I can see clearly now.

Over the last year or so I have been finding it harder and harder to see close up, i.e: to tie a hook, even thread one  and read the paper. Over the last month this has got even worse, and I have discovered that it is no more 2 pairs of specs for £69 pound for me. I turned down contacts, I am a clumsy bugger and certainly could not see them if I dropped them and left Specsavers £240 worse off. Not even a second pair.

Life is now HD and I can actually read, and tie an eyed 16. One of the first things  I did was go to the Library. I came away with a varied selection and the first to be devoured in a sitting was Beneath the Black Water, Jon Berry. A fascinating subject, the ferox. A man obsessed. I find it hard to resist Bailey in his purple patches, and we have all now discovered Aston. Not for  me those dizzying heights but still a gripping read. 

 I have now picked up the next which is well removed from Shin and Veyatie but again an obsessive, driven and singular minded expression. A fishing book not a writing book. Which is not to say this is a bad thing.

I can count the number of all nighters I have spent behind 2,3 or 4 rods , certainly without troubling my thumbs and days trolling for ferox without using any digits at all.  I can however understand why these two have, and more importantly imagine where they have done it. Which at the end of the book is why it was worth writing. I have more hopes of that from The Fishing Box (Maurice Genevoix) than In Pursuit of the Largest (Terry Hearn) but that is probably because the Genevoix is a Medlar, with the nice hardback and stuff and line drawings by Richardson. There you go, chalk and cheese again.

Having found I can see small things again it was up the road to Captains  yesterday  for  a couple of hours with a litre of hemp and some crumb and corn. I  took advantage of  some previous raking to fish the corn over crumb and hemp off the second stage. I did put out a foul white chocolate pop-up, partly because  this carroty ghostie or koi  checking out the float was quite active in the swim

After a few rudd the bream had come in closer and two rudd type bites  resulted in this small, hump-backed bream

and a "proper" skimmer.

The carrot had been joined by several carpy brethren and at times the swim was a bit of a cauldron, certainly the hemp is attractive to the carp in Captains.

No doubt the bubbles were carp, the bream tend to send up smaller clumps. Given the weed, and the shallowness the bubbles were often fish turning rather than troughing in the silt but  the float was showing signs of life, mostly liners. I had not spooled with  heavy enough line for the carp on the waggler rod, one fish did take some corn in the drop and move off but I somehow didn't connect.The line tightened on the pop-up a couple of times, perhaps my primitive hair off the eye didn't make for a self hooking rig. Now I can see close up I must think about the knotless knot. How do you get the loop so small?

There are at least 4 carp in this frame, right off the rod tip. One much bigger fish did appear, but hung back and I think in the end there might have been another lighter, bigger  fish as well as the carrot. I did eventually pop the white blob straight off the lead as a mini zig, and think that on a couple of occasions a nice piece of slowly sinking flake could have been taken. The carp were attracted by the hemp, crumb and corn and a heavy maple or black-eye and hemp combo, certainly at this close range was running through my mind. Strange then that Theobald seemed enamoured with a hemp and black-eye combo as I discovered when picking up his book later with a glass of Shiraz...