Continuing a theme

I haven't summoned up the arse to do any self takes lately so no time to brush up on the tail gazer frown but I did decide to break my last session "down" to get with the parlance.

19.41: leave drive.

19.46: park.

Twat about

20.03 cast out Source mini under a 4gm Puddle Chucker, spray krill 6mm pellets and two handfuls of Source minis around said Puddle Chucker, sit down and breathe.

20.13: first bubbles appear

20.18: Puddle Chucker lifts and disappears. 

20.19  small but perfectly formed bream on wetted mat.

Twat about a bit more

20.47: Every thing packed away bar rod, stink net and mat.

20.48: Puddle Chucker lifts, glide to pads on left. Missed.

21.11: Wine poured, Commander in Chief's glass as ever slightly fuller.  

Just a short 24 hour session.

Just a short 24 hour session. I really do hate that glib tail gazer's phrase. Sponsored so and so catches first ever 60 plus UK brace,... Ned Vass smashes his PB twice in a two week long session at Kordatakes Yer Dosh Embryo. Four hours is a long 'un for me at present. So, you're not going to get an anatomy of a session on here today....

Pushing 3 hours or so on the Next Nearest on Saturday in the by then just about bearable heat after tea. I hoped this stuff might give me an edge, not sure it did really. Hard to plumb accurately, think the weed is beginning to work through the tru blu inhibitor.

 

Some nice roach. mainly on the drop  and just one bream, foul hooked in a pectoral fin, which upped the fight quality a few notches. Lovely old job after  a hard day hacking through a briar jungle.

Even later and even shorter river trip on Sunday, partly because I knocked over the bait box. The Sweetcorn Kid has been back too, perhaps trying to avoid the ravenous small dace.

 

Bait shredding small dace, and a couple of small  but brilliantly coloured perch as I hadn't packed corn. 

Oh and a nice roach as well. Nights starting to pull in now, fill in flash coming into play against the lowering sun.

I'm still breaming.....

Jon Savage aside, I'm still breaming. This penned after yesterday's Wembley shenanigans.  Far away from the already madding crowds I would set out my stall for some rod bending action down on the Next Nearest on the firm boards of the Royal Box. The last few spots of rain dried on the windscreen as I  unloaded the pantenchnicon, leaving all but the waggler rod inside. I had a round 4 hours to see what magic the golden grains could conjure up. You know the score, 13 foot Drennan,. 3.2lb bs Floatfish straight though to a B560 #14. A nominally 5 AAA insert peacock waggler, bulked with 4AAA and  3  number 4 down, not spread out  and 2 number 6  anchors 4 inches over depth. Seven foot of depth, though some weed  coming up which occasionally saw the shots hung up  a bit.

Roach at first, as the Black Bream laced with corn, hemp and 6mm krill pellets settled on the bed and seeped out it's sweet attractants.  Then the float lifted and sank away as this hybrid made off. I'd seen the length but knew it wasn't a big daddy roach as no vivid red about the fins in the water

A bumped fish with a sheet of bubbles and I knew they'd knocked the roach off the feed. And so it proved as a bream put the desired bend in the rod. Faint spawning tubercles about it as well.

The next fish to the party was different gravy, and though it didn't make off in a knuckle rapping  frenzy it did try to get in the pads to my right and the reeds to my left (which bream don't really) and then disaster struck. I'd rescued an old tip section for my bust landing net but my hastily applied glue gun glue succumbed. I had to fish about with the handle to retrieve the net head then reach for the 42 inch net which the tench gratefully dived into as it wasn't the stink net....a glorious green goddess of a tench.

 

There is nothing as satisfying as sweeping the rod back to meet  a firm resistance and having to flick the anti reverse off, and though the bream weren't as feisty as that tench they did indeed bend the rod  quite nicely. Once beat they do flop over on their big broad flank but even that looks good as they are drawn to the net, a shot I must capture. I'd switched to dendro and corn cocktail now and it seemed to be very effective.

I put up with the two bream above snotting up my 42 inch net before putting the stink net head on the shorter 1.8 mete handle. And proceeded to fill the putrid mesh with even more snot. All in a good cause.  I think this worm muncher was still just a bout a skimmer. Freshly minted too.

Took ages to get  a shot of this black tailed skimmer (not the small bream above) though it is heavily cropped.

 

This decent hybrid put up a very determined struggle (as they seem to do) and quite different to the first hybrid of the afternoon. Two more for  https://jorvikangler.blogspot.com  mutant  Norfolk rogue's gallery.

By now the bream were really on it and if I hadn't had a get home and light the barbie curfew I can't begin to  imagine how many I'd have had  if I had stayed on until I ran out of bait. No mistaking these for skimmers (or dragonflies). And I made it to the barbie lighting duties  by the skin of a roach shredded golden grain.

Brief excerpt

Had a quick evening window to clear some annoying briars overhanging the tank trap blocks, so took  a trotting rod for afters. Broke  landing net pole on said briars but cleared most of the miscreants. It's a lovely pool but depending on which sluices are open you often have to trot back on your self and not always  easy to get the float into that sweet spot where the pace drops then doubles back on itself. Looking at the dried sweetcorn and silkweed on the block someone probably had been ledgering to get round the problem . I could have gone worm bounced down  on a SSG link but as I had no net didn't want to increase the chances of hooking  something that might need it and 5 feet up no way of beaching anything. If I got it right then bingo, hand sized dace and one pretty roach,, if not  then tiny dace in the faster flow. Just one chublet, and  a nice one too. Hand lined it in just in case...

A lot of verges are going over now as the grass takes over but in poorer soils everything is rushing to set seed whilst it can. View out of window parked up for a zoom call. Please, please, make then stop.....

 

A trotting we will go.

A promised rain fest yesterday afternoon but I had  a trotting itch to scratch and headed for a stretch near enough to a parking spot in case a quick dash was required The footpath bank sheltered by a long stand of poplars is somewhat overgrown and a bit busy, the meadow bank opposite is without much vegetation for the fluff chuckers but it has more subsurface weed, I guess  because it's not shaded by the poplars. But the cows have been on it and poached the banks so a secure foot or seat hold is in short supply. I did find a spot though, whilst checking the increasingly grey skies.  

Double reds on a  B560 #1, under that 2 swan chubber/loafer thingy. A couple of chewed maggots and then a run of nice dace, mostly of this stamp so nice fishing.

Started to pick up some small but perfect roach too, nearer the marginal weed in a little less pace..

Then one pulled back and needed the net as well. Plump as butter and I perhaps ought to have weighed it. Both flanks for ID purposes. An absolute beauty.

Within minutes I was scarpering back to the car, but not quick enough to avoid a soaking. It got out again later, but I contented myself with some rudd spotting on our only canal hatching plans for a spray mag and wag fest (it's very weedy).

Englands Dreaming....

Hit the car park just as a few spots of rain on the wind screen became a biblical deluge. Sod that for a game of soldiers... if  I'd got there 20 minutes earlier I'd have been stuck out in it. Lasted an hour and  a half so phew.  Back down again about 7pm and unsurprisingly not  a soul to be seen given the forthcoming game at 8.  

Though the skies looked fairer I went with minimal bits just in case and just fed hemp, corn and pellet 3 rods out from the Royal Box, 5AAA waggler and B560 #14.  On my trusty waggler rod which is a joy to use. It has as it declares a progressive action and though it's clearly not a grunt rod it copes with some poundage if you take things easy but steadily.

Standard fare at present, and I split the shots a bit to get some on the drop if they were having it. And indeed they were. 

 

Touch of blue about this one and it had some extra power from it's mixed up genes.

Everyone loves a few pads dotted round a fishery and these are well established now. 

Trouble is, the fish love them too when they feel that steel bite home, as above the Drennan is not a hauling tool but the extra foot makes a difference steering round obstacles, and though this lovely female tench did get in amongst them all was well once I got it's head up.

 No bastardy evident with these two

But definitely with this wrong'un

Time was marching on and this fell as the church click chimed 9 and as I opened the gate to load the pantenchnicon  cries of COOOOOOOOOOOOOMOOOOOOOON echoed round the village and it seemed that England could start dreaming..

Peaking too early?

I'd taken the day off, in part to attempt to tidy up after the handyman (take away his mess..) but also to get a few hours on the bank, nothing too planned. In to town to renew a mobile contact, a mediocre coffee and a better toast and bacon..

I had dues to pay on the hallowed turf, no stripes but neater anyway, hard work in the now humid heat but after a ginger beer I popped up on the bridge (extinction rebellion types or disgruntled locals having forced a way through  a temporary obstruction) to see the dace and roach back on the gravels, good news for another day. I am inching ever nearer to the purchase of a pair of chest waders so I can get in with them for some decent off the rod tip trotting. and maybe some estuary bassing. Not yellow strap VASS ones though and certainly not rods on rests 5 wraps out in the swim.

Back to the Pantenchnicon to unload the waggler and corn gear wishing I had a floppy or at least wide brimmed hat as the sun was high and hot in the sky. As is often the case my groundbait barrage was a bit wayward, and a bit too far out but sort of effective enough to get a few fish down in the deck of the listless surface. I did loose a decent tench to a hook pull at the stink net, you know what happens, they hang there for just not long enough to scoop them in..in this case long enough for me to identify it as a  fairly friendly  female with a St Peter's Thumbprint that can approach 7lb at the right time of the year. The scrap on the waggler gear, with "fake" dorsal pings rather than tail slaps had me thinking carp for quite a while.

I found some nice roach but no skimmers or hybrids and though nothing really troubling the pound nice enough to put a bend in the Drennan Waggler rod.

This bream however did bend the rod in a determined and dogged way. Might have been worth an out of curiosity weigh perhaps, as long as the stinknet from handle to the rim and over two folds of the mat  but not much substance past the vent/dorsal axis.

Saturday has dawned very wet and sticky, looks set in for the weekend too. Wet or not, bet the banks are empty come 8pm tonight. Now, what to do with loads of sodden timber cut offs when the eagle eyed "waste operatives" are ever ready to pounce with a Wi-Fi contactless card machine?

Saw a quite heart-breaking sight on my last trip there, a car-full of fishing gear presumably from someone  recently incapacitated or deceased being unloaded. No trading or exchanges on site was the harsh decree, and years of someone's pleasure were impounded to to be picked over and probably skipped. I'll have to leave some sort of instructions about my mountain of tackle, but the "waste operatives" are welcome to the stinknet... and probably my still by then unused Fox depth marker set as well.