Bombing along

Back on the river at last and what a glorious Saturday afternoon. River still holding a lot of colour following Wednesday's deluge and being run off hard, which seems to be the general state of affairs this winter. Certainly has mixed things up with flow patterns and features.

This is the mill pool at the top of our stretch. Will need some waders to get to anything like any depth down that far run. For most its working life this iteration was used in paper making but also textile and flour processing and there was a mill way back in Doomsday times and the adjacent Brampton was a Roman settlement.

The Hall is being developed extensively, primarily for weddings so those pesky trees have had to go. Built by the Pastons it has been reworked a bit over five centuries. Oxnead itself was a lost medieval settlement. it's church and lost settlement well described here by Nick Stone:

http://www.invisibleworks.co.uk/oxnead-dmv/

So, with the river being run at a brisk walking pace and little cover it was  time to work the margins and takes came from near and far margins. The first, after a twitch back saw the float heading off for the next mill at some pace. on winding into the fish it  motored even harder and at first I began to wander whether I'd found a big hen as it was taking full advantage of the flow and keeping the float below the surface. The pressure of a locked down 3lb tc began to tell and the big hen had shrunk somewhat by the time I had it in the onion bag. Leeched but plump and pristine with a small green patch on it's almost striped flank.

The other half of the pollan was taken virtually on the drop in a slight far margin depression and the belligerent little fella did the right thing and unhooked itself as I grabbed the trace. Nothing else really occurred as the sun disappeared into the poplars behind me but what a lovely dusk to be on the river.  I had a feeder rod in the charabanc and had thought  about the bridge pool into dark but decided to  just soak up the increasing clamour of the roosting corvids and the mournful wail of the noddy train over the flood plain.