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.         

A Paucity of Perch and a Plethora of Pike

The day dawned grey.  The very ground itself looked grey:  the green of the grass being so muted by the time of year and the ambient light that colour would have been all but eliminated, were it not for a few brightly painted narrowboats in the foreground.  The sky was that shade of grey which you know is going to precede a snowfall.  The canal had a partial coating of cat ice, formed overnight, a very thin covering.   With the reflections from the sky, even that looked grey.  I caught a slight movement amongst the grey on the far bank, some couple of hundred yards away.  It wasn't grey, but a brown colour, yet as near to grey as it could be.  A herd of six deer.   I don't know the species, and although they are rarely so be seen in this spot, there are nearby red deer, and probably fallow and roe as well. These six individuals did not stay in view for more than a couple of minutes, but one by one jumped a fence which was over their head height. They did it so easily, from a standing start, up onto the hind legs and then they just sort of folded themselves over the top wire, making it all look so very easy, immensely graceful with no need for any Fosbury Flop or Western Roll nonsense. 

Deer at 200 Yards, and Some Very Active Moles. 

As the deer  disappeared into the woods, the snow started. Initially just the occasional tiny flake. These first few fell onto frosty ground, and looking closely at some that landed on dead leaves, it was possible to see the hexagonal basis of their shape.  Only a quarter inch or so across, yet on a molecular scale that is a hell of a long way.  And for a snowflake to have the six-fold symmetry that was clearly and visibly defying that vast molecular distance between the separate arms is truly a wonder. How does one arm know what the next is doing? Why should it look identical? I have read that for such symmetry to occur and remain as the flake forms,  requires very stable air, very uniform conditions at any moment, and right  across the space the flake occupies. Every small variation in that uniformity as time passes, leads to a different pattern of crystal growth.  So as the flake grows it actually records a mini history of the conditions, and the changes to those conditions as it formed.   Few flakes will be totally perfect in all six arms of course ( although many come close), but equally you would find it impossible to find two the same. For each has grown in its own short spell of changing conditions, and each records its own past from birth until it is observed. No two flakes occupy exactly the same spot in the cloud, so no two will have the same history. 

So it snowed, a couple of inches falling as I fished, layering the topside of everything: branches,

Snow

twigs, landing net, rods and me.  Just one missed run from a pike, but until the wind started to strengthen it was quite a pleasant morning.   A moorhen chugged past me, snow lying on its back.   It must have been at least as well insulated as I was but without the inconvenience of heavy clothing , boots and gloves.   Oddly I felt quite warm until I packed up just after lunch, when I realised that the typical English wet snow which lays so heavily on everything, does make me feel quite shivery, and I was quite glad to get back in the car.

The previous fortnight had been a little odd. A few frosts, but in general nothing too extreme.  But something seems to have got under the scales of the perch, in that I have stopped catching them.  Instead of three or four fish a trip, perch catches have dropped just to a couple over about five trips.  One of them was a nice enough fish at 1-14.    But it did surprise me somewhat by taking a pike bait.   This perch took an eight inch bream: quite a deep bodied fish, the bream, even at that small size. I swear that the perch had a gob even bigger than some of my Liverpudlian friends, and knew equally well how to use it.     How this specimen managed to take the bait and still have the strength to pull a fairly large float under, I just do not know.   I also have little idea why, during the next four trips the perch all ignored a four inch little rudd, a bait designed specifically for perch, rather than pike. 

A Lob Caught Roach Drifts in Towards the Net

 Having become expert at ignoring the rudd, they then became rather good at ignoring my lobworms.  The odd skimmer bream and roach still took the worms, but there might as well not have been a single striped fish in the entire canal system for all the signs I saw of perch.

Pike have proved a little easier to catch, or perhaps rather more difficult to avoid, with about 15 or 16 of them taking perch baits.  I had my five a day on two consecutive trips, although there was nothing of a vegetarian nature involved and so my waistline has remained unaffected.  Initially when perch were the target I had omitted a trace.   I figured that, as I was on a small single hook, any pike biting through the monofilament would not unduly suffer, and would fairly soon shed the hook.  But I was not expecting so many pike, maybe the odd one or two.  And the pike were not confining themselves to the rudd either.  Some of them took lobworms.  Believe me, playing a pike of perhaps six and a half or seven pounds on 3 pound nylon, using a light rod fitted with a centrepin reel was quite exciting.

The Lobworm bait is Just Visible, Curling Out of the Pike's Jaw

  The fish fought more like a summer pike, and with a barge passing by me as I played it, the drama and heart rate rose considerably and in parallel with each other. I actually shouted at the pike to keep to the near bank, and fortunately it did. It honoured and obeyed me far more than the wife ever has.  I would have been unable to stop the fish had it made a  determined rush for the boat's propeller.  On the other rod I had resorted to using a trace with the rudd.  No point in being really silly.

Playing that fish  came in very useful a couple of days later, when a rather good looking pike of a little over fifteen pounds also took a traceless lobworm bait.   This fish fought for less time that the earlier fish, but stayed deep and slow, and I knew it was a fair old fish.   Knowing that, and remembering the monofilament end tackle, really affects how one plays a fish.     The image of one of those 700 teeth cutting through the line remains in the mind the whole time.  There was one other double in my haul, a little smaller, and a fair mix of fish from as little as a couple of pounds up to just under the ten mark.

With a Flick of its Tail, Fifteen Pounds of Pike Vanishes Into the Murk.

   A wide size range, indicative of a good and healthy population.   One fish of about eight pounds though, had a damaged left side jaw.  An obvious fishing injury, one created by an angler who had no idea how to treat a pike, and who valued his lure or trace far more than he did the pike.  The jaw had quite a flap of loose flesh, and as I looked at it in the landing net, the fish thrashed, and somehow managed to inflict half a dozen small cuts in my finger and thumb.  The exposed side of the pike's jaw had also exposed a fair number of its teeth, which caught my hand. Usually it is not until the hook is to be taken out that those teeth need to be watched carefully. The next ten minutes were spent wiping the blood away.  The fish, apart from its wound seemed quite healthy, could certainly feed itself, and swam off strongly when released.  But I don't like to see pike injured like that.  Those that do not know how to handle pike should get a demonstration from an experienced angler before going pike fishing alone.   The pike is always in some danger, especially from those who still use anything similar to Mr. Jardine's old snap tackle.  A couple of treble hooks deep in a pike are not easy to remove for the inexperienced, and are likely to have barbs ending up near to the delicate blood filled gill filaments.  Barbless hooks help, but I do feel that multiple trebles are not a good idea on a deadbait.

I took a day off from the perch, as the rivers had fallen to an acceptable level.  Two rods, one for pike which proved to be ineffective, and a grayling rod.   Just the one grayling was to take the bait, but the trip was not wasted.   Something landed in the willow tree, just to my left, maybe 6 feet away.  My head automatically swivelled, and I saw, as it took flight, what I immediately thought to be a nuthatch.  Another second of observation though, showed that the orange/brown chest was that of a kingfisher, one which, having been as startled as I was, headed speedily back upstream.  Good to see one in February.  Still no good photograph though.

Tales From the Riverbank  (or Towpath)

I meet a fair few oddballs whilst fishing.  Maybe likes attract.  Yesterday a cyclist wheeled his bike onto the towpath near me, and settled down onto a memorial bench. I assumed, because of the time, he was going to have lunch.  He was, although I had not expected it to be a 500cc can of Boddington's.  Initially he was quiet, but then became noisy and rather over-friendly. It was obvious this was not his first lunch stop.  A young lad fishing nearby was initially the target.  Various phrases he used were as follows:

"I am one of life's victims."

"Watch out for the Chinese, they are out to wreck the UK"

" See him there ( pointing at me), he is above me".   I took this to mean that he thought I was a rung or two higher up the social ladder than he was. 

"I am a God"  This seemed to go somewhat against his previous statement, unless I too have become a deity whilst I was not looking.

"I am on your side"

He also made reference to a life in which cocaine had played a big part.

The young lad was half amused, half scared and pleaded with me not to leave him alone.  A friendly drunk, whom I dismissed as harmless, but I did worry whether he might fall into the water if he tried to get on his bike.  Luckily he didn't, but walked along the canal pushing the cycle, and shouting other phrases at various passers by.  It all helps to pass the blank days.

The other situation was rather odd too.   Over a few trips there has been a dog, near to  a boat on the far bank.   The dog seems to incessantly watch me.  It stands there, paws on the very edge, and stares at me.  For hours at a time.  Another boater mentioned to me that it was a fishing dog.   Apparently the boat owner, some evenings, casts out a pike bung, which the dog watches, and on seeing a run, the dog barks so as to drag the guy away from his TV, to get him to come out of the cabin and strike the pike.  The dog did seem at times to be watching my float!   The second boater mentioned that the dog's owner was a serious angler, who fished all over the world, and even made fishing DVDs.  He was called Pete Drabble, the eel man.  I said I thought I recognised the name Drabble, but  the eel man was surely Barry McConnell.  (Barry is fairly local). Ah yes, said the second boater, those two are great mates.  Coincidences all round: Barry fishes, or fished the Cheshire Meres for eels.   I did fish for eels myself on the Meres some years before Barry, although with not quite such spectacular success.  But the interesting part is that Pete has a fishing dog that gets him out of bed whenever a fish bites.  Is that not cheating?  I hope to see that in action one evening.  Life at times just gets very weird. It will be nice if it continues to do so.

Silver Bream and Back to the Rivers

In my angling log books, dating back to 1960, I have recorded all my catches in some manner or other.  As a 12 year old I was very heavy on the data and the statistics, recording all sorts of mainly useless information...even yearly counts of each species of fish caught.  The first book has ***stars*** against biggest fish of each species, first fish ever of each species and much more that, at the time, I thought would be useful.  What it does list though, in amongst all the hieroglyphics, are the first 52 bream I ever caught, on various occasions, from various venues. 52 yes, I was being that accurate!    However many years later, on re-reading all this tripe I note that 51 of those 52 bream were listed as being silver bream. From five different venues included the Witham, and the Macclesfield Canal.   Today I have to doubt the accuracy of the fish identification.  Silver bream?    A fairly rare fish as far as I now know.   And who would trust a young teenager with the task of identifying a silver bream  correctly?  Certainly not me.   And so I came to the conclusion that I may never have actually caught such a fish.  But after reading Jeff Hatt's blog, and his successes with silver bream I decided some time last year, that I really had to catch one.

My first exploratory trip to a club pond had produced one very pretty little bream, but it was a common or bronze bream. And I suspect that club members have been mis-identifying these as silvers.  Today though, I visited another small club pond reputed to hold silvers.   Another new venue for me.   Small, shallow, but a good looking pond.  All the weed was marginal though, and the water a little cloudy.   Three feet of water was the deepest that a short exploration found.  But I cast my float in, the hook baited with good old Warburton's bread flake.    As has happened to me before, a fish splashed a couple of feet from my float.  No others splashed for the next hour, but I did have a bite, which was missed.  A kingfisher made a couple of circuits of the pond, but did not land in view, and a young heron was fishing rather noisily close by.  It jumped in off the bank a couple of times, but I did not see it catch any fish. Its inexperience showed. A

Silver Bream and Common Bream, For Comparison.

second bite was not missed, but the fish, and another like it moments later, was bumped off unseen.  The 4th bite was obviously a bream, coming to the surface and splashing just moments after setting the hook.   It was a little common bream of perhaps half a pound.  Confidence in the pond'a ability to produce silver nose dived.   But the next cast produced a far more silvery fish...the almost mythical silver bream.   Its large eye, close to the nose, and reddish fins left no doubt in the mind.   And it struck me that I have certainly had such fish before, although I could not remember when. Maybe those 51 fish.... A short time later I had landed another two small bronze and one more silver bream. The two species appear to have been shoaled up together. I have added two pictures, one of each bream species. It may help some other anglers to correctly ID the species. But to be honest, once seen and appreciated by the adult eye, the difference is quite stark. I am unlikely to return to this water again.   It no longer holds the mystery, and I feel its fish stocks will be of mainly quite small individuals.  I don't mind catching small fish, but I like to have fresh venues in which to do so.

Back to the river:

The greeting of the grayling and the meetings with the minnows did not go well.   I took about three hours one recent evening, to go to my usual grayling river to try and catch one of its grey ladies. I was highly confident, having found a new spot on the final day of the season back in March, which had given up 5 grayling, all over a pound, in just 90 minutes fishing.   My confidence was somewhat overstated, and I found no sign of any grayling at all.  Not that I had too much time in which to look: the trout were ravenous and somewhat suicidal.  During those three hours I was to catch no less than twenty brownies, mainly small, with the largest being about a pound and a half.  3 others, all at least as large as that, shed the hook, or, in one case, snagged me. It was a highly pleasing way in which to totally fail at my objective.   Some dozen of those twenty trout were 6 or 7 inch fish, an excellent sign for the future, and indicative that 2,3 or maybe 4 years ago there was an excellent breeding season on the river.

I was surprised indeed to catch no minnows.   When you need minnows for a perch session, or for the garden pond, they become somewhere between surprisingly elusive and totally extinct.   As a 12 year old kid these were so easy to catch that they were almost tedious: different river, different age.

So, back to those roach, and another couple of trips were planned and executed.   Having set up for an early morning until lunch session, I hovered over the rods, sitting inches from them.   It worked, and I hit no less than 4 from the seven bites I was to get in the session.  Sadly I was outflanked again.  The roach were peas in a pod, at 4 ounces each. Immaculately coloured, silvery scales ever so perfect, but 8 or 10 times smaller than the hoped for specimens.   Dare I say 12 times smaller?    Very probably not!  But big roach are never easy, and that is as it should be.   I was joined by another little vole, collecting odd particles of

Young Robin, Recently Fledged.

 dropped bait, and a young robin, very fresh from first flitting its nest.  It was incredibly trusting, coming within inches of my feet to pick up the odd straying but very seductive red maggot.  A parent robin hovered nearby but was far more shy than its probable offspring.  I am not sure whether the youngster had still to learn that there are dangers in this world, or whether  it was just very naturally trusting of human presence. Less trusting of human presence, and very much keeping its distance was an auto-gyro.  The second I have seen within a year.  I will not add its picture, taken at extreme range, it occupies about a couple of dozen pixels in the middle of rather a lot of sky.  My view of it was not much better than yours  ;-)

I am Quite Good at Bruises

The next day I had to attend a Summer Fair.  The juggling and unicycling club I run had been invited to attend.  I had taken a couple of my silly bicycles and a set of fire juggling clubs.  The idea was to allow kids and others to have a go, and hopefully to attract new members for the club.   I was surprised to be approached by two people with whom I used to work a few years ago.   One tried to persuade me to join the Rotary Club, for which, unfortunately, I really do not have the time.   The other asked me about the oddball bikes.    I suggested he try the reverse steering cycle that I had bought second-hand from a circus some years ago.  Of course he wanted a demonstration. Now I can ride this thing, but usually do so on the flat, smooth surface of the local gymnasium.  The fair was being held on grass: sloping grass, bumpy grass.   Forgetting that the cycle has no brakes I accelerated more than expected, and fell off, bruising my ankle very badly. The bruise extends the whole way around the leg, and half way along my foot as well. The wound hurts still, some 18 days later and is restricting how far I can walk to the fishing.  The healing process is still taking place, evidenced by the discoloured areas feeling very warm for the last two weeks. I was a little worried at times, that there might be permanent damage, but it seems to be clearing up well now, if very slowly. Typical me though, continuing my accident prone year.   And on Tuesday evening...no new members for the club.  A damaged ankle completely wasted..
   

          

Early Morning Roe Deer

Another try for the grayling, and another dozen trout in about the same time.  This was a morning session, rather than an evening trip, and the dipper and the kingfisher were both in evidence, out of camera range as usual. As I drove to the river, a deer was briefly visible  a couple of hundred yards away, as it headed back into the woods. Probably a roe deer, of which there are a few locally, although they are shy and very rarely seen in the daytime.

So continuing the alternating theme, an all nighter after those roach was next.  A carp angler had already occupied the swim to the left of my chosen spot.  I noticed his rods were all aimed well to the right, a great deal to the right, and so asked him where his right hand bait was.   Using the compass application on my new-fangled phone, and a little mental trigonometry ( learned whilst measuring the school field for 'O' level studies years ago), I concluded he was probably fishing in the right hand side of my swim.   I suggested that he was therefore in effect occupying two swims, and he quite pleasantly agreed to move his baits to the left.   Later he sent out his bait boat and asked if it was positionally OK.  I suggested he come look, and with a grunt he conceded that it remained much more than half way across my swim.   His new spot was still to be in front of me, but towards the left and so far out as to be no further hindrance to my own fishing.  I was pleased to have resolved the matter quite peacefully: these incidents can at times, I understand, become quite traumatic.  Once again I hovered and was rewarded with another half dozen 4 ounce roach, and one good tench was hooked which was lost, just five yards out due to a hook pull in the ever denser weed growth that the clear water encourages here.   Next trip will be with PVA bags rather than with feeders I think, and just a small lead for weight on a rotten bottom link.   I don't really like PVA in stillwaters, being worried about what sort of chemical residue it leaves near to the hook bait, but I do need to reduce the weed threat and consequential lost fish.   A fish, by itself, unencumbered by feeders etc, probably slips rather more easily through the greenery.

I was visited by a passing carp angler, who stopped for a chat.  He said he had hooked a two pound roach on a boilie last year, but didn't weigh it.   These carp anglers seem to get quite macho-man about fish they landed but did not weigh:

"I had a couple of bream, didn't weigh them,  they were doubles I think. Unhooked them in the water rather than getting my net all wet and slimy"

"I had a tench about eight pounds, didn't bother weighing it...and my dad's bigger than yours."

And the ultimate I heard myself was 

"Yes the tench was about twelve pounds.  Sometimes I wish I had weighed it."

It is hard not to take some of these unweighed weights with rather more than a pinch of salt, but the problem is that I know that some of them may actually be fairly good guesses.   It is hard though to understand, why, in a three day long, and otherwise blank, carp session, such fish arouse absolutely no excitement in their captors.  I wonder whether they are similarly calm and cool when they finally do land a carp?  They stay asleep in a zipped up bivvy much of the time, or lounge about half asleep on their bed chairs for much of the rest of the time. How can they be so disinterested in all that goes on about them?  How can they be so single minded?  Yet there are many anglers who fish this way. To a large proportion of the anglers I meet there is only one fish that matters.  Either the carp in stillwater, or the barbel in the rivers.   To them I say: 

"There are other species out there.  Appreciate them...and occasionally peer out at the world outside the bivvy."

Another grayling session was taken over by those trout, a dozen or so, although this time I was half fishing for them   Mainly small fish again but one went to a pound, and a second was a good fish of exactly three pounds.  This was an old friend, a fish I have caught before, distinguished by its very spectacular spotting patterns. I had been fishing around the edge of a tongue of fast water. I could imagine the trout lined up in a large 'V' shaped pattern at its edges, where the water became a little slacker.  The three pound fish, on being hooked, rapidly headed up into the very fast, rock strewn areas in the middle of the 'V', and gave me a few quite worrying moments on my 3 pound line.  It once again did not seem pleased to see me, and swam off rapidly and vigorously when released, without ever once looking back and waving.

Sandmartins, With a Lazy Nest Site.

I did finally get my first grayling of the season, a twelve ounce fish, but welcome. I had to visit my "hard" grayling river to catch it though. ( A couple of days later I did manage a better grayling of 1-5 from the same river)  The river also provided 15 or twenty minnows. Even these were not easy to snare though, and I had to work quite hard for my small rewards.  But sandmartins flew about me entertainingly as I fished, and dived in and out of their riverbank sand tunnels.  A pair of young female mallards harassed me the whole time I fished, repeatedly trying to eat my float, or chasing my bait.  There was one shallow spot on the river into which they kept duck diving. Initially I could not see what they were trying to feed on. But eventually one surfaced with a four inch silver fish in its bill, which it then swallowed.  Dace or roach.  Recent videos on Youtube show Wels catfish grabbing pigeons off a sandy beach on a French river, Rather in the same style as killer whales chase seals in Patagonia.   Maybe the mallards had been watching the same video as myself, and decided to turn the tables and attack fish in the river.  I have never seen mallards act this way before, and was almost shocked by them.  Forget the cormorants and goosanders...we must now exterminate the mallards!  Exterminate! Exterminate!  We urgently  need a quack Doctor Who.

Young birds in the garden seem to be quite fond of a bit of sunbathing.  Several species: robins, magpies and

Young Robin, Roasting Gently on a Bed of Sunflower Seeds.

 dunnocks have all had a spell on the patio.  As for myself,  I detest the sun.  Hayfever and the sun's bad effects on most of my fishing. If I were able to walk about in the sun wearing gloves and balaclava without fear of being arrested as a suspected burglar, then I would do so permanently.

Finally my apologies if this week's missive has been a little understated, without much drama or too many big fish.  I don't always seek out large fish, I like to take great advantage of the wide variation that exists in our sport. No other pastime has such a breadth and depth of experience, and I want to stretch my arms within that.  Occasionally, and probably this week, the writing has also had to suffer, time being in short supply sometimes.