...and Over-confidence.

There is nothing like a good day by the lake to boost confidence to stratospheric levels.  Having a great day, and then seeing the next day dawn identically: same temperature, same cloud cover, same wind strength and direction, endows the angler with a sure fire certainty that he will catch.  That may well be so on your waters,  but not on my tench lake.   After my 6 hour, 9 fish session I was back in the same swim, at the same time, with the same tactics and the same bait the next day.    Nothing had changed, except the fish.  The fish had returned to their usual uncooperative sweet selves, and I did not get a single bite.   An angler needs confidence. I cannot explain it in any logical way but a confident angler will have far more success than one who is not so.   But confidence is not everything, and fish are frequently able to override any other factors so as to change the results.   That is what happened on my recent successful trip.  It was not the case that the fish suddenly decided to stop biting...it was more that, on that one day. they suddenly decided to feed very well indeed.     Their behaviour probably had more to do with my success than all my skills and experience combined.   And so trips to the lake have now returned to the "one fish/no fish" normality.

That first and successful day also saw fish rolling all over the lake.  It was noticeable the next day that very few fish were seen moving at all.  And that is another enigma: why DO fish roll?   It seems obvious to me that their rolling had something to do with their feeding on that day.   I remember fishing Loch Hightae, back in about 1965.   Hightae is very near to Lochmaben, Scotland, and famed for its big bream fishing back then. Seven pounders were being caught!  It  was probably against the rules to fish Hightae, but it was much more peaceful, smaller, and with a dour Lochmaben yielding no fish to the English invasion,we decided to fish one night, one when we thought no-one would be looking.   I suspect they actually would not have cared, Hightae not being a trout loch.   Three of us had driven up to Scotland in an old Austin A35 van.   The sort of van owned by an eighteen year old with little money. It was rated at 5 cwt (hundredweight)  and so must have been near the limit with just the three anglers on board.  Add the tackle, clothing etc for a week and groundbait, and we had one very overloaded small van.  More on the groundbait later, save to say we had two separate hundredweight bags of it crammed into the back.   Half way up the motorway the van decided it was not overly keen on the way we had packed it, and collapsed on its suspension, with the rear leaf spring mountings coming up through the rusty old floor.    The rest of the journey became even less comfortable, but we did get there, and knew we would have a lot less weight going back...so no problem.

On this particular night, having left Keith, the van owner, crying over his Austin, Eric and I headed for the Loch.  It was a mile or so to walk, but we arrived early evening and found a couple of adjacent swims in amongst the reeds.  Soon, looking a hundred yards to our right, we could see a shoal of bream rolling. A large shoal. Some thirty yards out, they were moving slowly, parallel to the bank, and getting nearer.  So we mixed some of the groundbait.  It was unlike any I had seen before, or since.  It was breadcrumbs, but was bright yellow in colour, and very coarse.  So coarse that it actually hurt the fingers as we mixed it.  We were close to drawing blood, it being more like bread crystals than bread crumbs. I could see, as the shoal drew closer, that there were a LOT of bream in it, and decided that we should mix the bait as hard as possible.  And we did:  there was something about that bait that enabled us to generate balls with the size, shape and consistency of cricket balls.  They did not change shape or break up when dropped.  Real splod-oosh balls. We threw in about thirty or forty of these and sat waiting, rods cast in with a lump of Mother's Pride bread (medium sliced) on the hooks, as the bream got gradually nearer.  They eventually reached our swim and stopped.  The stopped all night, and I imagined them playing football with their yellow cricket balls.  Desperate for the tasty delights under their noses, but unable to break in and take a bite.  There was no way they could have chiseled them away quickly.  A few extra balls were chucked in to top up the swim every couple of hours.   The final result was over thirty bream for me, and about fifteen for Eric.   And all the time they rolled.  Another instance where the rolling was feeding related.   Once daylight arrived in its full force, the rolling and the feeding stopped simultaneously.   But the question remains: why were they rolling?

Izaac Walton mentions bream rolling. I think he referred to them as sentinels in "The Compleat Angler": lookouts, if you will.   In his time that was probably as good an idea as anyone might have had.  The eye of a fish though, is designed to see clearly, and in focus, under water.  The curvature of the pupil would mean that, out of water, any vision would be blurred, and so it is unlikely that a half second glimpse, as the fish porpoises, would be likely to reveal anything at all, never mind any dangerous, above the surface, predators.  The fish would have been far safer keeping down and out of sight.

Another guess I have seen mentioned is that fish, changing depths, need to equalise pressure in their swim bladder, by adding or expelling air.  But the Hightae fish were in a constant depth, and my tench lake fish were all over the lake, in varying depths, some quite shallow, some much deeper than float fishing depth. Fish are split into two groups, and one group has swim bladders that have an opening into the mouth and throat area of the fish.  Most of out UK species are like that.  So if a fish wanted to sink deeper, one option, other than by absorbing gas into the blood, would be to expel a bubble from the bladder. No need for rolling.  If it wished to rise in the water, then, other than transferring gas from the blood to the swim bladder, it could alternatively gulp a bubble or two from the surface.   BUT, why would a shoal of bottom feeding bream need to rise up in the water? They wish to stay deep, surely?

 Interestingly. different species seem to roll differently.  Bream mostly seem to stay upright, with just the tops of their backs and dorsal fin breaking surface.  I cannot say with certainly whether their mouths/gills  break surface. Hard to tell.     Tench seem to roll more on their sides, or roll, turning onto their sides as they do so.  Carp mostly come half way out, head first, flopping back onto their chins. And a carp often will have two or three flops within just a few seconds.  Each of these species seem to roll in their own way, but with some precision, it is not a random movement.  Roach seem to be more splashy, but may be doing it for a different reason.   Barbel roll, but only rarely on the surface.  Far more often they turn on their sides whilst remaining on the bottom of the stream.  In clear water they will often reveal their presence by such manoeuvres, flashing their white stomachs.  They don't take in air, but for a bottom living species, it must be an advantage to be always a little bit denser than the water around them.  Trout and grayling break surface, but they have their own, different reason for doing so.

I have heard people suggest that fish roll to get rid of parasites.  But most parasites hang on to a fish as if their life depends on it ( which it may well do) and a rolling fish would certainly not dislodge a fish louse such as argulus.  And why would large numbers of a shoal all suddenly decide to get rid of a parasite or two at the same time?    Others suggest that the fish is passing air through the gills to dislodge mud and debris, picked up whilst feeding.   But it cannot be that simple,  as many, many times fish feed well but do not roll.

All I know is that rolling fish are not to be ignored: their rolling is probably something to do with feeding, but if the fish are rolling all in one place, then that at least reveals where they are, and where my bait should be. I would like a weather forecast that said: cloudy, wind 6 mph, fish rolling.  For now: another fishy mystery remains largely unsolved.

But back to the fishing:  several sessions with few bites allowed me to listen again to those cuckoos.   And I found that they do on occasion have some variation in their calls.  The odd "cuk" all by itself, or followed by a sort of throat clearing rattle, almost as if coughing up phlegm, before settling into full cuckoo clock mode.  As the weeks pass they are gradually calling less and less.

The mallards are interesting birds.  There have been two pairs with young on the lake.  One lost all its

Mallard Duckling

chicks quite quickly, I only saw them once.  The other had a starter for ten, and then there were seven ducklings hanging on the wall,  followed by five, three and now just two.   These are now three quarters grown, and often spend time away from mum.  The drake also seems to be in regular attendance. In the absence of the parents the duckings call constantly, one having a high pitched tweet, the other being much more of a  quack, very different sounds.  Maybe one is female, the other a male with its voice broken.  As ever, the lake supports a few solitary males as well.  These have "urges", and the female of the pair seem to be subjected to being regularly raped by these isolated males, her own partner seemingly torn between trying to drive them off, and trying to join in.   The family, the parents and two young were sitting quietly on the bank one day, until the second pair of mallard floated by, twenty yards out.  The male on the bank flew out, raping the other female, and then sauntered back as if nothing had happened.   All a little disturbing, but it led me to wonder how humans might behave had we not constrained our own behaviour with laws, rules, religions and social conventions.

The male swan continues to drive away any other bird on or near the lake, and the reason has become apparent.  The pen has had a well hidden nest, and her absence has allowed incubation of her eggs. So there are now some very young cygnets on the lake.  The swans KNOW they are the bosses.  It is why they, of all the birds, are quite happy to bring their young very close inshore, and quite near to an angler.  The swan knows he is in charge and cannot imagine that any other creature would dare to interfere with his brood.

Bullfinches, Male and Young

Back home the first young birds are appearing on the feeders: bullfinches, greenfinches and goldfinches.  One of the male bullfinches appears to have damaged a foot.   He can perch on a branch, but sits low down, feathers covering his feet.   He can only take food from the feeders by hovering, humming bird style.   Humming birds make it look so much easier. But he is surviving well, and seems otherwise to be in good health.

In between the nature studies I have had the occasional fish, never more than one a day recently,  but one tench was a new personal best again.  At 9-2 and female it truly was a very good looking fish indeed. Although not empty of spawn, it did not have so much as to distort the fish's shape unduly.  I could have looked at it for hours had I suspected it could breathe air. Perfection, if not in miniature.

.  
There have been three or four other tench too, but none so big as this one. Some sessions remained

A Tenchy Little Corner

blank.  I remember one of them well.  It was raining, but I sat under my umbrella in as much comfort as the situation could provide.  I wish I had read the weather forecast before setting out.   It was flat calm in the afternoon as I read Charles Dickens's "David Copperfield".  A good read. You see, it is not just the female of the species that can multitask.  I can read and fish at the same time with ease, especially when the bites are light years apart.  My apologies to any scientific pedants reading that.    I read with some unease, and was at a crucial part of the plot, in which there was a great storm over Yarmouth, uneasy because, as I read, the wind by the lake also strengthened.  I struggled to hold on to the brolly, and eventually exited stage left, and took it, with all my gear to  a more sheltered spot, in deep vegetation, but with trees behind, sheltering me fairly well from the wind.   As the evening progressed about 50 house martins hunted near me.  They too were flying in the wind shadow of a thick wood, with one or another bird occasionally breaking ranks and flying off by itself, probably to feed its young.   The

Dawn

wind continued throughout the first part of the night, reaching about 50 mph.   It remained warm but the night was otherwise distinctly unpleasant.    The wind, early in the morning eased off completely, with the lake becoming flat calm as dawn broke.   I knew it was dawn because the grass and other foliage looked as if it had been left out all night.     And it was about then that I also discovered that I should really have gone home.   Moving into an area of already wet foliage was not the best of ideas, and all my gear, and my clothing, was covered in slugs.  In my pockets too.  Hundreds of them.   Even now, the odd one seems to find its way out of my tackle and onto the floor of the utility room wherein I keep my gear.  Wifey is not amused by black slugs crawling up the fridge.

Ruddy Shelduck

She also does not really like me going fishing, and so I sometimes take walks instead.  She does not mind walks, although from her point of view I am just as much not there, whether walking or fishing. Odd.   But the travel gives a chance to see more,  and to take a few interesting photos.    This was a bird I could not identify. But having found someone who was a far better googler than I am, it is a ruddy shelduck.  Either a rare visitor to the UK, or an escapee.

And a grass snake.    This is only the third I have ever seen, the other two being swimming in some water or other years ago.

This one is, I think, quite large as grass snakes go.   It has two areas of damage, wounds,  possibly made by a heron?   The yellow marking on its head identifies it as a grassie, rather than an adder.

Puddling About...and Another Good Roach

I didn't immediately rush back for another go at the tench and roach as caught in recent trips.  Nope: a few short trips to local and club ponds were needed, to balance the excitement of the bigger trips.   Several pond sessions were involved, and were a nice low key alternative to the more serious business of bigger fish.

The first pond, two trips.  Trip one, using a light Avon rod, 4 pound line and a float.   There was a fair bit of needle bubbling going on around my baited area, and tradition indicates that these are always caused by tench.   Factually I doubt the truth of that, but with even the possibility of tench in the swim, the nerves sharpen and the hand hovers above the rod butt.   When the bite came, the only bite, it was no tench,. but a lively little common carp of about four pounds. Always nice to catch carp using bread flake and a float.  I had started early in the morning, about 4 am,   just a short while before the two illegal night anglers let their fire burn out, ensured that they had dropped all the litter they had, and cleared off at 05.30, well before the bailiff was due to make his rounds. I informed the bailiff of their presence later, but was not, after my recent foolish involvement with other wrongdoers, going to tackle them by myself this time.   By 8am the clouds were gathering, and looking a little threatening, and at 9 the first drops started to fall.   I was fishing very light, with no brolly, so managed to pack up within about three minutes, and was in the car as the rain began to fall with serious intent.   I drove the mile or so home, and then had to sit in the car for about 20 minutes, as the rain hammered onto the car roof.  I returned the next day, just as the bats were beginning to stop flying, and this time the short trip was rewarded with a short tench, a little chunky fish of rather less than two pounds.  

A number of carp cruised the surface, in this very muddy watered pond of maybe 90 yards square.   When cruising, they never seem to get nearer to the bank than about 15 or 20 yards.   They can have no idea where they are based on bottom features, and so MUST be using the trees as their SatNav device, ensuring they stay fairly well clear of any danger at the pond's edges.  One carp looked to be over twenty pounds, and another was a pale coloured yellow koi.  As I sat there, from a tree directly above my head, a heron came swooping down, and dangling its feet in the water grabbed a small roach in its bill, from the surface. It left the characteristic grey stain on the water.  Herons plumage is coated with a grey dust that acts as a defence against its being stickied up by fish or eel slime.  Quite a sniper like attack, none of this patient and stealthy stalking of its prey.  ( I always wondered why that word was not spelled as "storking", the herons and stork families being so good at it) .  On this same pond a couple of years ago, I saw a heron land in the water, and paddle its way back to the shore, using legs that were very ill designed for the purpose.  Very odd to see one sitting on the surface swimming.  On another nearby water a heron used to sit atop a small ornamental weeping willow, and then dive in, head first, to attack any small surface fish, even the fish on the end of your line.   It was a bit of a pest, but very inventive in its attack methods.

On Sunday, with the football world cup getting ever closer, I decided at about 4pm that I just had to get away from it all.   My wife would be insisting on watching it, and thus monopolizing the TV.  So I headed out to a smallish club pond that was rumoured to hold a few wild carp. A new water for me.   I settled down in a corner, and the very muddy water suggested a big head of fish might be present.   So on went the breadflake again, being cast out into 5 or 6 feet of water.   I suppose three seconds had quite fully elapsed before I found myself playing a chub of about a pound and a half.   The next hour was quiet, the odd missed bite on halibut based paste, but my bread was now being ignored.    Then the switch was suddenly thrown, and from

Crucian/fancy Goldfish Hybrid.  An Ugly Fish IMHO.

about 7pm, every cast produced a bite.  All on bread.  And there was a hell of a variation in species.   4 carp, a couple of mirrors, but with the biggest being a common of about 4 pounds.   A few small roach, a couple of rudd, one small crucian, a dozen or so tench to about a pound and a half, one more chub.   It was serious every egg a bird territory.   Added to the pure species were four F1 carp/crucian hybrids to about 3 or 4 pounds, one fantail crucian/goldfish hybrid, and another hybrid, whose origins I can only guess at.   It fought very hard, weighed a little under a pound or so, was flattened

Weird Hybrid:  Bream/Your Guess as Good as Mine

heavily side to side, with a very bream like anal fin, yet was quite golden in colour.  The head still carried the remains of spawning tubercles.  The photo does not really do the fish's colour full justice.  Bream/rudd hybrid would be my best guess, but would not really explain, to my total satisfaction, the bright golden colour.  Small bream in my experience are silver, and so it seems inconsistent that their hybrids should suddenly shine out in a blaze of colour. No wild carp came to the net.

I also hooked and played a 5th carp, a mirror, of about ten pounds, to a standstill, but it became snagged right at my feet at the base of a fishing platform.  I tried to free it with the landing net, and also tried to scoop it up, but all I succeeded in doing was to free the carp, the light line breaking about an inch away from the hook.  After this minor disaster, and because a few carp had been taking floating crust, late in the evening I moved the shot up very near to the float and lobbed out a bit of floating bread.   It was snaffled, almost as soon as it hit the water, by a fish that proved to be the second chub.   It has been many years since I last caught a stillwater chub. They don't look any different to those in the rivers.  Then it was time for that last cast.

You must remember the old Rolling Stones hit:

"This will be my last cast,

This will be my last cast,

Maybe the last cast

I don't know..."  

Sing along if you want, just don't expect me to join in.  Regular readers may know why.

To try and avoid chub, I placed a very large cube of bread onto the ridiculously small size 14 hook and made that last cast.   I did not have long to wait before my inch and a half cube of crust was taken....by a twelve ounce rudd!  How on earth it took so much so quickly I have no idea.   But I did make that my last cast.  My final last cast. Quite a change, I am very unused to such frenzied activity, but on that light Avon, and four pound line  it was a pleasant change and very good fun.

Dawn

But not so pleasant as to keep me away from big waters, which is a shame as my next overnight trip was to be a total blank. Not so much as a twitch disturbed the session.  But the dawn was quite lovely. 

Parent and Young Grebe in Silhouette

As the light intensified, the grebes ventured out, parents with their young in tow, now largely grown, and well able to dive themselves, if not to actually catch their own fish yet.

 So the day was spent bird watching, and after a long time trying, I finally managed a poor shot of one of a family of young blackcaps. They were constantly moving in and out of some nearby willows, never keeping still long enough for me to be able to point the camera at them.  But finally: peering out of the foliage at me:

A Young Blackcap

Having blanked miserably on one water, I had little choice, my next trip had to be back to attack the roach, if there were any more to be attacked. I set up my rods so as to be intermediate, rigged such that they had a chance with either roach or tench.  A little too heavy for the roach maybe, and a little too light should a tench decide to bury itself in the weed. Baits were also chosen so as to appeal to both species. And guess what?   I ended up with one tench and one roach. Who would have expected the plan to come together so well as that?

/rant on...  Blogger has decided to rotate my tench through 90 degrees.  Every so often it decides randomly to do this to one of my photographs, and I struggle for about ten minutes messing with the photo and finally sort it. Today, Blogger, I am not going to bother.  The damn photo can stay rotated, so there!  But I wish I knew why it happens. 

/rant off.

The tench was to go 6-2 and gave a good old fight, despite it having quite obviously spawned very  recently.  

The roach was another great fish, 2 pounds 2 ounces, and probably the most gloriously coloured roach I have ever seen.  Like the previous big roach, until it finally laid on its side near the landing net, it seemed to be far bigger that it actually was, and for more than a moment or two, its colour had me thinking that I had hooked a big rudd. It therefore gets a big photo in the blog.  What a stunningly coloured fish this was.  But catching it gives me great hope that others are present, that they CAN be caught, and that they might well be present in somewhat larger sizes than the two landed so far.  The year promises to be very interesting.

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.