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. 

Of Voles, and Dragonflies, of Carp and Crucians

Missing out, at least temporarily, missives about perch, roach, barbel and grayling trips, I want to mumble a few words about other bits and pieces.  I needed to have a few sessions that were very casual, almost trivial, and to fish for other species, in waters that I would not usually visit regularly.

So firstly I particularly wanted to catch some crucian carp.   These were always my favourites as a very young angler, fishing on the club pond, getting on towards dark, using lift method with a pinch of breadflake a couple of feet from the bank in three feet of muddy water.  The bites were typically crucian, delicate, little pimples of bites, barely registering on the small floats, but using the lift method made it all much easier, and most bites were non too difficult to hit.  Then that vibrating fight, making the rod tremor as the fish struggled frantically to get free.  Finally having the fish curl up its tail in the hand as it was unhooked, a gorgeous little teddy bear of a fish. Bliss.

Not surprisingly then my first choice of venue was also a small club farm pond.  The lift method was

Little Cruician

frequently used in my early angling life, and the bites now, on that same method and same breadflake  ( although now Warburton's rather than  Mother's Pride) were just as satisfyingly minuscule.   But as before, they could be hit, and as the afternoon wore on a good thirty crucians came to hand.   All of a size, small, their growth in the pond probably limited by their numbers, stunted growth as we used to call it, and also restricted by the competing hoards of small rudd they shared the water with.   Other animals seem to die in lack of food situations, fish just appear to reduce their maximum size, whilst still becoming fully mature adults. Quite a few of those rudd in the pond also liked the

Tiny, but Colourful Rudd

bread, end I greatly enjoyed the short three hour session.

Roach poles in my youth were archaic pieces of angling tackle, used only by a few Southerners of extremely advanced years, on the rivers Lea and Thames.  I had still never seen one when I stopped fishing about 40 years ago.  On my return to the fold 6 or 7 years ago they were then commonplace, even locally, and frequently used for carp of all species!  When did elastic appear in the system? I was shocked somewhat by their frequency, but I did buy one a few years ago.   It has remained in its bag...until last week ...when I determined to have a go with it, on another club water, and also for crucians.  Not the best of poles, costing about 60 quid.  I understand people can pay as much as fifty times that for a really good one.   However there are limits, both financial and temporal as to how much I was prepared to invest on a pole. Two days later, I had only one crucian, maybe a little over a pound, to show for my efforts.  But, in words straight off a can of tuna, my first pole caught fish.  I can see some advantages to using poles, but I am unlikely to frequently suffer what I see as their many disadvantages.

I took the pole to a third pond, a new one for me, but it remained in its bag, and I used an eleven foot

Morning on the Pond, and the Little Patch of Lilies

Avon to fish bread for another two crucians, a tiny mirror carp and one roach.   All day I ignored some carp that were smokescreening in the shallow water close to and in front of me, only feet from the bank.  I don't think I have used the word "smokescreening" since first reading it in "Stillwater Angling".  But these carp, even in already muddied, clouded water were subtracting visibly from their visibility. Eventually though I gave in, temptation proved too much for my feeble determination to ignore them, and I cast a bit of groundbait, moulded into a paste, to where I had seen the fish, very near to a small clump of lily leaves. It was not long before the float sailed slowly out towards the middle of the lake, and after a short scrap a mirror carp of about seven pounds was landed.  Another much smaller common followed just before dark, on the last cast of the day.  The crucians were very pale in colour, so pale that I momentarily doubted their identities, but the coloured water had discoloured the fish quite dramatically.

Sunday ( Oh my God, I just mistyped that as Sinday, possibly in an accidental confirmation of my atheism ). Odd too, how so many of my mistypes can get quite Freudian.    So, Sunday and yet another club water, one I fished just once before, catching quite a lot, maybe as many as 50, crucians on the occasion.   This water is very clear and deep.  Few spots have less than 15 feet of water, even near the bank, and so the pole was not even considered.  I cannot imagine how anyone could ever land a substantial fish from such deep water on a pole. So I suspect it may once again be gathering dust for quite a while. I had 16 feet of water in front of me, a short cast out, so with the Avon rod I still had to get a little inventive so as to be able to float fish that deep, lift method, without having to use one of those awful sliding floats.

I had not wanted to resort to legering, because right through this season legering has caused me a major problem.  Line Twist!   Not something I have noticed much in other years, but this year it has been dreadful. I am careful when loading my spools with new line, to ensure that the line comes off the supply spool without twist.  It gains one twist per revolution as it goes onto the fixed spool, but this disappears on the cast, becoming twist free in use.  There is an alternative I see recommended, which is to get the line coming off the spool sideways, in such a manner that it loads on to the reel without twist.  After considering both I prefer not to have twist in a cast out line.    There are three things which can add twist to a line during use:

1)  use of the slipping clutch.   Each revolution of the clutch adds one twist to the line

2)  use of a baitrunner does exactly the same.

3)  when reeling in, if the end tackle spins it adds twists.

It is also just conceivable that the end tackle could rotate on the cast as a result of the movement through the air, but I doubt that is really happening.

I don't use the clutch, preferring to reel backwards and the baitrunner has not really moved much at all. So, when using a feeder I have intentionally been reeling in slowly, and, as far as I can tell, the feeder has not been rotating on the retrieve, certainly not in the final few yards.  YET, after only a few 40 yard cast with new line, with either feeder or lead, I am seeing hundreds, if not thousands of twists in the line.  With the lead dangling from the rod tip after reeling in, it can rotate well over a hundred times. 100+ twists in about 4 yards of monofilament. So 40 yards of cast suggests as much as a thousand twists in total.  I have not as yet worked out why it should be so bad, as it seems to defy all the physics I know.  The state of the line gets so bad that twists near the reel, having cast out 40 yards three or four times, have been causing tangles, impeding casts and generally being a nightmare.  My only solution to date has been to keep replacing the line.  Every two or three trips!    Luckily I use line that costs just £1-29 for 250 yards, and that I split three ways.  The financial cost is minimal, but the time taken reloading spools is time that could be better spent. The only other clue I have is that, since I started checking, the twists are always in the same direction, the lead rotating clockwise, seen from above, as it dangles from the rod tip.  New line on both rods yesterday,  I only cast each rod 5 or 6 times, and yet I once again have the problem.   But I WILL get to the bottom of it.

So the float fishing has been a welcome change, and on Sunday, having thrown my bread upon the

The First Of Many Mirrors

water, it was not long before I started to see lots of the usual crucian type bobs and bobbles on the lift method rigged float.  Unusually though, I seemed unable to hit them.  Crucians are of course totally unable to multitask. Eating and swimming at the same time seems completely beyond them, all of which explains the minute movements seen on the float when fishing for this species.  Then I did hit a bite, but the rod tip on the light rod stopped dead, as if I hit a snag. But no, it was obviously a fish, something bigger than a crucian, and proved to be a mirror carp of six or seven pounds, good fun on the three pound line and a one pound test curve rod.  Twenty minutes later, another carp, after more missed twitches, and I started to think that the twitches on the float, today at least, were not crucians, but rather bigger fish, carp, waving their fins about and nudging or disturbing the line. By 9AM I had three more carp, all very much of a similar size, all on bread flake, some giving superb flat float bites.  I learned to ignore the minor tremors of my float. The crucians just were not there.

A Young Vole is Unable to Resist a Few Pellets

As the sun got higher, the bites ceased for a while, but the wildlife became interesting.  A sparrowhawk, a female, traversed the pond in front of me. A grey heron also crossed the pond.  One of its legs was drooping badly, and I fear it must have been broken.  A heron that has to hop around a pool loses much of its stealthy approach, and I fear for its future.   Later three buzzards were circling directly above, their shrill cries quite loud.  Two of them appeared to be having a bit of an aerial dogfight, whilst the third gained height in a thermal at a speed that greatly surprised me. A family of voles appeared to live in the front edge of the fishing platform on which I sat, occasionally venturing shyly out.  I tempted them out some more with a few pellets and gradually they became less shy.  Two fully grown individuals, one more greyish than chestnut, and later in the day one or more younger voles joined in the feast, nipping out, grabbing a mouthful and then scuttling back.


Soon the bites returned, and another three anglers joined me on the pond.  I was able to advise them that it was fishing well, probably silly of me, as they settled into the next two adjacent swims.   As the day went on I began to feel for them, as they were getting no bites, yet in my swim, the carp just seemed to keep on coming, every fifteen or twenty minutes.   In the very still conditions I could hear them speaking to each other as their words bounced off the still surface of the pond.  "He's bloody well got another one!", "How is he doing that?", "Never even seen him here before"  and other similar comments.   They were doing their usual thing: legering with boilies, and a method feeder.   Maybe the splashes were scaring the fish...maybe the carp had had quite enough of fancy baits.     The carp continued making my float dance and kept on taking the bread flake.   To cut the story short, I finished with 18 carp, two F1s and a really bright gold goldfish.  I estimated my total weight to be about 150 pounds of fish, my highest ever single day total.   The carp were all between six and ten pounds...well the best might not quite have made that mark.  Nothing huge, very uniform in size, and every one a mirror.  Maybe because of the deep water they were all very dark fish, and quite snub nosed, not in any way pretty fish.  I still think of mirror carp as being ornamental, suitable for display ponds rather than angling, but these were to me, very ugly fish indeed. Give me a common any day.  

A Deep Bronze F1 Hybrid

The two F1s were better, deep antique mahogany in colour, and I think, the only decent sized F1s I have caught, with the best about four and three quarter pounds. I have very limited experience of these hybrids, bit I admit these two were very good looking fish, and compared to the significantly larger mirror carp, put up a far better scrap.  That is the first time I have ever had a good word to say about F1s.   I can see how they might be better appreciated now.  Are  all F1s fully scaled, similar to commons, or do some have mirror like scaling?


The goldfish weighed 1-13, a good fish I guess.  I have caught very few goldfish, my only other

A Handful of Gold

remembered gold one being from many years back.  I was surprised at how similar to a crucian carp the mouth on this fish appeared.  As I was driving home I suddenly thought that it would have looked rather good in my garden pond, where in company with my crucians, tench, gudgeon, bullheads and stone loach, it would have been the only fish we would have been able to see regularly.  Of the other species, at most I see the odd swirl of water from a fish I have disturbed in passing.  Too late the thought, but as taking the fish would have broken club rules, maybe it was for the best.

From lunchtime on, as the sun broke through the mist, quite a number of dragonflies appeared, together with the odd damselfly. Various sizes and species, and as I watched them,

At Rest, Guarding its Territory

Mating Pair

marvelling at their incredible skills in flight I missed a few bites.   A pair were mating on woodwork close by, and several were flying in tandem pairs, some laying their eggs.  I had put a ball of bright green groundbait, moulded into a paste, where the voles could access it.  The carp had previously ignored it, but not the voles.   Nor did the dragonflies, and one dark green individual, of similar colour to the bait, actually attacked the bait ball several times.   I had seen other dragonflies, at rest, take to chasing intruding rivals, some even seeing of members of other species.  They were reacting to movement. But I was quite surprised that a dragonfly would also attack something stationary, but of very similar colour to itself.  I can only assume from this event that they must have colour vision. I know they have the multi faceted compound eyes, but wonder whether each of those compound eyes is effectively just a single pixel, or whether each has a significant number of pixels.   Looking at their flight, and their obvious recognition of colour, I suspect the latter.

A Large Green Dragonfly Making One of Four Attacks on my Grren Bait Ball

On My Knee, Enjoying the Sun

Very late on, on the very last of the last casts, a single crucian took my bait.  A deep and clear-water

fish, being fairly dark, but its colours were far more crisp and clearly defined than those of fish taken a day or two before, from coloured water.  But I shall not be rushing back to this pond. I'll leave it to the other members.  It is very nice to have such a huge haul, but mirror carp are not my favourite fish, and so once will be quite enough for now, thank you.


All in all a highly entertaining day

Late Update: Having made contact with the a representative of Natural England, I learn that dragonflies do indeed have colour vision, and additionally are able to see some frequencies of ultra violet light, and also to do some things with polarised light. More details were sent for me to study, but I'll not overcomplicate things here. I am surprised, but when I remember that Homo Sapiens has had perhaps a couple of million years of evolution in our history, compared with a hell of a lot more for dragonflies, which back then  probably alighted on T-Rex's knee, then I should not really be surprised that a modern dragonfly is such an incredibly sophisticated insect.

Too Many Fish?

I don't like my angling to be too easy.  The idea of fish after fish is always unappealing as I make my way to the water, and actually becomes boring during their capture. I learned this very early on, when I caught over 30 bream one night for my first ton up bag. Every fish was identical in size, its bite was predictably like the last, and the fight was similar.  And I knew what result the next cast would bring.  Oh, sure enough it was exciting as the fish were first seen to roll at dusk, a hundred yards away, and still more thrilling as they gradually approached the baited area, but once on the feed, as fish repeatedly came to the net, the experience soon palled.  I didn't go back for a second night. I like a challenge... but there are exceptions. Gudgeon fishing should always be easy. It is traditional for them to come freely to the hook, and it would just seem wrong to have to struggle to catch gudgeon. I still enjoy the odd trip to catch the gudgeon under the bridge that crosses the local river.

The other exception to my rule is the crucian carp. They are such pretty, cuddly things for one. But they are also always a challenge on a fish by fish basis.   Every one can present a problem.  And so, although I ended up with over 30 of them yesterday, in a 7 hour session, every fish in the net was a delight to catch. And they did give me  a few problems to solve. 

I have always viewed bread as my ultimate crucian bait,  most of my crucians, big or small, have been taken on Warburton's Bread, or before Warburton's, on Mother's Pride sliced bread.  Mother's Pride disappeared from shelves locally some years ago, and I have occasionally wondered whether their factory became Warburton's. The texture of both loaves is so very similar.  Bread has been a favourite of mine for a number of species, and many years ago I  fished with it to catch some very large rudd and roach.   I always liked a big hook for bread flake, and those roach and rudd were mainly taken on a size 2 Sundridge Specimen hook. Quite intentionally on a size 2.   But yesterday I arrived at the lake with my rod still set up from a previous fishing session, in which I was using maggots, and the tackle was armed with a size 14 round bend hook.  The swim was about 12 feet deep, and with very clear water, and so, knowing crucians to be my quarry, I again set up the float gear, lift method, with just a single AAA shot to take the bait down and cock the float.  It would take a while, each cast, for the bait to sink to the bottom, and for the float to cock,  sometimes needing a wee bit of tension from the rod to set the float vertical, if the depth was a couple of inches or so less than it had been at the spot where the bait rested on the previous cast. But once the bait had reached bottom, I rarely had to wait very long before the first tentative bobs of the float.   The rain was, all this time, coming down sufficiently hard as to prevent any chance of much play on day five of the third Ashes test, and, as I had only taken an ordinary gentleman's umbrella, it did make both keeping dry and fishing a little awkward.  Nothing a seasoned drowned rat like myself could not manage though.

The bites were typical of those from British Standard crucians, and at start of play, the first over or two, I was missing three quarters of them.  But some fish were being hooked and landed.  Others were coming off as I played them, and I was losing about one in three hooked fish.   I noticed that many of those landed were hooked by the most delicate of hook holds, and suspected the losses were due to the hook pulling through that ever so slight fold of lip on the bend of the hook.   I put it down to the crucians, and their oft infuriating habit of playing with their food. A situation such as this is a prime opportunity to experiment though, and after a couple of hours it seemed logical that I had to try something different.  That was as far as logic went: logic would have maybe suggested that, for shy biting fish, I should reduce their food portion size and drop a couple of hook sizes.   I chose to do the opposite, bearing in mind my bread experiences from forty years ago.   I upped the hook to a size 10.

Up until that moment I had about 15 fish on the tally board, landed and released, none having been hooked other than in the lip, several very delicately so, and with maybe seven or eight other fish lost.  The hook change had an immediate effect.  I was then hitting three quarters of the bites, and three from the first four fish were hooked just inside the mouth: a far more secure hook hold.  I figured that the smaller hook must have been skating out of the crucians' mouths, securing those tenuous hook holds as the hook was leaving.   If my theory was correct, the larger hook was not skating out in the same way.  So, rather than it being a case of shy bites, it was more a case of poor hook choice.  I continued to catch at a much higher rate, with less missed bites, and only one other fish dropped off, until I chose to leave. The final tally was well over 30 crucians, the best couple being something over a pound and a half,  plus one crucian/goldfish hybrid and a solitary F1, carp/crucian hybrid.  I have only had a couple of F1s before, both being only a few ounces in weight.  This one was maybe four pounds and put up a good scrap.   The F1 seems to be quite severely compressed side to side, in a bream like fashion, but has a very prominent and well defined scale pattern.  This fish had four barbules, but they were very small, especially the upper pair, which were miniscule.  I was a little surprised, as I had read that F1s had just two barbules.  Maybe they didn't search hard enough to see the second pair?

A bread fishing lesson re-learned, and applied to a different species.  No photographs.  The small umbrella, rain, and a minimal tackle trip had rendered it impractical to take the camera.  However on my return home there was a male bullfinch, together with three of his youngsters from this year's brood, on and around the feeders, so the camera did see some action.   So here a picture of a male bullfinch, and a youngster of the same species.  Bullfinches are not popular with fruit tree farmers, but they provide quite a splash of colour if you are lucky enough to have them in your garden.