Water craft

You know the scenario. You've crawled up to the swim through nettles and cow crap, nestled in quietly under the bank line, fed patiently before casting and suddenly..puff, wheeze thump as Diawa man drops his Riva box on the ground in full fish eye line, "got anyfing cocker?".

Saturday evening on the pool at Buxton. I'd spotted what I thoughtwas a barbel as at first the low slung snout was under the weed, just a long body and noticable pecs and caduals but it was drifted  up and over the weed and hung menacingly as only a pike could, eying up the dace and a solitary brownie. I marked it down for a livie later.

Dropped just below it and the concrete tank trap featured in a Bailey shot in Chub and Dace and elected to trot red maggot through at the tail of the clump of weed and the small eyeot pushed up by the  flow over the the twin mill races. A very shallow run and seemingly devoid of fish but for the tell tale swirls for the loose feed indicated dace at home. The gate clanged and voices trilled, "are you going in?" Two of the local Massive ran past and straight in on the sheep drink, wading and splashing past my float.."cort anything mister?"  I played a rather splashy dace past them. No adverse effect at all.  Makes you wander though, these fish are dive bombed all weekend  as it's a local swimming spot and must get used to it. I wouldn't be so sanguine if I was working up a barbel swim though.

A steady flow of hand sized and a bit more dace followed. Too much for pikie number two who ghosted up to just below me. I lip hooked the next dace and it was straight on it. I could see the the head out of its jaws and hoped the hanging treble might be inside. It was off quickly however. It spun round like a dog chasing it's tail tying to find the dace in a passable shark like fury. I swung out the dace again and it was off into the main flow to work the fish round to a swallowing position. Not a good shot as I was holding the rod and DSLR's and selfies don't quite work. You can see though the head is in the jaws and after a little tussle in 2 foot of water on the bank and smaller than I would have said (not the fish in the weed above though).

The yoot were now raiding a cherry plum tree to lob at little poly gliders they had decided to float as targets so off to the next bend. Needed to trot a long way down for much smaller dace  so back up  and few more better dace before home time called.

Lovely sunset on the way.

This one a bit further down the road not appreciated by the HDR police on a local Facebook group. Come on, it's hardly straight out of the can is it?