Watching brief

Spent a  bit of  time yesterday watching a pair of kingfishers, which when not darting about were kicking up quite a din. They've raised  a brood. No pics worth posting, but lovely to see four kingfishers lined up in a row and the kids couldn't stop talking about them.

In other news I got a couple of hours on my own somewhere else in my fishy world and whilst I didn't pull up any trees whilst prospecting for future challenges I did catch a nice roach and a couple of average bream. The roach pleased me the most and got me thinking about some scaled down tactics when the temps drop a bit and the beech trees are beginning to shed their autumn tinted leaves and the pads are dying back..

Call the Coastguard

A break in the weather, and a break in the day. Headed for the cool of the pool and came across the Nation's finest  hell bent on an exercise.  Not sure that 'raft' as they insisted on calling it is big enough for them all.

A quiet lunchtime, just them and  some gentle swimmers and kayakers, no tomb stoning yoots, probably still in bed. Quiet on the fish front too, just  a few roach like this one and  a couple of dace.

One of the dace was chomped by this little beastie, which was fun on 2.6lb bs in a good current, tail walking too.

If I'd gone with maggots it would have been loads of these I think.

Might check things out upstream roach wise, bread and corn again, looks nice doesn't it? 

Corn fed

I do like a tench. Seems I am mostly catching single males at the moment amongst the snotties, wherever I go, They do bomb about a bit

I'm sure there are tench somewhere on this bit of the tidal, but probably not in the pool but you never know. It's even busier post furlough, with swimmers and kayakers from dawn to dusk it seems.

Got there about  7.30 and it was cooling down, and after some litter picking and scowling at the yoots set up at the head of a nice back eddy, and having watched some video footage of the pools inhabitants reactions to feed I fed a small egg of left over groundbait and corn, with a golden grain picked out of the still defrosting groundbait on a size 14 B560 . Nice trot off the rod tip along the apron, avoiding the swimming yoots as best as I could. First trot and the float buried as it started its trundle back into the main push. Lovely in the fast water with the pin and the 15 footer.

Mostly roach but some dace too, but no chublets. Worms and I would have had lots of perch I'm sure.

At one point relations with the dive bombing yoots became a little strained when one set about trying to light  a bush and a bin. I chucked a lot of c bombs at him which  might have been heard in Wroxham, to which he sheepishly slunk off whilst his mates came round to see what the fishing was like, one even stood in the water to put some fish back for me. Yoots being yoots they spotted some yootesses and  went back to jumping in again.

With relatively clear water in front of me the catch rate improved as did the stamp of the roach. One of those occasions if you don't get  a bite you have a tangle or no bait on the hook  Deffo worth another bash and perhaps a wade down the tail flush where the  jumpers fear to bomb.

9ish and the lure boys arrived as I was packing up, including Robbie of the North with tales of  a few makkies coming out again but evening tides are now night tides so not for me. Got me some bass tips though.

Quick sticks

I had an hour or  so to kill between scout drop off and pickup. Sneak on to a village pond with dubious no fishing signs and wait for the beady eyed Alsatians to be released or head to the canal with ear defenders on. The canal won and instead of wild yoots I had to contend only with wild swimmers, gentle but nearly blind I think, hugging the reeds and swimming between the rod tip and float. 

I had a paltry amount of past their best maggots (new team in Dangling Indirect who seem to be relying on holiday boat trade to shift their below par grubs.) but had plenty of bites whilst my supply lasted. Mostly tiny dace with a few small rudd and roach, a hybrid and a couple of perch. All on freelined (no shot down) maggot. 

Back for pick up and what  a lovely soft pastel sundown.

Chalk 'n' cheese

I needed  some respite from the noisy canal so headed for a quieter place i know and parked my sorry arse on the neatly manicured sward with chiffchaffs jays, magpies and  a crow for company. Hot but bearable as the sun dipped past the poplars. Small fish feasting on a big hatch of something small and big ole grey hippo-like bream rolling in the greasy Limpopo surface layers.

I'd got two neat little flatbeds out by 6.25 and balled in 5 jaffas of 50/50 Black Bream and brown crumb laced with a tin of corn and spread a top up of 6mm Spicy Sausage pellets and relaxed with an obligatory  fiery ginger beer. 

The church clock had barely chimed 7 times before the right hand (pink tuna) baitrunner was fizzing and a jolly decent bream was bought in protesting and nearly refusing to surrender into the newly festering second string stink net.

 

I'd said to the Loafer that sometimes they seemed to prefer one colour/flavour and it seemed that the Pink Un's were the wafter of choice as another bream was cashing in on the shocking pink fish supper club.

A miscast into the right hand area with  a sneaky yellow peril proved this wrong as this old lump of a

male barry hovered up the wrong'un. so clumsily deployed.

Normal service resumed with a recast of both rods (yellow left/pink right) and a male tench was soon charging about causing mayhem.

A fresher not quite skimmer with a taste for pineapple followed. 

I was down to my very last feeder full of squid and krill as the church clock chimed 8....

Out it went and the bobbin was ripped out of my hand as I clipped it on the line, and the fifth bream of the evening was mine. Time to go home for my tea.

They've got their post spawning slime back, my net, mat and clothes were covered in what resembled the contents of the lavage bucket after Marc Almond's infamous visit to A&E....or a wild evening at St. Osyth for the Beach Gentlemen

ming ay 

 

Average

Had a late afternoon on the canal, it was very busy and I didn't  fare too well. Started off on  a 5 metre pole but only had a few small bits, bites were amazing though on the ultra fine bristle.

Got a few moving to loose fed a bit further out so went onto the waggler and this stunner was my reward.

Went for a snout about a bit further up away from the wild swimmers and wave boarders, might rake a couple of spots and put in some mash, corn and seeds.

Yesterday being Friday we went for a fish supper at the Runtons after school. Not sure what this little feller was.

 Packed as usual.

Hi Ho Silver Lining

Don't know anything about Jeff Beck but I'd bet a nugget he never caught a silver bream  I probably hadn't till yesterday unless I count the tiny little thing I caught from Danbury Park Lake when I was 12 that came  with a bonus tiny float and an even tinier size 22 hook. I didn't even know they were plentiful in the Norfolk/Cambridgeshire  Fens system. I'd spread my post work wings to the edge of my territory to spend an late afternoon 15 feet down a high bank chewing the fat with the Loafer (aka Essex Scribbler) out on a mini road trip in his Twisted Melon Hymer. I think the Middle Level is vague enough. I certainly had to throw a pink if not red herring to the Facebook swim jumper replies. And Pingle Bridge is a real place btw.

It's deep and quite rugged and needed some positive baiting to stir an interest, see below: once they were on it every chuck a coconut but (most) bites hard to hit on our basic open ended feeder tactic but the Loafer reported better results on the slider. We both thought a long pole to hand would be even better if it wasn't permanently windy, even tucked in down below the flood banks. .

Wurms mostly for the Loafer so this lovely perch was no surprise. 

I dropped down to a 14  with single corn to get a better hook up ratio and we certainly were in a silver bream hotspot

I'm sure we had some hybrids but you wouldn't need to be Dr Redfin to spot a true one. Lovely little things they are and game scrappers too.

I had a couple of tiny skimmers, a couple of rudd and this odd thing, neither roach or rudd.

A lovely late afternoon indeed. The Loafer is right though, definitely Bandit country. 

Into the Valley

No, not square jawed fisherman's gansey wearing Richard Jobson's Valley but just a different valley, reached by a winding flinty path and nestled under rolling downs is a little jewel. Poplar fluff and sycamore keys litter the  neat little pathways carefully picked out of the encroaching verges and crushed water mint and rosebay willow scents fill the heavy, warm air. We've had rain and the scented ripeness is pregnant with expectancy, heightened by clusters of bubbles and rocking reed stems, swaying in no breeze.  

I press the short sticks in the verdant sward and hang the red bobbin on the lines, having laced the swim with dark, sweet and oily groundbait. I've avoided baiting up with trembling fingers because Rod Hutchinson  did that many many years ago and instead of my sausage like digits I've impaled neon wafters on  the barbless QM1's, and pressed them into neat little quenelles of tiny things purporting to be krill and squid. These things.

Under armed out into the general area of the banquet I've laid out go two little parcels of attraction, with the waiting sting in the tail ready to catch in an enquiring mouth. It's not long till the left bobbin is dancing and the alarm is sounding. A decent nodding battle, and a solid bream is hustled into the waiting net. No pathetic swimmers roll and capitulation from this hidden jewel's denizens of the deep. A good 6lb I thought but it made good its escape before I'd readied my Nikon and the next encounter

(I'd say from a mudpig)  saw a spat out feeder whistling past my face in a shower of spray.

The Nikon did have an outing for the next one, and this time a very impressive roach bream hybrid made me me work hard for my prize.

The rains came and went several times, I only had the snotty, slimy unhooking mats to shelter under till the showers passed  and they became even more snotty as 4 more decent bream tripped up. Solid things and no pushovers. 

And this very feisty male tench. Now he really did charge about looking for the pads to hide in. Lovely hump back too.

I did spot a jay hunting from a post, taking a big lob worm, and ether a small rodent or a frog/toad. picking at it on it's perch.  I also saw a gormless pigeon land on a branch, break it and almost flop backwards into the water. A Fosbury Pigeon?

I'll certainly return. But not with an umbrella. I hate them. 

Just because

Seems as if I get an odd hour here and there at the behest of other peoples plans so an easier option is sometimes the answer so not a huge change of scenery in this post. A scant hour on the pond, and though the bream were starting to have as I was leaving one missed bite was my lot.

My view from the other end yesterday was equally as pleasant and this time I was on the link ledger approach and just one hit pull in my hour. More would have come I'm sure.

A bream in it's normal surrender pose. Spawning bumps still.

Did have a drive out with a Little'Un in the morning, we did see the very distant bee eaters at Trimingham, being watched by a phalanx of scopes and Billy Big Balls lenses. And speaking of Billy Big Balls, these were a bit difficult to explain.....we bought  a Slushy instead. 

We did have a drive out after out turkey twizzlers for tea whilst the Commander in Chief  was in the  Regal watching the Elvis movie. She's hinting about a trip to Graceland next year. I'm not invited. That purports to being a mammoth.

I have however been thinking about some mackies as they are back off the shingle, typically I've missed the convenient high tides after work for this "season" so I expect they will have been slaughtered by the

undersized bucket load or moved on before I tie some feathers on in place of a mudpig rig. I sound like I know what I will be doing. I don't as my only experience of mackerel was with a hand line  being towed at high speed round Lyme Regis bay. I ought to get out more.