Sabotage

The Loafer had found some roach topping at dusk and primed a few areas and after sending me  (honest) the wrong way at the bridge (his hundred yards are often half  a mile) I found him wielding his latest rod, a 15 foot Cadence 

with  a chub already in the bag, 

but no roach or dace. We pondered on the effect of the cormorants possibly keeping them tucked away, even in these perfect trotting conditions. So much so that I soon jacked in  the trotting and managed to miss one nailed on chub bite on flake, had a pull round after lifting the rod to let the flake swing in which was on briefly then a decent chub that was properly on  but shed the hook just as I was thinking where to net it. This after a period of finding it hard to cast as far as I wanted. We'd been talking about getting old and Loafer mentioned threading the line through the gap in the tip ring and not the eye itself. We checked my quiver tip and lo and behold the exact same thing. How bizarre, then it dawned on me that during my last loaf squashing debacle down on the Stour the Loafer had re-rigged my rod....

Loafer had one similar sized chub trotting flake but nothing on maggot till I started to get roach  twitches on flake, a couple of fish topped and he had a small roach, all on dusk. We could hear the bastard cormorants laughing at us..