Not long after my last post I called in at my local tackle shop for some reason. Either to drop off a repair or gather some tubes for despatching rods. Anyway, 'someone' was diseased and unable to speak above a whisper. A couple of days later my nose started dripping. Then the sneezing started. Sleep was interrupted at frequent intervals by snot collecting at the back of my throat making me wake up choking. Just when I was feeling better the cough started, accompanied by the loss of the will to do anything at all. I thought I was over it but no. The continual hawking up of phlegm commenced and is only now abating. That's why I haven't been fishing for a while. Of course, the weather that was warm and windless has turned wet and windy now.
In between the endless cups of tea, nose blowings and Strepsils I've been getting on with work. One lovely little job was to re-ring a couple of Loch Tamers belonging to 'a well known pike angler'. The first part of the job was to remove the repairs he'd made. I've seen worse ring replacement jobs in my time.
One thing was for sure, these rings weren't going to fall off! Meaning the highlight of this task was removing the whippings which were braided line liberally soaked with Superglue. A hideous combination to take off.
The other rings cleaned up remarkably well, which meant that altering the spacings didn't leave too much of a mess. Which was a relief.
Now, do I get the pike rods out again, try for the roach or go gudgeon bashing when I get a free (dry) day (or few hours)? I haven't caught a gudgeon for a long, long time and quite fancy swinging a few to hand. Even if it's only to hear them squeak!
