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.    

Does Size Always Matter?

Spring crashes on, its signposts are everywhere.  The roads I drive on are now littered with fox cubs in the early mornings,  although as I get nearer to the venues I gradually see less foxes, and far more white flashes from the scuts of rabbits clearing the road in front of me.  I wonder whether the words scut, as in a rabbit's tail, and scuttle, to run away and escape, are related  Scuttling perfectly describes the actions of the rabbits as they see and run from my headlights. Neither the rabbits, nor the foxes have featured in the roadkill I have passed.  Hedgehogs also seem to have escaped death,  but badgers seem to be very poor at avoiding cars this year, and several have lain dead by the roadside this past month.   It is supposed to be hedgehogs that freeze, confident that their spines will prevent any harm coming to the animal itself, shortly before their being flattened.  Maybe they are getting very scarce, although I still see them in the back garden at times.

I was wrong about the swans.   I never expected that they  would ever lose any cygnets.  The cob, the male swan, is always so very aggressive, and has that "I am the boss on this lake" look about him.  But the family is nevertheless two cygnets short this week.   I doubt that they just died,  all of them looking perfectly healthy last week.  And I don't think they got lost.  The lake is not so big that the swans can't circumnavigate it all several times daily.   So a predator must have claimed two victims.   Poor tactics by the male swan, who, rather than looking after the kids, has spent most of his time chasing geese around the water.   Oh, and annoying the angler in the next swim by swimming through both his lines, as he lay dreaming away in his bivvy.  I always shoo the swans away from my own lines, and am usually successful, although I do get some pretty  vicious hisses from the male as I do so. Occasionally I might have to wave the landing net at them.  It is all for their own good, as I would not want their legs tangled up in my lines any more than they would want my lines wrapped around their legs.   

No signs of the grebes having hatched any young yet.  One spent several hours diving in exactly the same spot, an area of two or three square yards,  just off to my right.   A lot of effort and I only saw him catch one small fish during that time.  The water is fairly deep, and I wonder whether, like the fish, grebes lay their eggs late on such waters, waters that are slow to warm up.   In contrast, in the shallow local park lake, the young grebes are already several weeks old.  It would maybe be to the bird's advantage to lay eggs at a time that is related to the hatching of the year's fish fry. In much the same way that blue tits seem to know when the caterpillars will be most plentiful in the oak trees.

 Other visitors to my swim included this woodmouse, totally oblivious to my presence, and this cheeky, chirpy little chap.

If the alliteration does not help you with the bird's ID: tough!

Most of my days' tenching continue to provide fish at the rate of one bite a day, and I cannot yet seem to find a consistent way to improve this.  Some good fish, some less so, but the recent highlights up until a few days ago,were another at 7, and a fish of 8-11.   Both well worth the wait.   A few males showed up as well, each being a little under 5 pounds but great fighters, as are most male tench.   I seem to catch fish of two very different looks.  One is pale green, almost Granny Smith's apples in colouration, sometimes with quite an orange belly.  The others are dark, almost metallic green, with a belly that is best described as greyish.   I have no statistical data to actually back this up ( so far) but I feel that the darker fish are smaller, and that they fight far harder.  I will leave that as a theory: work in progress, for the moment, and I will see whether future fish help to support the theory.

Having had a number of such zero/one fish sessions, I chose to spend a morning on a farm pond, A change is as good as a rest, and fishing lift method with bread, catching a mixed bag of tench, crucians, roach and one bream, is a very pleasant change indeed.   None of these fish topped half a pound, but there were plenty of them to play on the light rod and centrepin reel.  The pond does hold carp as well, up to at least ten pounds, so there was always the chance of some greater drama.   

During this session I somehow developed a lip ulcer, quite a bad one, very annoying. So driving home I stopped by Tesco's medicine counter, and looked for some suitable cream.  Bonjela Cool was what I chose.  Seen it on the TV, must be good.  Back home I applied it liberally. Oh My God!    Cool?   How can they call it cool?  I almost screamed in agony at the powerful sting that went right through my lip, feeling as if had every intention of severing my tongue!   It was murder, Continuously hurt for a good thirty minutes. The TV adverts do nothing to warn of the near death experiences caused by application of this stuff.  The minty taste, (evidently that was the cool bit),  was just discernible, but the major impact was like having a baseball bat crash into the face.  So painful.   I had intended to buy Tesco's own brand version.  It would have been far cheaper...had it existed.   Tesco knows about this stuff I am sure, and do not want the blame, when their clients experience the excruciating effects of using this cream.  Not daft Tesco: now they can finger the Bonjela company every time.  The tube has lain on the table ever since, and only once more have I dared to try again.  I should not have expected a different result, and did not get a different result, It still felt much like a self inflicted decapitation must feel, except that the pain persists far longer.   A week later, and the ulcer is disappearing all by itself. The tube remains nearly full. How full?    About £2-95 of the £3-00 I paid for it.

One final long tench session produced two fish.  The first was a very dark female, no spawn at all visible.  At 5-15 it was not a huge fish for the water, but it fought as though it were being piloted by

A Gorgeous 5-15 Female.

the very devil himself.  Absolutely wonderful account of itself, and such a beautiful fish too.  Very metallic green.   I would have been happy with just the one fish, but decided to stay on through the night.   The lake remained as a mirror the whole time and very few fish, save the odd roach, moved. Sometimes I would swear there were no fish diluting the water in the lake.  I had one rod cast over a tight patch of bait, and another was equipped with a size 6 hook, three maggots and a lump of breadflake adorned it, and it was cast as far as I could into a weedy area. Maybe 50 yards, not much more, as I am no distance casting champion.  The night remained peaceful, with just the bats for company.  The fish had deserted me.  But at exactly 5 o'clock, certainly within 30 minutes of 5am, the distance rod had a bite.   I didn't see the dough bobbin rise up to the carbon fibre, it was far too quick, the bait runner was also too surprised to play any part in the incident, but the reel suddenly started to revolve rapidly backwards. I do not fish bolt rigs, but this fish was sure to have hooked itself.  I struck though, and feeling a heavy weight, thought "a carp".  The fish moved left, heavy and slow, and I was able to reel in the other line out of the way.   After I did so, the fish went quite solid, and stationary,  and I became convinced it

A Spawny 10-5 Tinca. Not so gorgeous.

was off, and that I was into some heavy weed.   Apart from one moment when I thought that a bream might have taken the bread, there was nothing more to be felt on the line, no movement and I slowly pumped in what appeared to be merely a massive ball of weed.  As it neared the net I saw some smooth green, the flank of a tench?     I quickly removed most of the weed, and the fish, which had been completely encased by weed,  moved out powerfully and bored deep several times close in. I have experienced this before: a fish with its head buried in weed will often lie completely still and not fight.  It was netted soon after, and was indeed a tench.  The hook fell out in the landing net, and I thought that maybe I should have netted the weed ball, rather than removing the weed from the fish, thus taking the risk of allowing it to have another swim round.  After a few quick photos I weighed it, and then weighed it again, and again:   ten pounds five ounces!   A new personal best, and my first double figure tench.  

But it had only gained that weight by virtue of at least three quarters of a pound of spawn, maybe even a bit more.  And so my excitement level was not perhaps what it should have been.  Am I my own worst enemy? Wanting all my fish to look perfect and pretty?  Dampening the experience for myself? The 5-15 of the evening before was just as exciting a fish to catch. So size is not everything for me. For many other anglers though, it is.   And I can understand that, although if they were being honest there is not really much more skill involved in the capture, as the weight of a fish gets larger.   If I were being cruel, and having another rant at them, I might suggest that they were fishing in grab-a-granny mode.   Only the weight (effectively age?) matters to them.  Me: I like them pretty.

There is a large barbel in the local stream. It weighs anywhere between 12 and 14 pounds, varying somewhat over the weeks and months, and has been around that weight for several years.   This fish has been named "The Big Girl", by those anglers who MUST name fish, and appears it to be something of a neighbourhood bike.  Everyone and his dog has caught it, some anglers several times.  It probably got to be the biggest in the river by feeding freely, and it seems to get caught at least a dozen times each year, sometimes on a weekly or even daily basis.   People fish for this fish, targetting it specifically.  I avoid the swims in which it lives, quite intentionally.  I don't want to catch it.   A representative from the EA thinks it must be 25 years old, and I assume he therefore thinks it was one of the initially stocked fish.  A great great grab-a-granny?  25 years is a ripe old age for any fish, and I am a little surprised it has not lost much weight from its maximum.  Or rather at 25 years, shocked it didn't die years ago. Do fish suffer from dementure I wonder? Is this a fish that cannot remember that it has just had its breakfast, and hence gets caught again and again?  ;-)    Apologies to Bill, Paul, Jerry, Steve etc. etc.....................etc.

I think I might now go and hide for a while. 

Mirror, Mirror, in the Weed...

Not at all satisfied with my score of two fish, a small roach and smaller perch, for a total of about  four ounces, in my three short trips to the Scrapyard Pond, I decided to have another cast or two this morning.  I was not going to be beaten by a  little pond in such scruffy surroundings as this one. The rods were set up last night, with float and star lights, as I had every intention on reaching the water at about 2 am.   Head torch was readied on the kitchen table, bait to hand, and all I needed to do was to wake up on time.   I failed miserably in this aim, maybe the alarm in my phone went off, the phone certainly pronounced its guilt on screen, but I heard nothing at all.  And so it was nearly 3 hours later, after waking up naturally, that I hit the bank.     Fortunately my preparation meant that I was fishing within moments.  

The swim had lilies to the right of me, lilies to the left of me, and a massive bed of weed, rising to the surface both in front and to my right, some 7 or 8 yards out.  A narrow clear channel stretched out diagonally away and to the left, although after only 15 yards it again hit solid weed.  The open space before me was small, and landing any sizeable fish was going to be a challenge, but I had an idea in mind.   If the fish went into either lily bed, then it was probably game over.  Both rods were equipped with six pound line, and lilies, big fish and light line just does not often work.  However I have occasionally found that, if a fish gets its head buried in soft weed, it can give up, and stop struggling.  Maybe any good tench hooked might get into the softer weed, allowing me to pull them in?    It was still dark but the Eastern sky was ominously light, signalling the approaching dawn.  I had cast my right hand rod, straight out, a yard or so short of the weedbed, and catapulted a couple of handfuls of maggots into the area.  Bait was 4 orange maggots on a size 10 hook.  The second rod was a side dish of half a lobworm, cast just over the lilies and to the left of the baited area.   The starlights provided just enough float illumination, certainly enough to show both were completely immobile.   A large dragonfly appeared, and slowly flew off down the bank, a sure sigh that the light had intensified somewhat.  Then a bite on the maggot rod, and I cursed myself for having struck too soon. THINK! IDIOT!   Tench, my target species, are not quick biters, and I should have allowed more time.   Bubbles were starting to appear, and only around the maggot baited area, and so I was sure that fish were responsible.   Tench bubbles they looked like, and it was obviously a small shoal, rather than a single fish.   Spirits lifted, but still no bites, just more bubbles.   The worm rod float bobbed once, but did nothing more.   Odd that, for the worm rod did the same two or three times on my last trip.   Perch cannot have been responsible, as they would surely have gulped the worm down deep into disgorger territory.  Nope: the bites on worm, together with two or three more I was to get during the session, would remain a mystery.    

At precisely 6.30  the right hand float disappeared, and a strike hit into a solid fish, which took line as it headed into the clear channel.  My thoughts turned from a tench to a good tench, as I stopped it, on the 6 pound line just before it reached the weeds that defined the limits of the open water.  It then moved to the right, recrossing the open patch, and swam directly into the weedbed in front of me.  And there it stuck, the pressure of my line preventing it from going in much further.  I kept some pressure on, so as to prevent it going any further in, and as I expected, a mass of the surface weed, together with the submerged rest of the

MOST, But Not All, of the Weedball That Encased the Fish

green iceberg, slowly started to come towards me.  The fish gave the occasional shrug of its shoulders, just to assure me that it was still on the line.  It took an age to bring a huge weedball, about a cubic yard in size, to the bank.  Although I waved a smallish landing net at it, I was still unable to see the fish.   I had to grab many handfuls of weed, and throw them onto the bank, before I saw where the fish was, and then sliding the net under both it and some more of the weed, I lifted it up the bank.  It was only at this time that I realised it was not a tench, but a mirror carp.  

A Bit of an Ugly Old Sod.

 It weighed a little under 12 pounds, and I knew that I was probably a little lucky to have landed it in such a weedy swim, on such light tackle.  The weed is unlike that at the Sunday challenge pond, it is still comprised of long strands, but the leaves are smaller, and the stalks are long, and quite stiff, with an almost twiggy feel to them.  It has as much in common with a World War I barbed wire entanglement as it has with the soft Elodea from the other pond. Nevertheless, the whole ball did come to the bank when pulled, and on looking up at the water, about 4 square yards of the weedbed had now disappeared, taking up its new residence on the bank.   As twelve year olds, my mates and I had little knowledge of the names of any of plants we saw when fishing, so Michael, one of the gang, had coined the name "Grangle weed".  I can think of nothing better to describe the huge mound now standing on platform 1 by my side: Grangle. Almost an onomatopoeic description of a truly evil weed.  

The swim now died, and the mist, rising from the pond, started to envelop it.  The ghostly figure of another angler walked to a swim on the far bank, his camouflaged jacket aiding the mist, and he rapidly disappeared from the visible world.  He had been moving slowly along, making a great deal of quiet, and so I  instantly diagnosed him as a carp angler, one that was stalking his fish. A guerilla in the mist. A heron landed atop a tree at the far end of the pool. The little grebe did not show itself again this morning.  The day already had an Autumn like feel to it, with the temperature dropping noticeably.   It wasn't until about 8.00 am that the swim started to pick up its pulse again.  More bubbles appeared, and the worm float gave yet another single bob.   But no fish resulted, and I left for home at about 9.00 am, the sun having risen quite high, and dispersed the mist.   I felt that my chances of catching another fish had diminished.  The missing mist allowed me to see the other angler clearly.  I was surprised to see him on a seat basket with a roach pole. So much for the carp stalking stealthy approach.   I was mistaken yet again.

The Post Mortem:

Had that carp fought as well as the seven pound fish I caught from the tench lake a few days ago, I would have been unlikely to have landed it.   The tench lake is big, with clear water, having little weed, and I could afford to let it run with the same rod and line strength as I used today.   The scrapyard pond is full of lilies, rushes, grangle weed, with at least 80% of the surface covered.  Today was a risk.  A tench would have been in itself a fair old problem, but to have intentionally fished with such gear, in such heavy weed, for carp would have been foolhardy indeed. But the fact remains, I landed the fish.   But it was a mirror.   And there seems to be widespread acceptance that mirror carp do not fight as well as common carp.   Would I have had it so easy if the fish had been a common?   I suspect not.    But why should mirrors not fight as hard as commons?  And indeed, do they really not fight as hard as commons, or I am just looking more benevolently at the far prettier commons in the landing net, when compared to the mirrors?   What do leathers scrap like? Commons or mirrors? I cannot remember: it is a long time since my last leather carp.

So now for the truly wild theory, based on nothing more than an idea that flitted through my head as |I looked at that mirror carp, a fish which was certainly not the fairest of all, for if truth be told, I thought it looked a bit of an ugly old sod.  Definitely no Snow White, not even a wicked witch.  But, with it living so near the council tip, maybe I should have expected that. Mirrors and commons are usually more or less the same shape, they certainly have the same muscle groups, and so in theory might be expected to fight equally well as each other. So what is different about the two varieties?  Only the scale pattern.    Fish scales are designed such that, as the fish flexes its body, so the scales slide over and under each other, the overlap between adjacent scales changing slightly.   Is it possible that mirror carp, with their much enlarged scales, might feel some discomfort when swimming?  The larger scales would flex less easily, and might not be able to slide across each other quite so much. Might they "dig in" as the fish flexes its body to its full extent, and actually restrict how much the fish can bend its body? Is it possible that the very pattern of a carp's scales therefore have a direct effect on how hard it fights when hooked?   As I said, a fairly wild theory, but one maybe worthy of some discussion.   Maybe I need to catch a couple of leathers now for comparison.  I really don't know why people had to mess with the genetics of carp so as to alter their scale patterns.   And as far as looks go, I have only ever seen ONE mirror carp that I thought looked really fantastic, and worth all the genetic modification of the species.   I can understand why the Asians messed about so as to produce highly coloured and decorative Koi carp, but as for mucking about with scale sizes and numbers....WHY?

Grayling and Those Irritating Ounces

At this time of year most waters can prove difficult to fish.  The temperature has dropped, along with most of the leaves.  I am torn between loving the leaf fall, and hating it.  Which side I hang probably depends on my proximity to the water at the time.  







My Maple... Minus its Lower Branches

Maple Leaves in the Pond.

I have, in my garden a fairly large Japanese maple.  In the Autumn its leaves turn a deep crimson, and the tree dominates the view from my lounge window quite spectacularly.  Unfortunately its magnificence remains at its best for only two or three days, and the red colour is at most only present for a fortnight. Many of the fallen leaves end up in my pond, where I am again torn between admiring them as they float around in the pond, and rushing to get them out before they sink and decompose.  This tree is, without doubt, my favourite, but it has had its problems.  The branches used to cascade almost to ground level, but I didn't mind weaving my way between them throughout the year, looking forward as I was, to the fireworks display some months later.  But a few years ago my wife's twin sister visited us for a couple of months during the Winter.  She is Asian, and as such would sometimes be seen doing very odd things. So I came home one day to find her hacking off all the lower branches of my precious maple...using our best kitchen knife.  I was horrified, and told her in no uncertain terms, with judicious use, I am afraid, of language that was somewhat alien to her dialect.  It was two, maybe three, days later that I realised what she had been doing: just trying to help with the garden.   In her country there ARE no deciduous trees, and it suddenly hit me that she must have thought the tree to be dead.  Trees in her own garden each lose two or three leaves a day, and any with no leaves at all on it is therefore dead: firewood.  I can only thank God she didn't start to fell the 100+ year old lime trees in the front garden.  Had I arrived home much later I imagine I would have had a list of fallen trees not far short of those that were blown down in the infamous 1987 hurricane. Well, it was a BIG kitchen knife!  But surely she should have noticed that nearly all the trees in the garden, and those in the nearby road, and most trees in the town's parks were "dead"?

But enough of that. At this time of year, late Autumn, fish, of most species, are sluggish and unco-operative.  Lake species, apart from pike are often far more difficult to locate and catch. River fishing can become a nightmare, with countless leaves drifting downstream, giving false bites, accompanied by drifting and dying lengths of streamer weed, perhaps the odd branch, and even full sized trees if the rain has persisted long enough to significantly raise the river level.  Grayling and chub are perhaps the most obliging of the Winter species, but water, coloured by rain can deter them from feeding, or perhaps even from finding the bait. But there had been no rain for some time, and so I set out in search of a grayling or two.  My first  trip to this river had been a couple of months before, and it had given up a dozen of its grayling, and a similar number of trout to my rod.    Most of the grayling were 6-8 ounces, with one outstanding male fish of a pound and eleven ounces, a personal best and on my first trip to the river. So I was hoping for a similar result this second trip.  The river looked sad, as did the surrounding fields and trees.  Everything appeared grey, solid grey cloud cover,  even the grass appearing to have a greyish tinge to it.  The trees were bare, and the venue looked thoroughly unenthusiastic.  But, as every experienced angler knows, such conditions can make the fish feed well. There were no drifting leaves and the grayling fed, but spasmodically so, and only five fish were landed.  Grayling being grayling, another 4 or 5 had shed the hook.   The top jaw of a grayling is very solid, very hard for the point of a hook to penetrate there, and it is inevitable that some fish are lost.  A couple of dace were also added to the total catch.  But another personal best grayling, a female fish of one pound fifteen. Excellent. 

Not Quite Two Pounds

  But what is it with that final irritating ounce or so?  I always seem to have to pass though fish just short of a target weight, before I finally achieve that target.  I had a couple of roach of 1-15, before that first 2 pound plus fish.  A pike of 19-12 preceded my first 20 pound fish.  Tench, barbel, so many species have made me wait  before I hit  the nail properly.  It is uncanny.   Not that there is any more skill needed to catch a bream of 9-15 as opposed to a 10-4.  But try telling something like that to an angler who has just landed his first 30 pound carp!    I tried once. I said that, in a lake containing just two carp, one of 10 pounds, and another of 30 pounds, the bigger fish needed three times as much food to maintain its body weight, and therefore should be three times easier to catch.  I admit I was being a little "poky in his ribs", but he would not have the theory at any cost. Nope: the 30 had to be at least 3 times harder to catch than the smaller fish. 

But again I digress.  I wasted the last 90 minutes of the day chatting to a guy on the bank.  I had seen his split cane rod, and asked to see it.  Carp fishing was discussed, and he remembered my name from the early days of Cheshire carp fishing.  Apparently he had spoken to me once on the bank when he was a teenager. I had taken 30 odd years away from angling completely, rods gathering dust in the attic, and so, for someone to remember my name after one meeting nearly 40 years ago was quite astonishing.



 Bullhead

Weed Wrapped Around my Hookbait.

Another week passed, and I was again on the river, looking for that 2 pound plus fish.  No chance!  I knew it had rained a little during the night.   My wife, who sleeps lighter than myself, told me later that the rain came down by the shipload.  I think that is what she said.   So when I arrived I was a little surprised to find the river up a couple of inches, but carrying a large load of leaves and weed.  Fishing was dire, but I stuck it out.  The river continued to rise very slowly over the day, but the debris load increased massively.  Not a total blank if you consider a minnow and three bullheads a catch. A couple of dace also sucked at a maggot, but the day was blighted by masses of drifting weed.   One of the bullhead astonished me by taking two good sized worms on a size 4 hook.  That fish was no more than three inches long.    Bullheads are surprisingly common in many of our rivers, often the second most numerous species after the minnows, and very much a favourite kingfisher food item. Large pectoral fins allow them to "glue" themselves to the riverbed even in very fast water. They spend a lot of time in and about the gravel and are rarely caught by most anglers.  Three in one day, I consider an achievement.  Eventually though the weed beat me, and I retreated.