Still blue

As the Covid-19 lockdown eased fisheries have opened up. The pit I fish opened a week or more back but I left well alone. Mainly because the weather had turned less eel friendly . Eel weather returned on Monday so I started making plans. I'd already bought a bag o' worms and was sure there was some squid from last year in the freezer. Wrong. I had to scrape up some dregs from my pike baits to use on the non-worm rod. Blueys and smelt don't really fill me with confidence for eels, but they take smelts when they are fished for pike so there's a chance.

This season I'm restricting myself to two rods. It might make me work a bit harder and it'll cause less problems fishing from the pod I'm forced to use because of the stoned pegs I have to fish from. With no brolly required having just a pair of rods in the quiver sure does lighten the load!

No early start required I left home around quarter past eight and was surprised to find one van in the car park. A quick look at the water to see what the clarity was like provided another pleasant  surprise. It was still blue, but quite clear. It didn't take me long to walk round and find a swim, one which lets me cover a fair bit of water and which has produced some decent eels in the past. A bunch of dendrobenas went out to my left on the off bottom rig and a short smelt tail on a leger towards the pads directly in front of the swim.

 The leger rig is dead simple. A short coated wire trace to a single hook is tied to the line which has a large eyed swivel running on it. The stop is a small cork ball pushed over the trace swivel eye. The lead is tied to a length of hard nylon which acts as a bit of an anti-tangle device with a rig sleeve tidying up the knot where it's attached to the small eye of the large eyed swivel. It looks crude and inelegant. But it works.

It took less than twenty minutes for some action to occur. The bobbin on the smelt rod was twitching. A strange sort of take which wasn't taking line. I struck anyway and connected with something. From the way the fish was pulling I suspected it was a jack rather than a snig. No head shaking, no pulling back. Just a fishy weight coming in. When it kited to my left my doubts increased as I reached for the net. that's when whatever it was dropped off. The bait was lightly marked but in a pikey kind of way, even though it wasn't slashed by sharp teeth.

The willows were alive with the chiffing and chaffing of chiffchaffs, A mallard brood was almost full grown. A grebe vacated the area as I laid my gear down. The sky was clear and the wind light. Even so the air temperature was set to stay high after dark. Even by the time I left at midnight it was still in teh high teens and no fleece was required. Other than the light traffic noise, the roads are still strangely quiet, it was a peaceful evening. That was until the starlings arrived to roost. Around nine, as dusk was thinking of turning up, they began to arrive in small flocks, gathering in the tall firs where they chattered to each other. Only a passing tractor would disturb them, cars and motorcycles didn't bother them at all. After flying up they'd circle the firs a time or two before settling back.

It was around ten to ten, just after sunset according to the tide table I keep in my fishing bag, that the starlings upped and left the firs. They began circling the pit before descending into the reedbeds I've seen them roost in during autumn and winter. Being closer to me their noisy twitterings were much louder.

It was about there quarters of an hour later when there was a couple of bleeps from the Delkim with worm rod resting on it. I left it a few seconds to see if anything would develop before winding in to check the worms. They were still there. I'd previously spent the first hour with the worms wrapped around the polyball when my first cast had tangled. the worms were intact so I recast them to the same area.

The next take wasn't so long in coming. A typical up-down-up-down twitchy bootlace take to the worm rod. Sure enough it was the bane of an eel angler's life. A writhing, sliming tangle-master. How it got the hooklink and leadlink knotted up and covered in slime is one of those mysteries of the eel. When I eventually managed to flick the hook free, it was lip hooked, I had to cut the hooklink and leadlink to salvage the hook. What a mess.

With a fresh Kevlar hooklink attached and the leadlink retied I baited up and cast out again. This time I put the worms out to the pads and dropped the smelt tail close in to my left on the reed edge. They both remained untouched until I packed up and called it an early night.

This had been one of those 'feeler' sessions to check the gear out to make sure everything was in order as much as anything. And to get me back into the swing of fishing. I've been taking a lot of photographs since fishing stopped and have been really enjoying it. So much so that I haven't missed fishing at all. A few hours by the water as day turns to night, though, was a real tonic. It's still a bit early for concerted eeling for me though. Another week and I might start in earnest.

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Not so scary

Whenever I see a tench roll in front of me when I'm deliberating over where to fish it makes my mind up quickly. This was another 'turn up late' overnight session, but I wasted no time getting the rods out having seen that fish. I plopped the marker float on the spot, cast one rod to it and moved the line marker on that rod used that to set the markers on the other lines. With three baits out (two plastic casters, two grains of fake corn and a 10mm tench scarer) I spodded out some seeds, catapulted out some pellets and finally set up camp for the night. Then the kettle went on.

I was treated to a close view of a black headed gull trying to steal a meal from a common tern just above head height and a couple of rod lengths out. A while later the same tern noisily chased a kestrel across the lake.

It had been a hot day and there was little wind. Even the clear sky didn't cause the cold to rush in after dark. Night time was the cue to swap the casters to a grain of glow corn and the fish scarer to a larger pop-up on a carp rod. It really did feel like summer had arrived. The midges certainly had so I lathered on some midge repellent.

Not a rat was seen. Nor a fish caught. At dawn I went through the usual ritual of a bite to eat and a brew before putting the tench baits back on and spodding out the bulk of the seeds. The plastic baits were fished over the seeds, with small mesh bags of pellets used to protect the hook from bottom debris. The tench scarer got cast away from the baited area, also with a small bag of pellets.

It was quite a shock when the scarer rod was away at ten to five. When I say 'away', there was no line being taken as the baitrunner was pretty tightly set, but the rod was bouncing on the pod! There was one tench that hadn't been frightened! Although the fish had come to the net with some weed attached, that lovely grassy weed that tench seem to favour, there wasn't much being picked up when I wound any of he rigs in.

With a cloudless sky the sunrise wasn't as dramatic as it can be, but its stillness promised another red hot day.

An hour after the first take I had another, to the same rod. This didn't feel like a tench. It didn't feel like much to be honest. It looked a bit strange whatever it was. A bit of carp, a touch of fancy goldfish and maybe a hint of crucian?

More reliable than a train timetable it was exactly an hour later that the tench scarer failed to scare another tench. The third tench was running late, arriving at twenty past eight when the sun was getting high in the sky and a nice ripple was on the water from the light easterly. Then the timetable went to pot. It was twenty to eleven as I waited for the test match to restart when the biggest tench of the day so far picked up the scary bait. By now it was pretty obvious, even to me, that the reason for the bait's previous failure to attract tench was that I'd not put one near any tench. A new moniker for the bait is required!

Fifteen into play at the test the third tench's twin turned up, and forty minutes after that the first small male tench of the season for me. Half an hour after that one another male was in the net.

Come what may I was going to pack up when the players went for their cricketers' lunch. It felt like I could have carried on catching tench on the little round balls all day, but sometimes you have to go. I loaded the barrow and pushed it along the path round the lake. I'd not gone far when I thought about gratuitously running over a dead leaf caught in the grass but it looked a bit odd for a leaf. Avoiding it with the barrow I took a backward glance at the 'leaf' and saw it was actually a pair of mating moths. Despite catching seven tench and something else, spotting these moths made my day. A quick check of their ID on returning home revealed them to be eyed hawk moths. A first for me.

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Enough's enough

The website frustration, which I just can't be bothered with trying to sort out right now, and my  workload was driving me nuts and finally drove me out in an attempt to beat the oncoming foul weather yesterday.

I tried to find a spot that was sheltered from the chilling wind, and almost succeeded. The trouble was it was in a swim I've had next to no success in. However, it did allow me to cover a lot of water by casting baits out and working them back to me every half an hour. Which was what I did for the first two hours.

Despite the touch of colour in the water I wasn't feeling very confident. Unlike the robin that came to see me. No doubt used to being fed maggots and scraps of sandwiches it was out of luck as I had neither maggots not sandwiches with me. Even so it was finding plenty of small invertebrates in the mud that had been paddled up in the damp grass around the swim.


After those two blank hours I was getting restless and had a move. That was the cue for the weather to change from overcast with sunny spells to overcast with rain. I was a little happier in the new swim though, having caught from it in the past. Not this time. The whole place seemed lifeless. Yet another day when there was no pike activity to my rods and little bird activity around the water. With the hawthorns all but bare of berries there's nothing to tempt the winter thrushes. Even the tits made only a brief appearance and the goldfinch flocks were elsewhere or keeping low. To be honest I was glad when I packed up. It had been ne of those sessions. Not even fishing two bits of lamprey made a difference.

Back on the rod front I've fitted another Alps reel seat to a spinning rod for a customer. I have to confess that these Alps seats are exquisitely machined. Very nice if you like that sort of thing but no more practical than a bog standard Fuji seat.

All reel seats with inserts for decorative purposes require extra faffing about to fit to a rod. The one in question required more than usual. It's typical of designers to make things look pretty without giving a thought to how they'll be put to use. A reel seat has to be well bonded to the rod blank. That means there has to be enough of a gap for glue to fill. It's obvious from the photo that there's not much space for glue with this seat, and what there is is at each end. Still, a little ingenuity (not to mention a bit of bodging...) has done the trick.

One more thing. Fuji's composite reel seats were rightly hailed as an advance when they were introduced. They were not only corrosion proof, they were warmer to the touch than the all metal reel seats that were standard in the seventies and before. To my mind this fad for fancy machined aluminium reel seats is a step backwards, no matter how nice they look. Not that they all look nice. Some are plain ugly!

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Bad day at Goat Lake

It might be a little late this year but the fresh willow leaves are doing their thing glowing against a  dark spring sky. Couple that with a brisk wind and thoughts turn to tench. So I went roach fishing...

My intentions for the long bank holiday weekend were to start on Friday after boxing off the last job on my list. Applying the final coat of varnish to a couple of butt rings on a pair of handle modifications. Okay, so I'd run out of the disposable brushes I use with more on their way. This isn't usually a problem as the craft shop in the village also stocks them.

First thing Friday morning I walk in the shop and the proprietor knows what I'm after. "A lady from the Cubs came in yesterday and bought all the brushes." Bugger. Not to worry. Poundland had some that would do the job last time I wandered in. Off to town. Did Poundland have any paint brushes? Did it hell. Nor did anywhere else I looked. I headed home to start searching for something usable to apply the varnish. The hunt ended at five o'clock. The day which was to be spent fruitfully had been wasted.

Saturday didn't go much better. The refurbished rod butts were duly collected, and another customer stopped by to pick up his rebuilds, then I headed to the tackle shop to drop off a repair. I was going to go roach fishing in the afternoon but my back was starting to niggle so I thought it best not to irritate it by carrying my gear round the lake. When I got home the post man had delivered the replacement for the lawn mower cable I had managed to mow. My back survived the grass cutting which I finished off. Then I went for a roam with a camera after tea.

Sunday morning and the back was still niggling so I took a walk to see if that would free it up. It seemed to. With cabin fever getting bad I had an early lunch, made some butties and loaded the gear in the car. I reckoned that if I fished a peg near the car park my back might cope. Sure enough I wasn't feeling any discomfort by the time I started to set the gear up.

The wind was pretty strong, but not unmanageable. It was chilling, even though I was sheltered by a tree. I set up the two marked rods and cast one out with an open ended feeder filled with my pellet and hemp mix, to which I had added some explosive feeder groundbait, and the other with a maggot feeder. On the third rod I went for a change of tactics and tied up a hair rig with a small grain of slow sinking plastic corn. This was to be the 'sleeper' rod and be cast out just a couple of times.

It was gone four thirty by the time I was settled in and pouring my first brew. With darkness not coming until after nine now I had plenty of time. The only flies in the ointment were the water clarity and weed growth. The water was not quite gin clear, but there was about three feet of visibility. The weed growth wasn't thick, but there was the odd bit of thin, stringy weed on the rigs every now and then. I wasn't disheartened.

Butties eaten and the Korum magazine/catalogue read the radio went on. Fishing the shallower end of the lake it was easy to get the bow out of the line after the rigs had settled, despite the wind which wasn't affecting casting accuracy either. It was quite relaxing fishing. Nothing was happening. With the clear water and bright sun I didn't expet much until later so I was undeterred as I sat breathing in the gentle fragrance of the water mint which was beginning to emerge in the margins..

There wasn't much in the way of waterfowl to watch. If the Canada geese are anything to go by I guess most are well into the nesting stage by now. A few swallows were in evidence, and I saw my first swifts of the year, being alerted to their presence by their high pitched screams.

Another bird that drew my attention by its call as it flew overhead was the whimbrel. A flock of six were heading towards the river where I had spotted some for the first time last week on an evening walk looking for warblers. Strange how you see a bird for the first time in your life and then see more in short order. A bit like catching your first big fish can take years then they start to come along more frequently.

The sky clouded over and the wind dropped a little as the evening drew on. Towards sunset the sky then cleared. It was still cooler than it could be and my confidence was ebbing away. Partly it was the feeling of inevitability about the impending blank, partly the feeling that I should be fishing for something else. The other part of my plan for the weekend was a speculative session for the bream in another lake. I just fancy spending an afternoon to dark session with the rods cast on to a heavily baited area waiting for a bobbin to drop slowly to the deck. No frequent recasting as with the roach but a sit and wait approach, chilling out on a bedchair in the sun.

Nine o'clock came around. It was still light. I'd had enough. Not just because the roach weren't playing ball, but because my back had started to ache. I struggled to get the rucksack on my back and limped my way to the car park. It was only about 100 yards or so but it made me wince a time or two.

In the scheme of bad backs I can't say it's awful at all. It's more annoying and uncomfortable. Carrying fishing tackle and driving a car only serve to stop it getting better. So thoughts of heading to distant waters in search of tench or bream have to be shelved. It's too early for me to start eel fishing, and my new eel rods aren't finished yet anyway. So I'm a bit scuppered as to what to do. Maybe I'll have to find somewhere to take a float rod and start stocking up with eel baits. Preferable somewhere I can park behind my swim!

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