The Red River.

Ah yes, the Red River, but first: some photos I might have added last time, but didn't, from the Farne Islands.

The Only Razorbill I Managed to Get in Shot.

Eider Duck...Just a Big Softie.

And I Am Sure No-one Will Mind Another Arctic Tern... I Didn't Realize That They Had Claws on Those Tiny Webbed Feet.

...And More Puffins.

So, back to the Red River.   I had heard about this river a while ago, its real name being the Medlock, but I had never seen it.   So I took a walk yesterday, as part of a keep fit project to go alongside the dieting.  Only seven more pounds to lose now, in order to reach my target. But every pound gets more difficult, as my body says "No more, that's enough" and my mind now has to fight back hard as it tries to override my gut's instincts. 

When walking, any signpost that reads "riverside walk" is likely to divert me, and yesterday, one such sign did just that.  I found myself on a long length of beautifully laid, Accrington Brick pathway. I followed it upstream.

 But it is not just the pathway that is composed of brick, the river bed itself, the channel, is made entirely in the same manner.  And the other bank has a second pathway, both pathways being about ten feet in width. Hence the "red" river.  By watching and timing a floating leaf, and comparing with my own known walking speed, I determined that the river, now at a fairly low level,  was flowing at about 7 mph.  

Far faster than is conducive to fish presence, even if the brickwork held any natural food.  There was nothing other than water in the channel, no weed, no shopping trolleys, no condoms. Anything in the channel would have been rapidly washed downstream. I don't doubt for a moment that, somewhere downstream, is a huge pile of rubbish of every description.  But the red river itself is the cleanest length of water I have ever seen.  Not one plastic bottle, not even a single football. Not that it does not get its share of rubbish passing through, as can be seen from this outflow pipe, largely blocked with sanitary product. 

Impressive Dry Stone Walling, with Almost Tropical Looking Vegetation.

The bricks on the curve at the interface between river bed and pathways have precisely tapered cross sections. Sculpted bricks to fit in place precisely. Alongside each pathway, one on each bank, are 8 to 12 feet high dry stone walls.  But they are built from huge stones, as much as three feet long and a couple of feet high. A fantastic example of dry stone walling.  Not content with that, at the back of the stones is more brickwork, strengthening the walls even more.  Wildlife was more or less absent, and apart from half a dozen grey wagtails, a species that appears to enjoy living on the edge, I only glimpsed one other bird, in the undergrowth nearby. I think it was a robin.  At various points old archways suggest bits of interesting architecture and tunnels that were once in use.

Nature Finds a Way.

 A few trees have long since invaded the walls, with heavy trunks and roots clinging into the narrowest of cracks. Graffiti artists have so far, apart from a single tag, completely ignored the place.  I should have been horrified by the whole reach, but it did have its own "atmosphere", which in itself was a fascination. And what terrific engineers those Victorians were!
At the end of the red bricks, was a short tunnel under a roadway, but no means was provided to climb up, and back out, of the brick valley, and I began to realize that this brick pathway was possibly...probably...certainly not the advertised "riverside walk". So I had to walk the whole way back, finding the gate I thought I had come through, was now locked.    Slightly worried, I continued downstream to the other end of the red brick road and found a second tunnel.   I also, fortunately, found another way back up the banking.    The red brick paths on either side of the channel are of course, just extensions of the river bed, and very definitely NOT the riverside walk, and with the river in flood those dry stone walls become the containing banks.   I looked up a bit of its history, the bricks being laid following a devastating flood back in 1872, during which the river level was so high, and the flow so great, that many tombstones and bodies were washed away downstream from out of the nearby cemetery.  If it is the same cemetery I saw, the nearest body would have been some 40 feet above the river bed. An impressive flood level for any tiny stream.

Old Arched Structure.

I read that some of the tombstones are still to be seen in the river far downstream. The downstream tunnel (or culvert) is some 600 yards long, flowing right underneath the car parks of Manchester City football club. Another man-made channel, but this time with an arched brick roof. It is one of quite a few subterranean sections of this river, before it finally joins the Irwell on the other side of Manchester city centre.   In 2013 a project was announced to remove all the red bricks, and the underlying concrete foundations, so as to re-naturalize the river. It was reported in the Guardian,  but I see no evidence of any work at all having been carried out.  In the mile long red section there are at most a couple of hundred missing bricks, each removal looking like the work of the river itself. But in general, there is no sign of any significant deterioration, and absolutely no signs of wear on any of those rock hard bricks, despite well over a century of river flow across them.  These 8 million bricks will weather a nuclear attack better than any cockroach.  The longevity and toughness of Accrington bricks led them to being used in some parts of the Empire State Building, and also in another building of rather less significance....my own house.   Above the bridge, at the upstream edge of the Red River, the channel looks far more natural, although its edges are still, in many places, constrained by stone or brick walling. And there are a few fish present here, I saw a small one rise.

I fished a very large water a few weeks ago.  The objective being, once again, tench.   I last fished it over 50 years ago, when I used to catch roach there. It was difficult fishing for a young lad then, long distance casting required to reach deep water, and then it was very deep, far deeper than my rod length, and the float fishing was thus; not at all easy.  Roach, but plenty of them was all I caught...maybe with the odd perch, but the water has, like many others, changed dramatically, and now has tench, a species unheard of in the water back then.  It is still rated a hard water by local anglers, and they may well be right. After forking out for three day tickets ( at a cost rather more than the old price of half a crown), I had just one tench, and a couple of small roach to show for my efforts.  The tench was somewhere between 4 and 5 pounds, I didn't weigh it, but the beast shown below, weighing a lot more, swam right across the lake as I fished.  A red deer, antlers still covered in velvet, and therefore probably still growing.

 In India I have had buffalo, elephant and crocodiles in my swim.  On the Shropshire Union Canal I once had a horse fall into my swim. Unfortunately it drowned.   But a full grown 14 point stag is a first for me.  Later, as I approached my van, he, and a dozen of his mates, in an all male group, blocked my path, being rather reluctant to get out of my way. I half expected to be charged by one or more of them, but it didn't happen. 

I Definitely Felt I Was Being Watched

Fishing wise, not much else to show. A few more tench, four grayling, half a dozen roach-bream hybrids, and two more small roach, these two being all I had caught during three failed sessions chasing bream.  But I was visited by this wonderful little grass snake.

So, a couple of bits of trivia to finish.  
I was quite amused by a sign on a camper van: 

"NO FOOLS LEFT IN THIS VAN OVERNIGHT".

And having watched a programme about the brain on TV, I was shocked to find out that BOTOX was no just a sort of plastic crack filler, as I had previously thought, but  a neurotoxin produced from the bacterium Clostridium botulinum.  I suppose I might have guessed that the "tox" referred to a toxin, and maybe not that the "Bo" is derived from a form of botulism. But the very idea of injecting the most lethal neurotoxic known, into one's head, is just astonishing.   My son, a doctor, tells me it is only available by prescription in the UK, and that some doctors make a fair packet prescribing it for the clients of various Botox clinics, whose practitioners do not need any medical training.  Rather than filling in the cracks in the forehead, this stuff actually is locally paralyzing the flesh.  I wonder how many of the recipients of the treatment know just what it is that is being injected?  And surely someone could have come up with some far less dangerous, but equally effective, substance?

The various forms of such vanity treatments are continuing to diversify, but I was again incredulous when my lad told me that one of the latest male fads is a procedure to remove the wrinkles from the scrotum!  OMG...time to go fishing I think.         

Not as Good as it Would be if it Were Better.

It was my first day in grammar school.   Being a "fresher" I had to stand, with other first year students, right at the front of the school assembly hall.   I positioned myself at the back of the organ, and joined in at the first hymn.  I wasn't an atheist then, probably because I had never heard of atheists.   After the first hymn, the teacher playing the organ turned around and said:

"You boy, what is your name?"

I told him and was instructed to remain behind after the assembly. He then told me that my caterwauling had severely upset him, and quite put him off his notes.   He had no idea of why a benevolent God would have ever allowed me vocal chords. The tirade continued awhile, and he finally banned me from singing...FOR LIFE.   I was quite proud to have been banned in such a way, and probably boasted about it to my new classmates.    Sadly the teacher suffered a fatal heart attack a few weeks later.  Although I am fairly sure that my singing was not instrumental in causing his death I have actually, partly in memory of him, but mainly because his assessment was entirely correct, never sung anything since.   The teachers in the school were well practised in the art of the put down.  School reports were littered with juicy comments. I would like to have been able to say that "lamentable progress" had been written in my report by that music teacher, but it was from the art teacher.    He also used the phrase:

 "This work, boy, is not as good as it would be had it been better." 

Those two phrases adequately and accurately describe my tench angling to date this season. 

   Plenty of tench from the smaller venues, during short sessions, but nothing over about three or four pounds.   A few carp and crucians have slotted themselves between those tench.  Delightful fish, all of them, but not entirely within the plan.   I even resurrected the Sunday Challenge: you may remember that, in the 45 minutes of my wife's church service, I challenge myself to drive to the water, tackle up, catch a fish, and get back in time to drive her home.  ~~The result this time was two tench, a carp and a roach. 

None of these challenge fish would have weighed as much as four ounces, but there is something quite wonderful about tiny clearwater tench. Nice to have a moorhen for company too. I understand that the seasonal yellow tip of its bill acts as a target when the young are pleading for food.

 My longer sessions, after bigger fish, have so far resulted in seven consecutive blank sessions.   I came close, contacting a fish that shed the hook, and my best guess as to its identity is that it was a good tench.  But I don't give up that easily and expect my final school report for the year to have some better grades. 

The blanks did give me a chance to test out my theories on line twist, and I can say, certainly for short casts up to about 30 yards, the process for removing twist does indeed work well.   On longer casts the twists do not seem to  equalise along the length of the line quite so easily, but results there have remained encouraging, if not quite so good. It may be that I need to allow more time for the twists to disperse along the line, or else perform the process on land, rather than in the lake.

The birds have been rather more co-operative, the herons in particular have posed quite shamelessly for me.

 

  

 The bird below was catching quite well, swallowing something every couple of minutes, but they seemed to be very, very small and although he had to turn his take-out prey items, I was unable to determine what they were.   The pond abounds with tiny rudd though... and tadpoles. I shall make no further comment about this heron's photograph in the blog. Work it out for yourselves.

 The local pair of peregrine falcons are again nesting on the old mill by the river.  I understand they already have two chicks, but these have yet to be visible when I visit with the camera. The birds are of course nesting quite high up, and having to stand some distance back means that I cannot  see any of the actual nest site, just the cavity containing it.   Distance is a problem too: my camera even in bright sunlight cannot really capture the majesty of these birds at such distance, and so the shots remain slightly blurred. I have not seen them catch any prey yet, although there are numerous local feral pigeons that seem rather keen to get themselves eaten. I shall remain hopeful on this one, and visit as often as I am able to.

 

 As I drove to the pond one morning, still a couple of miles away and on a main road, a female mallard was walking along the middle of the pavement, trailing, in a line behind her, six quite small ducklings.  Right down the middle of the pavement, and so confident and law abiding ( no jaywalking here!) that I expect they would have been aiming for the nearby pelican crossing.   Unfortunately due to traffic, I was unable to stop and take a photo.

Reaching the pond had minor compensations: a couple of morning trips ( back home before 9) led to

Plump Little Common

 a total of three tench, a couple of nicely coloured middling roach, a rudd, a perch, and a carp. I don't mind common carp so much, they do at least look like proper fish, not some oddball creation designed by man for the food or aquarist trade.  All the fish on the centrepin which was quite satisfying. A second hooked carp headed along the bank, passing through two stands of lily pads.   With the 4 pound line I was a little restricted, but managed to get the carp back through one set of pads before the hook pulled free.   Better than the day before when, during the Monday Bank Holiday, I had taken a tour around the pond.   A few picnickers and non serious anglers were around, together with a group of guys passing the time of day.   One, who was a little worse the wear from drink, pleasantly enough, but he greeted me as "Pops".   Never been called "Pops" before, and I admit I hated it.   I know I have a few miles on the old clock, but having told my lad to keep it in his trousers and not make me a grandfather any time soon, and struggling with the "pensioner" thing anyway, I really detested being called "Pops".  Especially by a drunk.  I keep thinking about it: it being one of one's life defining points when you are first called "Pops".  I knew I should have worn my woolly hat,  that would have prevented being called such.   Anyone else calls me that and I will hang, draw and quarter them, not necessarily in that order.    

Apocalypse Last Week

It has been a long time since I did any serious walking,  a mile or two, quite often, but anything longer seems in the dim, distant past.   So I decided to have a far longer stroll, and chose Salford Quays in Manchester as the destination.     I'll tell you the end result, here and now, rather than at the end:   serious aches in the legs and ankles after walking about 12 miles.   But after a couple of days I definitely felt better for it, and will have to get back to taking such longer walks more regularly.  The Quays is Salford's old docks, served by the Manchester Ship Canal. Locks close off the canal, and the Quays are unlikely to ever again have much, if any at all, boat traffic. A few ships still use the canal though. So the Quay lock gates have been closed for years and the pounds, or basins as some are called, are effectively cut off from the Canal itself.     As a consequence there is no water flow through them, only rain and very minor seepage between the lock gates ensures a steady water level.   The level in the canal itself is controlled by additional huge locks further downstream, and is, I think kept fairly constant.   I say downstream because the start of the Canal is in fact really the River Irwell, dredged out to some 25 feet deep, 36 miles long and I would guess some 90 yards   wide.   Nearer the sea it follows part of the route of the River Mersey, of which the Irwell is a tributary.   Together with the steady water level, comes great water clarity, and provided that the algae is not "breaking" it can be easy to see a good 12 feet or more deep into the basins.  So fish can often be seen.  I watched a carp of about 10 pounds idling away its time near the basin wall.   As I left the Quays, an angler was just unloading his car.  I admit to being surprised at how much gear he had with him.  A very large piled up wheelbarrow carrying of all sorts of stuff, enough to enable him to survive an apocalypse.   He was after the carp.  One of his bags contained his beer, he said.   Another had in it an electric battery powered drill.   I guess this was to drill anchor points into the concrete banks for his bivvy.  But also all the gear, several thousand pounds worth I suspect,  looked to be brand new.   How on earth he keeps his tackle so pristine I have no idea.   Mine always looks battered and used.  Maybe because I use it and don't worry too much if the rod hits the odd tree or two as I change swims.

I walked back into Manchester along the Ship Canal.  One good fish swirled as I passed, maybe it was another carp. I didn't see it, and I don't think it had seen me.  I determined I should fish it soon.  But first, the next evening, I watched a small fishing match, on the Piccadilly basin of the Rochdale canal, right in the city centre.  The match was won by about three pounds of roach, including some nice half pound plus fish. The winner had to cope with a bunch of youths behind him, break dancing and generating some interestingly and highly scented puffs of smoke. Roachpole fishing is something I have no experience of and it was rather educational to see it. I can appreciate the advantages, but for my own style of fishing I suspect that it is all too much of a bother.  Too much messing about for me.  Or as the locals might say: "I can't be doing with all that."  But very good to see goodly numbers of fish so near to the centre of Manchester.

This Week's Rant:

At sometime during the fishing match my mobile phone was sabotaged.  I have never been an expert with a mobile phone, despite my life-long computer industry background.  A situation that my son takes great advantage of, in order to poke fun at me.   He suddenly had an ally.  That damned woman in my SatNav, she who must be obeyed, or perhaps argued with, had moved, and set up home inside my phone.  When I pressed the "go" button, she started to read my screen, quite loudly, and very annoyingly.  "Twenty-one thirty two":  she announced was the time.    "Battery seventy eight percent full",  and so on.  Worse still, as soon as I touched any on-screen key, or even just the screen itself, she announced my actions to the world.

"e key pressed".

As I typed my password, she made a vocal confirmation with every key pressed.  Being security conscious, she did say: "full stop", "full stop"  rather than repeat my actual password letters.       Worse was to come.   She took great delight in telling me, whenever I  touched the screen,  exactly where I had touched it, whilst not allowing me to slide a finger across the screen to accept a call.   I was unable to answer the phone.   What is the point of my having a mobile phone if I cannot answer the very occasional calls that come to it?   I concluded that some special feature must have become enabled, maybe a switch to help a blind person, and that all I had to do was to go to the "settings" screen to revert it.   She shouted "settings" as I touched the key, and I found I had to then make two more quick taps in order to action the key.   Up came settings,  but the first screen did not contain the required change.  And then disaster:  slide would not work here either.  I scraped off several layers of skin from my forefinger, desperately trying to scroll down to page three of the "settings" screen.  Every time I touched the screen she would again tell me which part of the screen I had touched:

  "Wifi", "Data usage", "Bluetooth".

But would she allow me to scroll down? Not a chance.

My son was off in the Far East, swimming with whale sharks, and I was quite jealous of the lucky so and sod. Huge beautiful fish, up to 35 feet long, exclusively plankton eaters.  Pretty yellow spots.  I had texted him the day before, suggesting he use two krill on a size 14 hook, but didn't get a sensible reply. But he was not, being under water, and 9000 miles away, able to help me kill off this loud mouthed smooth telephone operator lady.   By this time my wife was joining in, taking the Mickey at my total incompetence.     Desperation had set in, and I plugged the phone and its resident woman  into the computer, praying for 240 Volts, then upgraded and reloaded the phone's system software.  That procedure might have actually impressed my son, had he been able to watch,  but it didn't deter the lady in the phone.  Instead she got even stroppier, and it took me a good 30 minutes just to figure out how to re-enter my security codes, whilst she was rabbiting on and intercepting my every key stroke.   Eventually I got past both the phone password and the SIM password, but to no effect. She remained.  I was getting increasingly annoyed and frustrated by this time,  calling Sony and the Three network all the names under the sun. So I finally bit the bullet and went down town to the Three shop, where none of the five staff were able to resolve the problem.   But they did put me in touch with Sony support, and the gentleman on the line had seen this once before.   And he revealed to me what must be a closer kept secret than was "Little Boy" during the war.   You can also scroll by using TWO fingers at the same time.   I did so, with my two fingers configured so as to show the lady exactly what I thought of her.   It worked and I was able to scroll down to an "Accessibility" icon, under which a feature called "Talkback" had mysteriously been turned on.  "Accessibility"...really? It had rendered my phone totally out of bounds.  How on earth a partially sighted person would have coped defeats me.  I had not changed it to "Talkback" myself, and had no idea that the feature was there.    But sanity returned, the world order was re-established, and I was already wondering whether the wife might have a similar off switch, as I rode the bus back home.

The next morning, early, having travelled light, I set up two rods by the side of the Ship Canal,  or "The Shippy" as it is known locally.  I did not think that it was worth my while to try for a carp, especially on such a big strange water, so I put in a smallish amount of bait and decided to look for a bream or two, or some roach.

Manchester Ship Canal by Night

The last scientific report I read about the Shippy was a technical evaluation of its water quality, and its flora and fauna.   It was said that the roach lived in the upper layers, and, holding their breath, dived to the bottom to quickly search out a bite to eat, the lower levels having more or less zero dissolved oxygen.  This report was maybe ten years ago, and I feel things might be better now, so determined to bottom fish.  The depth was not the anticipated 25 feet,  maybe little more than ten.  Probably, because I was fairly near the Irwell, a spate river,  any sediment carried during a flood would tend to settle out once the flow rate decreased, so I think I was fishing over a good 15 feet of slowly accumulated sediment.

One rod breadflake, one maggots, both with a maggot feeder.   As daylight dawned I could properly see my surroundings.  The bats disappeared.

Ship Canal Decoration

The carp angler's apocalypse had occurred.  As far as I could see, every square inch of the substantial concrete banks and walls was covered in graffiti.    More paint than the spray can manufacturers could have made surely? And how do these people summon up the cash for so much paint?  People who create graffiti are either artists or idiots.  There were a few artists on display, and many of the idiots who "tagged" their own names over the good stuff.   I quite like good graffiti, and certainly there was little real harm done in it being here.  It would require considerable work by the council to transform this post Hiroshima bombsite type environment into something nice, and into a state where graffiti should not be tolerated.

But I did see a kingfisher flash past me, and a kestrel hovered over the far bank. So maybe the devastation is not so bad as mine eye thinks?  A good three dozen swans sailed past, followed by the usual Canada geese, and the odd mallard. Swallows and sand martins also cavorted over the water.  The advancing light soon revealed a number of old car and truck tyres around which I would have to steer any fish hooked. A cormorant, one of many that live on the canal, sat on a floating barrier.  It rocked uncomfortably as every wave passed it by, and looked well fed.

Then I had a shock, my rod tip rapped slightly.  I admit quite freely that in this environment I was not expecting any action at all, despite rumours of there being fish. I waited, but nothing.   But over the next hour or so half a dozen smallish roach took the bait.  All very cautious bites.    Less cautious was my last bite, and a heavier fish was hooked.  Most of the fight was typical...of a bream, although it did manage a couple of sharp pulls as well, which briefly impressed me.  After being steered around the tyres it was netted.

My Swim on the "Shippy".

 A bronze bream of  6 pounds 12 ounces.  I would not usually have bothered weighing a bream of this size, but on my first expedition to the Ship Canal, I thought I should.  Surprisingly it was a very healthy individual, a nice shade of gold, a thick deep fish.  The photo is a little disappointing, but I did not have an unhooking mat with me, and the photographic options were concrete, or in the net.  So the picture is a little blurred and the fish in the net.           

Impressed by my first encounter with the Ship Canal, I decided to fish in the clear water of the Quays themselves the next day.    Similar amount of concrete, but without the decorations.  A few hours saw me catch a few small perch, and eventually another bream.    This one was most unlike the fish of a day before.  It was VERY dark in colour, super-slimy, was still recovering from spawning, remnants of the head tubercles still being present, It was thin, side to side, and quite shallow.    I had expected the opposite, that bream from the clear waters of the quays would be very good looking fish.   But I suspect that they spawn later, in the deep water, that they do in the canal itself, which, fed by the Irwell undoubtedly warms up faster.   The Quays fish was certainly male.   It prompts me to wonder, whether the golden fish are all female, and the dark ones all male.   I have caught both "varieties" gold and black, from several waters now, and it makes some sense to see them as the males and females.   Speculation at the moment of course.

A Depressingly Ugly Quays Bream.  A Definite Male.

A Far Prettier Canal Bream.  A Female?

Five Tench and Four Candl...er... Canals.

It is hard not to feel deeply for those living on and around the Somerset Levels, those who have now had to endure about six weeks (so far) of completely horrendous flood conditions.   I suspect that any pumping done at low tide by the EA is quickly reversed by high tides and onshore winds.   It seems unlikely that mere dredging of the rivers will have any real effect if we get these conditions again next year, and any work needed will have to be well thought out.   I feel also for the local anglers and their fish.   I wonder how many fish will remain after all this...and where they might eventually be found as the water level falls. Do river fish tend to remain in the river channels, or do they seek calmer waters? Certainly any submerged ponds and lakes may well have had their carp and other species significantly "redistributed".   OK, duty done, regrets expressed for their local conditions.   I now hope my Somerset readers, if any, will similarly feel for me: no grayling fishing for about four weeks now.  I too am in need of a visit from Bonny Prince Charlie, who might also like to bring me £50,000.  Bit surprised that the Duke of Westminster, an incredibly rich man, only threw in the same fifty grand pittance.

My fishing over the last ten days or so has veered in two different directions:  some spells on the canals, and a couple more tench sessions...I suppose I was sort of getting them whilst they are on special Winter offer.  

I fished four different canals, each for just a half day or so.   Firstly, the Macclesfield Canal, for perch. As I left home the weather was calm, very little breeze, and fairly warm for February.   But it was not long after reaching my chosen swim that that all changed.  A strong wind began to blow from the right, aligning itself along the canal, and causing spindrift and waves that looked to be a foot high, but which probably were no more than 4 to 5 inches.  A promising bite saw the float drift into the wind and then disappear.  A bream of about a pound or so fought very well, aided no doubt by the immense sideways pressure of the wind on my rod.   Later after a small perch, and soon after lunch I decided to call it a day.  The wind was making the fishing most unpleasant, and the captures were not enough to justify remaining any longer. I could scarcely sit on my stool, and so went home to a bowl of my own design leek and bean soup.   Actually leek, bean and a large but random selection of spices from the kitchen cupboard.   My son refuses to eat it, describing it as toxic waste, but it is great on a cold day, and can usually make the nose water.  Actually, I would admit that my wife refuses to eat it too.

The second trip saw me on the Peak Forest Canal, giving "drop shotting" a try.   No bites, no signs of any interested fish, but this was my very first try at the method, on a canal I had not fished for about 50 years.  Three months ago I had never heard of drop shotting, and so I doubt that I was employing it with much skill at all.  I have been surprised by reports that suggest it to be very effective in the right hands.   I had a similar level of surprise many years ago, when I heard about catching cod on pirks...which essentially seem to be chrome car door handles with a treble hook attached.   I guess that drop shotting is a method rather further up the evolutionary angling tree, whose root was pirking.  I have much to learn about this method, and I guess I will have to try again soon.

Trip three was again after perch on the Llangollen Canal, which I am sure I used to know as the Shropshire Union Canal.   Another canal on which I have not fished for 50 years.   I remember causing a little controversy on the S.U.C. during a match.   I was still a junior but won the match overall, but most of my match weight was made up by a flounder, which had obviously come up from the River Dee.    Nothing in

A Tiny but Confident Looking Wren

the rules against flounders.  Trout, yes,  sticklebacks yes, but nothing about sea fish.   So I walked away with the first prize sweep money, to the annoyance of a couple or senior members, and to the amusement of others.   On this latest trip though I was not to get a bite, let alone see a fish.    I did see a kingfisher, the only one I think I have ever seen on a canal.  And a wren: quite a defiant looking little bird.

The fourth and last canal outing was an afternoon on the Trent and Mersey.  A canal I have never fished before. Four hours on a relatively mild day, sitting on a sodden and muddy towpath resulted in one small bream which rather greedily engulfed my lobworm.  A second bream , smaller still, tried the same trick a little later but, after showing itself as a half pound skimmer, it let go of the worm.  I doubt very much that it was hooked.  The canal fishing has not been fantastic, but it has provided me with a change of scenery.

So on to the tench trips.   The first day dawned with the lake very quiet and still,  overnight had been cold and the lake was only about 4.5 degrees.    But tench had fed at that temperature during January, and so I persisted.   By eleven o'clock, nothing had moved at all. Later I caught two tench, both males at the lower end of four pound fish.  Two other fish managed to shed the hooks.  The two males were not particularly pretty fish, the first having a torn mouth, the result of someone in the past being impatient or very rough when unhooking the fish.  The second had a cherry sized and cherry coloured tumour, just below and forward from its eye.  This could well also be a result of poor unhooking technique.   Both fish though, were typical in size as other males I have caught in the lake, certainly they were not unduly thin, and so it would appear they have little problems feeding and going about their general daily business.   This of course brings up the question, often asked by anglers, as to whether fish feel pain.    Most anglers seem to claim that fish do not feel pain "in the same way as we do". I suspect that many claim this in order to justify that angling is not cruel. I cannot say myself, with any conviction, that angling does not have any element of cruelty though. It does, sorry.  I also read a learned article that said that fish do not have the same brain structure as ourselves, and that the area in our own brains responsible for our pain perception is completely missing in fish.  I have often returned chub to the river, to see them swim off very casually, as if nothing untoward had happened to them.   I have also caught the same trout three times within two hours ...twice on the very same worm. It wasn't in enough pain to stop it feeling hungry.  BUT fish diverged from our branch of the Darwinian evolutionary tree many millions of years ago. Probably hundreds of millions of years ago.  So why should we be able to say that the same brain areas in fish are responsible for pain perception as those in our brains?   Is it not quite feasible that another area performs this function in fish?   When the evolutionary split occurred, did our common ancestors even have that particular brain lobe?  It seems a big wild guess to suggest that they did. For the creature on that tree cannot have, at that time, been more evolved than a modern fish.  If scientists can say that modern fish do not feel pain, they must also accept that our common ancestor also did not feel pain.  And therefore pain detection evolved much later in the tree leading eventually to Homo sapiens. Fish, although not endowed with the ability to perform too much in the way of mathematical calculus, or statistical analysis, are nevertheless very well evolved.  They are not in any way primitive, and I somehow cannot see that a fish, which has such sophisticated ways of detecting smell, taste, low and perhaps high frequency vibrations, would not also be able to feel pain.  Fish respond vigorously to being hooked... are we to assume that the only reason they fight is that they are being pulled in a direction in which they do not want to go?  Or could pain also be involved?   

How hot do you think your bathwater is?  I tested it recently and was very surprised to find that just 41 degrees is uncomfortable, and 42 degrees is almost painfully hot.  Before measuring it I had naively assumed my bathwater was 70 or 80 degrees!  Body temperature  is normally 37 degrees, and so your bathwater is no more than 4 or at most 5 degrees above your body temperature.   Now you may say that your black coffee is far hotter,  but whilst it is so hot you will just sip it, allowing that very small amount of very hot coffee to be almost instantly cooled by your mouth.   Ever caught a grayling?  It will almost invariable twist violently in your hands.    If the water it came from is say 5 degrees, your hand could easily be 25 degrees plus, and in theory anything up to 37 degrees, although that is unlikely.   You might be exposing that fish to a temperature difference of 20 or more degrees.   5 degrees makes you uncomfortable.  Is it possible that fish can feel such temperature differences as painful?  And why that grayling wriggles so much?  Much of a fish is covered by scales, and it might well be that scales provide some protection, not only from abrasive contact with rocks and other in-river objects, but also from the heat of your hands, or indeed the sun's heat if you keep the fish out of water too long. But not all of a fish is covered by scales, the head especially is free from such protection.  And what of mirror carp?  Have we inadvertently bred a fish that is more susceptible to pain across much of its body?

But on to the second tench trip.   Another successful session.   Four winter tench sessions, and all have produced fish for me!   Inexplicable.   Water temperature again just 4.8 degrees.  The fish came spread out

5 Pounds Exactly

over the day, the first being around mid-day.  Its weight bang on 5 pounds, a female.   Two males a little over four followed, the last one getting very well snagged.  All went completely solid.  Slackening off the line did nothing, the fish did not move. I walked to the left and pulled and the fish eventually came free and was landed after a great scrap.  Later a fourth fish went into the same snag, and again all locked up.  The previous tactic did not work, and it was only when I pulled for a break, that  I felt something give a little, and the fish came free.   But after just a few healthy thumps on the rod, the hook pulled out.   But three tench on a February day is a good result in anyone's money.

"I Had a Bream."

Well, actually, no I didn't.  But like Martin Luther King,  "I Had a Dream."   But I did dream of catching a bream. Taking a day off from the fishing (another), I had lain in bed rather longer than usual, until way past 7 in the morning.   It seems that my mind would rather that I had been fishing than sleeping  because I had a fishing dream.  A totally weird fishing dream.  One that probably revealed many of my angling insecurities. I often have what are described as lucid dreams, dreams which contain astonishing detail, almost as much detail as real life. They come in enhanced technicolour and with super high definition. Sometimes they even come with a voice over, making comments such as: how unlikely the events that are taking place in the dream are.   It is all rather odd, because the voice over seems to know it is a dream, yet I, at the time, don't.  It is rare for me to remember anything much of a dream for more than four seconds after waking up, something to do with my goldfish memory.

The dream opens with me attending to two ledgering rods, fishing at maybe 40 yards, on one of the Cheshire Meres that I used to fish a long time ago.  After a short time, the right hand rod had a bite, and I saw the line moving out into the lake and to the right.  For some inexplicable reason I waited until the fish had moved a good twenty yards before striking.  For those readers who, having read this, might want to go and fish the same swim, with the same tactics, I apologise: I have no idea what bait I was using.   

I hooked the fish, which gave little resistance, and sure enough it was a bream, a big bream, a huge bream, a new PB bream.   So big it would not fit into my landing net, its nose preventing it from falling into the mesh. I shook the net about a bit and it slipped off the rim and folded in neatly.  At this time I was guessing the fish to weigh about 13 pounds, and knew it had to be weighed and photographed.    A few shots of the fish in the net were taken, and then I went to the rucksac for my digital scales.  The scales would not zero themselves when switched on, no matter how much I shook them, and however much I pressed the various buttons.  Very frustrating.  

People started to arrive behind me, just to see the fish, which I dunked back into the lake, still in the net, to recover awhile.   I got another set of my scales ( I sometimes have three sets with me), to be faced with the same problem, they would not zeroise cleanly at all.   Someone ( yet more people had arrived to gawp) loaned me an old spring balance, but the mesh of the net was  partially trailing in the water and I struggled to lift it.  Eventually I succeeded and the fish pulled twenty pounds on the scale.   But the scale was only graduated in five pound intervals, no use at all, and I still really needed to know the exact weight of the fish.   Back in the water went the fish to recover yet again. I opened up the digital scales to change the battery: Maybe they were exhausted, and producing low voltage.  Instead of the expected two AAA's it now held two banks, each of 6 lithium cells arranged edge to edge.   Unusual. Unexpected. Obviously I didn't have a suitable spare battery in my pockets. Foiled again. Nothing was going right except for the actual capture of the fish.

As I picked up my third set of scales, another identical set of digitals, I now noticed that someone had set up a burger stall at the right hand side of my swim, actually in the shallow water,  obviously attracted by the large, and rapidly increasing, number of spectators.  I am getting worried about how long it was taking me to weigh the fish.  The crowd was getting bored, jostling for position behind me, but were still watching as I became quite guilty that the fish would not survive the long attention span it was being given.  Do I put it back, or struggle on with the weighing process? But after another rest in the water it still looked full of beans ( and sweetcorn, and boilies). So I switched on the scales and they now had a colour screen: yet I still couldn't find the reset button that I needed.  Eventually I found the on/off, pressed it and up came three options:L   gas, electricity and water!  No matter how I tried I could not get the scales to set themselves up into a state to properly weigh the fish. I was getting increasingly panicky, time going on, and I had no means of weighing a twenty pound bream.  A twenty pound bream!  I now began to worry that someone in the crowd was going to tell the Angling Times about my fish, and I didn't want my name mentioned.  "Angler Catches Huge Bream" was the headline. I became quite angry that the press was going to publish without asking me for permission.  The crowd behind had reached fairground proportions. Some of them had even started to fish in the left hand side of my swim, and were catching bream, much smaller than mine was, but it made me think I should have long since weighed the fish, and been back fishing for another.

Shortly afterwards I awoke,  I still had not weighed, nor had my photograph taken with a possible twenty pound bream.

Al sorts of questions spring to mind:  why a bream? A flashback to the sixties and seventies?  Why was I having so much scales trouble?  Why did the crowds appear?      In reality I DON'T like fishing with crowds, I do occasionally have battery and damp problems with the digi-scales, and I really don't like publicity, so some of the content was maybe extracted from real life.  A shame that the twenty pound fish is unlikely to become a real life issue too, but I, unlike some, do not believe that dreams can have any role in predicting future events.  

But I think tonight I might try to fall asleep with an image of a twelve pound tench in my mind.

Am I losing it?   Completely?   Or am I back to my usual level of insanity?

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.

Tench and Bream

A slim 7 pounder slips back into the lake.

Late May: Tench: one of my favourite fish, and they always have been. Probably always will be.  There is something about their colour and that smooth muscular shape, a real fish shape that imbues them with that "must catch" essence that I am unable to resist, as well as a powerful fight when hooked.   They can be easy to catch, or, given a suitable water, they can be a nightmare to find and hook.  That green and the contrasting red eye will always draw me in and I have so far fished three different waters for tench this year.   One easy water with small fish did not hold my attention for long.  I would have stayed longer, had the crucians I was also catching, been pure crucian, and not part goldfish. Another water, rumoured to hold the odd tench did, and 4 trips produced 3 fish. A good result with one of the fish becoming a new personal best, despite being a long, slim, fit fish with no signs of any spawn in it.  Such are early season fish, especially after a long hard Winter's fast. 

The third lake is what I consider to be an easy water.  Not lacking some good fish though, as a number of fish well over 6 pounds soon demonstrated by falling to my baits.   But the predictability of almost certain catches soon paled with me, and the time was ripe to go and try a hard water, one which I thought might hold some good ones.

So I arrived at the lake, early, about 4am, tackled up, cast quickly and the lobworm soon attracted a small perch, and a second bite at the same spot was probably another small perch.  But to my left a fish rolled: obviously a tench, a majestically slow roll, barely rippling the surface.  Had I not seen the fish, the ripple could have been put down as a small roach.  Two or three other fish rolled, and so I cast to the left.   As another good fish rolled right besides my float, the tension mounted.   Two bites followed, long slow runs of the float, but both fish were missed. Inexplicably missed.  7 AM now, and all has gone quiet, but the day remains dull, cloudy but rain free, and so hopes remain high.
And so it was to remain, throughout the day.  No bites, little sign of fish, no carp jumping, nothing.  So I occupied my time watching the wildlife.  In the margins scattered over a wide area near to me

Massed Toadpoles

were a great number of toadpoles.   The tadpoles of toads are blacker and with shorter tails than those of frogs.   Also they taste dreadful, so nothing eats them.   As the day progressed, the toadpoles gathered near the very edge of the water, forming a huge black wriggling mass.   Thousands of them. I don't know why they concentrated so, as there seemed to be little food for them.  A foot further out was a feast of silkweed.  The tench remained elusive though.  I did see a couple of tench cruising above the elodea though, small fish of maybe three pounds, but tench, and in the right area of the lake.   As evening approached a roach took a bait, a handsome but quite dark fish of some six or seven ounces, and a prelude to an evening rise of fish. 

As darkness approached, fish started to roll with quite large splashes.  Tench , I was sure,  and lots of them over an area of some 30 yards square, within casting range but outside my baited area.  I was perhaps rather silly to think they were tench as it happens: for they were not.  Good big fish though, each trying to make the most surface disturbance it could, as it breached, and over a ten minute period, at least a hundred such fish showed.  They continued to roll but in reducing numbers, and I started to get bites.  Easy slow bites which I was unable to hit.  I finally hooked one briefly, and the line came back with a large scale on the hook point.   I now assumed carp were responsible, but was to be proved wrong yet again.  So amateurish of me, I should have known far better.  Finally, after at least half a dozen inexplicably missed bites I hooked one.  A bream, 7-4.   On bread.  Two more followed: a fish of maybe six something, and then a 9-8.  All three fish were hooked just outside their mouths.  I have no explanation for this effect, all the bites were the usual big bream, slow rise of the bobbins. I never used to miss bites like these back in the old Cheshire Meres Big Bream days, early 70's..   More bites were missed.  I continued to fish after dawn, and on through a second night.   The day finally gave me my first tench from the lake, a male of 5-1.  Something of a Nemo this fish, one of its pectorals being small and deformed.  But a tench.  

As evening arrived the bream moved back in again.  5 more fish being landed, with three more hooked just outside their mouths.   All on bread, the bait being hooked conventionally, no hair rig, or other fancy doomahdiddle rig in use.   The fish were again quite good ones, with a 9-13, 9-0, and 8-13 the three best fish. All in all I missed a lot of what would normally be very easy-to-hit bream bites, and hooking six from those eight fish just outside the mouth was weird. I put it down to the roughness of the breams' skin allowing the line to stay in closer contact with the fish, maybe even catching the line itself, and the following strike hitting home outside the mouth, as the fish played with, rather than eating, the bread.   But any other theories held by readers would be most welcome. As all the fish had head tubercles, I assume all the fish were males.

 I have stopped fishing the lake, for the bream were most unpleasant to the touch, and in this spawning condition, my interference with their lives was probably not for the best, even though I am sure double figure fish were there for the taking...and on the float too!   I'll go back, maybe in September to try specifically for those bream, once they have regained their condition.