Splashing, Jumping, Dunkings and One Large Thud.

Yesterday I really felt the need to fish for some crucian carp.  Inexplicable but it was something I  just had to do, they were one of my quarry fish as a teenager.   No true crucians have fallen to my rod so far this year, yet they remain one of my favourite little fish, and I needed a change from tench.  So I searched the club's waters list, and chose a small sand or maybe gravel pit that I had never seen before.  I was a little concerned that the water was described as holding crucians, carp, tench and uncoloured goldfish. The prospect of more ugly crucian hybrids was a threat to be considered.   Described by the booklet as being something of a hole in the ground, the water was actually rather nicer than that, once the Satnav dropped me into the car park.  It was tree lined, mainly with oaks and alders, and  obviously was quite deep, and I chose my swim based purely on its lack of proximity to the four carp anglers' bivvies that were already set up.  They had probably been there all night, and not knowing the water I chose to arrive with good light, and reached my chosen spot at about 5am. The steeps steps down to the swim confirmed the need for good light.

There were quite a number of small to middling carp already cruising and pushing themselves half out of the water, as carp are often wont to do.   I rigged up a float rod, on a paternoster type set-up, so as to make casting a little easier.  The swim was about 14 feet deep, and I did not fancy using a sliding float. Crucians are notorious for playing with a bait, the float displaying niggling little dips, wobbles and bobs, but rarely giving a solid bite indication.   Unless of course it is rigged for lift method.  I have found that crucians are not particularly shy, but they do like to mess about.  With a sizeable shot (I used an AAA) about an inch and a half from the float, and depth set such that the shot is just resting on the bottom, most bites from crucians will sooner or later give a lift or even a flat float bite.   And such bites are within striking reach, at least 50% of the time. They can be hit. A pinch of flake provided the final touch, a bait I have found to be excellent for crucians of all sizes.  The cast was made, about three rod lengths out, and I was immediately plagued with some young mallards, all of whom seemed to want to eat my float, some getting it part way down their throats before shaking it out again.   They tried again and again for over 30 minutes, and simply would not leave the float alone.   Never seen such thick and blatantly stupid mallards.   Eventually though they went, and I was able to fish without having ducks make my bait dance about on the lake bottom.  

The carp continued to cruise and splash, and the crucians ignored me.  Until, that is, I threw in a small handful of micro pellets around my float.   Within minutes my float started to dither, and crucians started to jump, all of them very near to my float.  It was most odd, the way they were apparently coming up from fourteen feet, pretty near vertically, to splash on the surface.   Quite a few of them actually cleared the water.  This was the only spot on the lake where there was any significant crucian movement, and the activity was very obviously associated with feeding on the pellets. The effect on their swim bladders, moving through fourteen feet of water must have been significant, and I am surprised they did not feel enough discomfort to

deter their playfulness.  It was not long before the float lay flat and I was into a crucian of maybe five or six ounces, the rod vibrating as it tried to get away.  It was, I am sure, a true crucian, and in typical fashion, it curled its tail around my hand, as I unhooked it.    Crucians will often actually tremble in your hand, a quite bizarre sensation. They are the nearest thing that you can get to a teddy bear with fins.

Shortly after my first fish, a pigeon, determined to show that the mallards do not have a monopoly on stupidity, sort of dunked itself into the lake in front of me.   I have no idea what it was doing: splash, dunk, waited a couple of seconds and then it flew off.   Later in the day a dragonfly did exactly the same: a sort of slam dunk, or crash landing into the lake, and immediately took off again.  Was it drinking?  It seemed a totally intentional act, and it entered the water at some speed, as if trying to make a big splash. So I think it was more to do with cleaning, washing and dislodging dust rather than drinking.  Dragonflies are such masters of the air and, had it been drinking, I am sure the process would have been very delicately and precisely achieved.    A few days ago, during the really hot weather a third creature also dunked itself.   This one made a quite deliberate approach, rather like a swallow and it was obviously drinking.   This was a bat.  In daylight.   The second time I have seen a bat drink in daylight, the other time being in very hot weather too,  way back in the hot summer of '76....75?....74? I suspect that only during really hot weather, and then rarely, does a bat need to drink during daylight.

Meanwhile the crucians continued to jump and splash, and rarely was my float completely still.  Within a couple of hours or three, about forty crucians flattened the float, and more than twenty were hooked and landed. None very big, all being 4 to 10 ounces. And all were, in my opinion, true crucians.  They just looked right. 

So, that has dealt with the splashings, the jumping and the dunkings.   But what of the thud?

Nina's Photo of Sparrowhawk and Dove

I didn't hear the thud.   It happened whilst I was fishing but back at home.  My wife Nina was sitting in the lounge when she was disturbed by a loud bang on the double glazed lounge window.   As she looked around, a collared dove was slowly sliding down the window, whilst being mantled by a sparrowhawk.

A cloud of dislodged small feathers fluttered down around them. The hawk then, with its prey, moved onto the patio, where, much to the chagrin of Nina, a very tidy person, it removed the rest of the feathers, scattering them around, whilst the dove

A Well Plucked Collared Dove

still struggled in its claws.   Nina is a bit of a NIMBY when it come to nature being inevitably red in tooth and claw, and thinks it is all fine as long as it takes place out of her sight. And definitely NOT on her patio. But she did grab my camera and took a few photos.    I really must give her some basic instruction in the use of an SLR though.  Just four shots, taken through rain splashed double glazing with the flash enabled, were not going to produce the superb photographs that she could so easily have taken. 

In Hiding: Awaiting Lunch to be Served

A collared dove is quite a big meal for a sparrowhawk, and after eating just a little of it in our apple tree, it flew off, carrying the rest of the carcase in its long yellow claws.   It must have a nest of young somewhere near, for, only a couple of hours later, it reappeared and took a young goldfinch from near the bird feeders, once again hitting the window with its prey. So our local hawk is back, after an absence of probably three months or more. It is still around today, and I managed a distant shot at the limits of my 300mm lens, as it hid in the sycamore tree at the bottom of the garden.

Better Late Than Never.

This post is not about the funeral I attended last week, the funeral of a distant, occasional, acquaintance.  I felt quite guilty during the ceremony, as, for some reason, I was unable to stop thinking up some rather black jokes.  One was, as the coffin was carried in, dead on time: "It's not like him to be late".  Wondering why the crematorium only switched on the central heating as people were leaving, was in equally bad taste, but I suspect, that had he been able to hear, Dave would have appreciated the jokes. I did feel bad about it, but sometimes the mind wanders, especially on a day when I was completely unable to penetrate the thick Irish accent of the officiating priest.  Such is life, and death I guess, and I do hope that, as I finally go myself, that people are able to watch with a smile on their faces...even if it is a smile that says, "Thank god we finally got rid of the old bugger".

Sand martins Nesting Near the Mersey

In contrast to the ceremony, the swifts on Monday were having a wild time. They were constantly flying at great speed, with many an instantaneous change of direction, often so close to the water surface that it was miraculous that they never made the slightest mistake. They remained dry at all times, never even scraping the water surface. Their flight was pure perfection. They did make a few sounds, but not the shrieks and screams that they sometimes utter when chasing each other.  They seemed to be using me as part of their aerial games. As I sat by the lake or walked the bank, birds would often zoom past me, at full speed, missing me by inches, so close I could feel the backwash of air as they passed.  As I fished the tench lake again, it was obvious that these birds were enjoying both life, and their ability to fly, to the absolute full.  About twenty swallows, a handful of  house martins, and a couple of sand martins joined in the spectacle, each species flying in their own distinct style, styles which even change with the weather, with the rain, the wind or even the sun.  As I said last week, house martins seem to fly very low in rain, and swifts sometimes disappear completely. I usually only see sand martins near rivers, where they nest either in sand tunnels they build themselves, or if feeling lazy, in man-made drainage pipes, or gaps in old brickwork.

I had arrived at the lake fairly late myself. On the journey down, notices on the motorway signage, suggested that there had been a bad crash, with resultant major delays, a few miles before my intended turnoff. So I had placed my whereabouts into the hands of the pleasant lady who sits in my old Satnav. I don't argue with her very often, and on this occasion she guided me along unknown, but interesting roads as we got ever nearer to the water.  The journey took an extra hour, and, having baited the swim, I finally cast the two rods in at or around 6pm. I had the lake to myself, probably over a hundred acres of flat calm water. By ten o'clock it was becoming evident that I had the lake more to myself than I thought: for, despite constant flat calm conditions I had yet to see a fish move. Fish are also affected by the weather, and change their behaviour to suit.   But here I had fish that had changed their behaviour compared to their habits of last week, and under weather conditions that looked very similar.  It was thirty minutes later that I saw the first fish ringing the surface. Too late for any bright water, a roach or other small fish, it surfaced about a hundred yards away. The next fish to move was a good fish, of unknown species, which rolled just three or four yards from my baited patch.   This was a great confidence booster: rolling there, so near to my bait, it must have been a feeding fish. Ten minutes later a similar fish rolled, 30 yards off, and moving away.  The confidence level dropped a couple of notches. Confidence in a feeding fish was replaced by the thought that, in reality,  only coincidence had governed where that fish was.

Dawn, and Not a Ripple to be Seen.

The night passed, warm and still, with only two line bites to show for it, and those were caused by Daubenton's bats hitting the line, rather than by fish. Very few fish moved overnight, or at dawn. Those that broke the surface did so in a very disinterested way. A shame, for they would have seen a rather nice orange sky as the sun rose. The swifts returned and continued their wild games. I have no idea how they gain so much energy from just the odd midge or two.  They constantly seem to fly at full speed on their swept back sickle wings. Their flight is so efficient that I cannot understand why so many of our early aeronautical pioneers ever thought that pairs , or even trios of wings on their early biplanes and tri-planes were a good idea. Why did they not just copy the birds?

By oh seven hundred hours I was ready to give up, and slowly started to pack away my gear.  The rucksac was packed, the chair folded, umbrella (unused) packed away. Bait was packed.  Everything but the two rods and the landing net was packed.  I had even removed the screw in rod rests from the bank sticks.  The rods were then simply resting, butt rings atop the bank sticks. My glow bobbins, a variation on a device I invented 45 years ago were returned to the tackle box. I had previously used dough bobbins, made from real bread pinched onto the line, but dark nights and the availability of beta lights had triggered a burst of creativity.  Maybe I should have patented the idea all those years ago. But no doubt others would have had similar ideas at the same time. I might have called them glough bobbins...or if I fell into the modern trend to reduce everything to absurdity: Glo-Bos.  Yeuck!  These days I use Star Lights instead. Modern betalights are very dim by comparison.  My old betas are still brighter than their modern equivalent, 40 years on. Tritium gas has become scarce, and so much less is used in each glass vial. The half life of Tritium, at a little over twelve years, suggests that only a tenth the quantity of the active gas is now used.  Go check your old GCE Physics books for an explanation of that.  :-).   To compensate the price has increased tenfold.

As I reached out to pack the first rod, its tip twitched, and I struck into a nice tench of just over five pounds.  It fought reasonably well, right up to the net.  I still, working on old school fish sizes, weigh any tench I think will make five pounds, and detached the net from its handle to do so.  I then carried the fish, still in the net, back to the water and watched it swim away. As I did so the second rod lurched sideways off its precarious stand, and I was into a second fish.  A far better fish to judge from the dogged, solid fight.  It held deep and slow, characteristic of a big old tench, rather than a carp. I walked backward up the bank to retrieve the landing net handle from 15 yards behind me, and with some difficulty, re-attached the net as I played the fish. A superb scrapper, a female tench of exactly seven pounds was landed, weighed and photographed.  Two very late fish indeed, but better then than never.  So I stayed on, figuring that my baited area had at last been found, and that more fish were headed my way.   They were not, and the two fish were to remain my total bag.  Not a bad haul though, late as it had been in the session.

I did manage to watch a little vole, of unknown species, but chestnut in colour, messing about in daylight near some unused groundbait.   I failed to photograph it, as the battery pack in my camera had given up on life just after the fish photos were taken.   I have only seen voles twice, and on both occasions they have avoided my camera.  This little beast did manage to chew through my bait bag whilst I was not watching though.  I have also only seen one shrew, many years ago now.   Again in daylight.  I caught a movement in the grass, and saw the shrew.  I approached closer, and it ignored my waving hand, and appeared not to understand me as I told it to "Shoo shrew!". Eventually I was able to get very close, and stroked it for twenty or thirty seconds before it unconcernedly ambled away into the undergrowth.

So in short, an interesting expedition, very much up and down, with a couple of good fish very late into the bag.  We all tend to have that last cast, and that "final" last cast, and maybe even one more for luck.  This day's fishing showed how important those last casts can be.