumped.  On to passport control and personal security checks.

BA had given me 23 Kg of checked luggage and 23 Kg of hand carry, and so I had packed all sorts of heavy items, luncheon meat tins, camera gear, an echo sounder, lead weights and so on into my hand carry.  My main luggage held three rods, reels, the usual bare minimum of clothing, a couple of loaves of Warburton's bread of course and many and various other bits of necessary, fishing related, paraphernalia. 

Result: a 20 minute , but rather pleasant, interview with a security lady as she stripped everything out of my hand carry/camera bag.  I admit that I had expected to be searched lightly, but it took rather longer than I expected.   Oddly I was not asked to remove my boots this trip. Are shoe bombers now seen as a faux pas?  No longer fashionable?

  

I cannot sleep on aeroplanes, no matter how tired I am, and this 9 hour flight was no different.  And why should it be that  every time an air hostess starts to pour me a coffee, the plane immediately runs into significant turbulence?  Is it an inescapable rule of international travel?  Or are the pilot and co-pilot sitting there, waiting to rock the boat a bit, as soon as the coffee leaves the jug? Later en-route: I had to fill in a landing card: declare any food, and any other terrorist weaponry.   Damn.  Not worth taking a risk by keeping quiet about the meat, in case I got into big trouble  ( I have watched a few  of those customs programmes on TV), and so I ticked the food box and said "luncheon meat".   As I went out through Bangalore customs I showed the card, pointed at the "tick" and held out a tin of "Stinky French Garlic Meat" as an example to the customs officer.   And I can assure you that it is one product that does exactly what it says on the tin.  I was hoping that he might just confiscate the one tin, and not find the others.  But the guard seemed horrified, and waved me quickly through.... maybe pork is unclean?  That seemed a more likely explanation than the guy being some sort of garlic hating vampire.  So  I walked boldly on.  Phew!    As I wandered past I also wondered whether he thought I was trying to bribe him with something his religion would not let him touch. I never mentioned the Warburton's.

At the exit I met up with the holiday company rep: no problems there, and after a further 4 anglers arrived, we were split between two taxis, two and a half anglers in each, and set off on a six hour drive to the river.   Oh my God! Two lunatic, insane, completely out of their trees, taxi drivers,  I was quite scared at times.  It was far worse than driving in Manila, or even than being driven in Jakarta.

There must be something in the religion that says "if your time has come, it has come, and there is no point in trying to dodge the issue. If you are not scheduled to die today, then nothing you can do today can possibly kill you. So you might as well drive like a maniac".

Their only objective was to get there as fast as possible...any other vehicle had to be passed as soon as humanly possible.  Sod safety, could we get through that miniscule gap, and charge across two lanes at the same time?  Yes. Fine.   As the second, trailing, taxi, we permanently drove so close to the first that we had no  advanced warning of the road conditions ahead.    Which, when cattle are allowed to wander freely about the roads, not to mention the unpredictability of all the other daft drivers, was a not inconsiderable problem.   We once very nearly went up the others taxi's rear end when it braked even harder than usual.  Up until then I had not thought it possible to brake harder than their usual. It was all last moment stuff.   A small motorcycle, with a girl in a sari seated sideways at the back of the rider, passed us in traffic.  The taxi then followed at no more than a foot or so away, doing 50 mph until he found an impassable gap through which to get past.  The girl seemed unperturbed by her milli-metered proximity to either heaven or hell.  Brake pads cannot last long in India.   When the foot is not hard on the accelerator, it is hard on the brake.  The roads were gradually deteriorating as we got further from Bangalore, and the driving became something of a manic pinball game, dodging potholes and what seemed to be the occasional deep water well in the road, but we made it OK, and in time for lunch, a welcoming beer and an afternoon of fishing.   I was left wondering what constituted a road traffic offence in India,   Short of ploughing into a cow there was nothing that seemed to attract the attention of traffic police.  Cows and buffalo rule the roads in India of course.   They wander about at will, across and along the road.   They have become inured to the sound of car horns and wander along in their own sweet way without deviation or hesitation, as Nicholas might say. They do not so much as twitch at the sound of the loudest, and most insistent horn.  Drivers have to treat them as mobile roundabouts...pass either side. Our driver was even swerving to miss piles of cattle dung.  Just how sacred are these cows?

Riverside House and my Nemesis, the Jeep

Three anglers were lodging in a riverside house, 2 others in a second house somewhere a mile or so away in the jungle. The owner of the riverside house, in which I stayed, owns quite a few miles of the Cauvery river, plus coffee plantations, rice fields, orange trees, the odd pineapple etc etc.    He said  "When looking to buy a place I wanted somewhere with wild elephants in it".  Extremely nice bloke, with a son at Cambridge.  He knew more about single malt whisky than I ever thought possible, even compared to most ardent Scotch whisky distillery tourist guides.  No fish were caught that first afternoon, but it was possible to assess just how many rocks and snags the river held.   Far too many was the initial and instant judgement. Not a matter of how many fingers on one hand. As an assessment, it would not change as the week progressed, but there is nothing that can be done, and to fish here one has to accept that some fish are sure to be lost to car sized rocks, and to a plethora of submerged trees and roots.

The River

Day 2, and a rather uncomfortable trip, along rough roads, sitting sideways in what used to be a jeep in a previous life.  The angler opposite me had his lure rod already made up, and a vicious looking pair of trebles hovered an inch of so from his genital areas, being constantly jiggled by every bump that the jeep leapt over.  I dared not watch, and I was expecting to hear agonising cries at any moment, but his week was going rather better than mine was, and he survived intact. On reaching the river, I set up my rod, the ghillie not liking the way I was tackling up one bit.   But I explained very carefully to him, that I would fish

My First Mahseer

in my own way. He eventually shrugged his shoulders, I cast in and was playing a fish 3 seconds later.  A classic on the drop take, with the traditional raggi as bait.  Raggi is a millet based fairly hard paste, with a smell similar to some of our more modern carp baits.  The fish fought well, but the outcome for a fish of 5 or 6 pounds on 35 pound B.S. monofilament was never going to be a matter for intense debate.   My first golden mahseer.  A pretty fish with big scales and a bigger gob.   A sort of combination of bling and Liverpool.  A little later, another fish gave quite a spectacular bite on Warburton's bread.  Smaller than the first, but another "golden boy".  But a fish to my rod and welcome. The ghillie, or guide seemed to have little idea how to use an SLR.  I have a number of photos with either half a fish, or half of my head visible. Point and shoot took on a whole new meaning. Luckily the fish was small or I would have been annoyed, pointed and probably shot him.

On returning to the riverside house in the evening, I left the guide and driver to unload the tackle from the jeep, whilst I took an emergency  trip upstairs.   On my return we decided to fish locally, in the back garden of the house for some small mahseer.   We threaded our way past and through the electric fence, designed to keep the wild elephants away from the house and crops, and started to prepare our gear.   My rucksack seemed unusually dusty.    I started to assemble my rod, but the reel looked wrong....and the rod was bending rather easily where it should not bend.   The house cook informed me that the jeep had been reversed over my tackle: result, one broken rod, one baitrunner reel casting broken where it attached to the bail arm, one mangled and squashed tackle box, and one dusty and split rucksack.   On the same evening as the gear was damaged, I twisted my right knee.  It has always been a little weak, that knee.   So by the time the house owner had been informed about the jeep, broken rod and my twisted knee, by ghillies and other staff who did not speak english very well, I was lying on the river bank with a broken leg.   The perils of poor translation and Chinese whispers. Not the best way to start the evening but I did have some spare tackle.   It did end any ambition to use a lure for the fish though, a heavy 12 foot carp rod, which I would now have to use for everything, was hardly the tool for that job. A bit like trying to fly fish with a beachcaster.

At the evening meal we were joined by a young Indian lady scientist who was doing some wildlife surveys on the river.  She also planned, the following week, to monitor whether hooked fish showed any long term stress.   I was not at all sure how she could do that, certainly with not having any radio tags to track the released fish.   If you return the fish, you cannot monitor them.  If you don't but keep them in some sort of enclosure, how can you possibly separate out the stress due to angling from the stress of keeping a fish in a strange environment? The concept seems flawed and  I hope the survey will not be used to ascertain whether mahseer angling has any future in India.  Slightly worrying.  I did mention repeat captures in the UK, including the trout I caught three times in a short afternoon, twice on the same worm, as an example that fish usually appear not to suffer long term from being hooked and released.  Food was very good, fairly basic, and heavily based on curry of course.  But over a week, none of the 5 anglers on the beat suffered any signs of Delhi-belly.  Which must say a lot in itself.

 As the week progressed, more disaster.  I tripped over a protruding tree root, falling onto another , this

The Bruise.

second root being maybe a foot long and an inch or so thick.  Result was  a vivid technicolour bruise on my side some 4 inches by 6 inches.   Painful , but I seem not to have cracked any ribs. Jay's root became quite a talking point   "Watch out for Jay's root!" every time we headed out downstream. Note the two small black marks in the photo. Biro! On my return home I tried to convince my wife and son that the discolouration was due to a snake bite.  I failed: my wife had seen snake bites before, and my son, a fairly newly qualified doctor just laughed. It's only dad, bedside manner out the window!

By the next day. I had recovered enough to fish, and chose to fish the crocodile swim from an island, or rather a promontory sticking out from the far bank.  This swim had a resident crocodile of some ten feet length or so.  It spent most of its time basking on a sandbank, or perhaps it was a rock, that was just short of reaching the surface. The crocodile would never be a maneater. Even at ten feet long, it was extremely shy, and any time I blinked or raised an eyebrow the beast would disappear.  I had one bite, on a light tackle rod, from a fish which chose an inopportune

Common Darter (Snakebird) and Crocodile

moment, just as I pointed the camera, to take the bait, and consequently I lost the fish.    I did get a fair picture of a common darter though, a kind of almost snakelike water bird.  There was a recently fallen tree directly opposite, leaves on it not quite dead.   Some smaller mahseer were attacking fry within its branches.    A long cast, and an impossible place from which to extract a fish.  So just the one bite on the day, and no other misfortune to befall me.  

I was starting to lose track of time by now, and so  day 4 or perhaps day 5,  another swim, and a good fish on the line.  One that, after it stripped off 40 yards of 35 pound BS line from a big seagoing fixed spool reel, snagged me. Irretrievably.     Two others were later lost to yet one more snag and a hook pull respectively.   The river was very, very low, almost stagnant, with little flow. I have seen greater flow down my bath plughole. So I was able to cast 40 yards across the river and still use a dough bobbin.  Cue the Warburton's. But after the jeep incident of the second day I had to use a non bait runner reel.  

So back to that dough bobbin: it was a yard or so below the rod, and my reel was set in a rest with the anti-reverse off.   After a while I had a bite of such speed, that I heard, rather than saw the bobbin hit the next rod ring, and the inertia of the reel was such that the bite broke 35 pound line instantly.   These mahseer things are FAST.  I did not even have time to grab the rod.  Bang!  Gone! Incredible.  I am quite sure that the line was in no way tangled, it is something I check quite regularly.  I was regretting the broken bait runner reel.

Of the other two guys fishing the beat,  one had a fish of 31 pounds, another, after six days had only a 8 ounce fish to show for it, although he did get broken by a good fish after a 20 minute scrap. He was using braid, and I suspect a sudden sharp jab from the fish, or a snag did it for him.   No cushioning at all with braid.     But he was staying for a second week.  Lucky b......d!     The river is so full of car sized submerged rocks and lots of tree branches etc.  I would have had more fish had I been able to spin for them, but with the loss of the lighter rod, I was stuffed.

Buffalo in my Swim (Seen Through Electric Elephant Fence)

Wildlife: crocs, monkeys, snakes.  One snake suddenly appeared and slithered out from between my legs as I sat on a folding chair. I remained still, camera just out of reach, and so the snake's species remains unknown.  Not a cobra though. Another guy did come face to face with a cobra.   Elephants were very noisy at night in the jungle opposite, but I saw none of them.  Lots of bird calls in the jungle, but they had almost all decided to be heard and not seen. I did get a few photos at distance, and saw an osprey try to grab a swimming snake.  It missed but I did manage a picture of the bird.   Had a herd of buffalo decide to
cross the river in my swim one day.  Or to be more  precise, the cattle herder decided to swim them across the river in front of me.   Made my moanings earlier in these blogs about dog walkers seem trivial. There were numerous very noisy birds in the jungle, but few ventured out enough to be photographed. Little apart from the osprey, ventured much nearer than the horizon.

Osprey

Because my rucksack was damaged, I was fishing, using my camera bag to transport gear. Not a great idea, but no alternative.  Of course both brass handle clamps then gave way due to the additional weight.  But a bigger problem became apparent at Bangalore airport, where my crammed bag was searched, X-rayed etc.   I had forgotten about the fishing gear in my rush to pack.  Several items were not allowed:   fishing line, my echo sounder, some leads.   Some jelly lures???!!!      "What are these for?"        I found that it is not such a good idea to refer to leads as "Arlesey Bombs for fishing".   I won't go into all the gory details but I was an hour and forty minutes in security checks.  Passport confiscated.   Finally they decided that all my "contraband" must be put into my checked luggage, which was recalled: another twenty minutes plus, waiting for my bag to be dragged back to the check in desk.     Made the plane with about ten minutes to spare.  Having the line removed from my hand carry meant I could not enjoy garotting the annoying passenger who was snoring loudly next to me. Result: a complete lack of light entertainment on the BA flight.

Next: tube and train back home.    I hated the tube.  Three times I was heaving my bag up stairs between underground lines, and people: LONDON PEOPLE of all people, were offering to help.    Hated it, made me feel like a pensioner.   Then, after a week with no Delhi-belly, I suddenly break out in the train with an enormous head cold, which I was still suffering with 5 days later.

But I thought, at least I have now got past all the security problems....not so. 

In LIDL yesterday, I bought a few things.  But I set off the security detectors as I left the store: loud beeps and red lights flashing.   I had stopped and turned around, puzzled, but two staff members came charging out of their office to chase me.   I was asked to step back into the store.  Practically arrested.  Whilst they examined my shopping I was asked to pass the sensors again....and was bleep free.    They gave me the shopping back, no problems found, but the alarm again sounded as I left.  Dragged back again.   It turns out that a roll of green garden wire must have had sufficient inductance in its coils to set off the trips.   I had a good moan, at being effectively  accused of theft, in front of a dozen watching customers, and suggested a compensatory bottle of good wine would be required  for continued excellent customer relations.   No chance...maybe they don't sell good wine?  But the manager may get a sizable  rocket when my letter to head office hits home.

So a week of disasters.  Few fish, but nevertheless I did enjoy the week, enough to book again for next year. However I scarcely dare stand up now in case the roof falls in.  I don't feel safe even whilst asleep in my bed this week.   

Expedition Zander Part II

The fishing this last week has still not been the best:  rivers not ideally suited to my quest for grayling. Still high, after a Wednesday night downpour. The same night dislodged many, many leaves from the trees, probably the largest leaf fall of the year.  About a hundred and twenty percent of those fallen leaves are now flowing downstream, making legering difficult. The stillwaters are quiet following the fairly rapid temperature drop of the last week or so.  Nevertheless I went out to  a gravel pit to seek perch.  A couple of carp showed themselves, one within an easy lob of the worm, the other right on the far side of the water.  Once again, one of the only fish to show was right near to me. It is at times rather uncanny.  I threw a lobworm on top of it, mainly as a perch bait, but should the carp choose to take it, I would not be overly complaining.   It didn't,  neither did the perch, and I feel a strongly worded letter to the editor coming on.   

But after the industrial background to the zander fishing of last week, to be out in the countryside, out of sight of man and his creations ( gravel pit apart) was gratifying.    The usual robin kept me company and begged for maggots, successfully, for who could not give in to such pleading,  but apart from a couple of magpies in the woods behind few birds moved on the land.  All was very peaceful.   The usual mallards, coots and tufted ducks adorned the water, and as with my last trip, I saw some curlews.   But far more of them this week.   A few solo birds and pairs were bonuses to the loose flock of about a hundred curlews that flew

Curlews at Distance ( Wrong Lens Fitted)

over the lake 3 or 4 times.   Their enigmatic eerie calls carried well over the water.    Too far away for a good camera shot, but close enough to make a positive visual ID.   Later a similar number of lapwings were to pass over.   I would like to say a shoal of a hundred big perch also passed through, but if they did their passing went unnoticed by both myself and my lobworms.

The river still being too high for my comfortable fishing, I decided on part two of the zander hunt, and headed back down to the Midlands.   Someone pointed out to me that last week's mini zander cost me about forty quid, in petrol costs alone. Over 300 pounds Sterling per pound of zander caught. But, and I know that this makes little real sense, either logical or economic:  it was all paid for by my pensions: government pension and company pension.   They give me money every month, and I do absolutely no work for it.  So although I know, deep in my brain,  that I have paid for it all during my working career, it still now seems very much  like free money.   So I spend it on fishing without so much as a nervous twitch of the wallet.

This week Jane guided me flawlessly to the destination, about a mile or so from last week's spot.   The tongue-lashing I gave her last week had worked, and she navigated  without hitch or argument.  I arrived with two hours of darkness in hand , rods built and primed , just needing baits  for the cast.   Minnows added, the rods were cast into the canal boat channel, where they swam about until daylight, unimpeded by any nearby predatory presences.   As daylight broke, I re-cast them very near to some moored barges, on the assumption that any local zander would now be seeking to avoid the light.   Two or three times the

Getting a Little Bigger....But Not Much.

minnows went crazy, causing the small floats to bob about dramatically.   But no runs came.   Later, when a decent roach splashed in the boat channel, I threw a minnow at it, or rather into the same spot as it had showed itself.   The float never settled, but immediately made off, if a little jerkily.  A strike hit a fish, which proved to be a small zander: well under a pound but much bigger than last week's fish.   

Jeff Hatt, of Idler's Quest blogging fame came to visit and stayed for a chat.  Local lad. ( How was the jam Jeff? ).  Jeff writes with far more flair than I.  My scrawlings are, I feel, contaminated by my years of working in a scientific research and development environment.  Writing dry reports has not helped my blogging style one jot. Jeff's blog article last week shows him riding a bicycle along the towpath carrying his rods and tackle.  The photograph reminded me of one of my long held ambitions, which is to be able to cycle with my own fishing gear to the nearest river.

My Next Fishing Vehicle. ( Photo: Snow White Productions)

A little differently to the approach used by Jeff though. On Tuesday evenings I run a juggling and unicycling club, teaching people both skills.     Being of somewhat unsound mind I want to ride to my local stream by unicycle, or maybe by reverse steering bike. It is a couple of miles to the river, and I still need a little more practice first. I will get there. Possibly in one piece.

Jeff was to return later for a couple of hours' roach fishing.  The roach were also to prove uncooperative, probably due to the week's rapid temperature drop, for Jeff was confident that he should in theory have caught something. One of my minnows had another crazy few seconds, the float

Foulhooked Mini Zander

bobbing about like mad, but no actual run.  I lifted the rod to find a foulhooked mini zander, of a size that might suggest it to be the brother of last week's fish.  Time to theorize:  was it really the minnow making the float jiggle about like a "Strictly Come Dancing" competitor? Or was that small zander scrapping and fighting with the minnow, unable to swallow it?  The minnow itself was still lively, and last week's mini zander was hooked a good minute after the float movements had ceased.  Have all these crazy float movements been due to immature zander?  And if so, should I be using a different bait?    Jeff had suggested a chunk of dead roach rarely fails.   I tried it for quite a while, but the fish were still playing away from home, the roulette ball consistently landing on the zero.   One more run produced a tiny perch, which had performed a Herculean task by half swallowing the minnow.  Its mouth was so full of minnow that I had immense trouble getting the big single hook out safely.

Very Greedy Perch.

Birdlife on the canal was restricted to mallards, a couple of swans and a moorhen.   The aquatic equivalent of sparrows, pigeons and starlings.  Very common on just about every water I visit.  But I did get a half decent photo of a stray goldfinch.  Always a delight, the goldfinch.

Goldfinch

So, do I return for another bash at the zander, or do I wait until more settled weather before I try again?  I think I may wait a while.     Success has been largely eluding me for about three or four weeks now.   I might just  have a go for a barbel or two next,  something a little easier, to enable me to carve a notch or two on the rod handle.   We will see.  Decisions, decisions.  If I do go fishing for barbel I will have to ignore the far preferable à la carte menu of perch and grayling.  I wonder where I put those dice?

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.