Slacking off

The recent snow and rain has put some water through the mills, and some speed on the current. I figured the debris would be catching on the line at every knot and swivel meaning frequent casts so left the stink paste and bread at home and stuck everything on the pike shaped horse.

Everything down the near bank today, given the boily flow and shit coming down decided against wafters and nailed the half herrings to the deck under a float tips well up. Think the herrings  were Essex Scribbler's boat fresh individually wrapped ones from last year. All tail ends too.

Lost a fish in the first spot to the downstream bait after it had been on a little while, fairly decent too. Next swim down and I realised I'd set the bait runners a bit tighter than usual to combat the flow when the downstreamer did a big barbel 3 foot twitch and the alarm went into single tone melt down. This one definitely bigger and going flank on against the main push. Eventually got it over the spreader, just one treble in so quickly unhooked and on the Fly Weights. A nice solid 14.06. A bit scuffed at the rears, Tarka had fancied it for a snack and discard at some point recently. Read this week that the Wild Otter Trust have realised that there has been no proper thought about what river catchments could be best placed to handle otter dispersal. Too late. Found two well used slides within a 100 yards of each other.

Nice to have a gallery sometimes. The noddy train timed it just right.

Not long to to the equinox. A brief but glorious sun downer. Not cold enough  to need gloves but only just.