England's Breaming...

I'm sure I've used the title before, but in for a penny...I bumped the Bureboi Charabanc down the track, carefully avoiding the big old strip of grass down the middle and found the car park empty and a noticeable reduction in wind as Storm Hannah petered out. One of those spring afternoons when you have the jumper on and off every 10 minutes  and hope those rain clouds bomb on overhead.

I thought I'd continue the devils work with the method feeders having brought the mould with me and once the pellets were damp enough, and with a little practice the silicone mould was doing its job with some neat little balls  being underarmed to the bottom of the slope with a nugget of gold or orangey brown goodness and a sting in their tail nestling on top. I'd started the two spots off with some dead maggot ( what a fantastic idea some one had thinking those up) and some decent corn and tinned hemp with some chilli. 

The 8mm pineapple wafters seemed to be the instant attractors  whilst the 12mm Source were a bit of  a slow but steady burn. I'd noticed last time out how pecked the baits get as the fish keep tying to get every last scrap out of the flat bed. Pretty much the stamp of fish falling to the tactic, rather than the bigger bream and tench I'd hoped for. 

I saw this one late, and the flash of red in the bluey green water  had my heart in my mouth for a few seconds but on closer inspection a cheeky and chunky hybrid. Quite heavily black spotted like many of the fish in here.d 

The two paired mallardy ducks showed a distinct difference in parenting styles. One pair had a brood of 5  that they kept mostly at very close quarters, probably because the resident crow was quite intent on a meal, even resorting to making  low level passes mid pond. Two slightly larger ducklings spent  a lot of their time on their own, so much so I thought perhaps they'd lost the adult birds for about an hour. I say mallardy, all very visually correct but often making quite showy dives, not quite deep enough to get any of the loose fed though. No cuckoo yet but the yaffles were on top form.Whilst taking a piss, concentrating on what I thought was a rather impressive coiled poo a flash of yellow revealed a small grass snake, awoken by a golden rain that Trump would have paid top dollar for from a pair of Russian hookers. 

I'd packed my old Drennan waggler rod  just in case and by way of a change upped the corn rations, little and often with a single grain on a #14 wide gape specialist just on the deck and was rewarded with some actual roach amongst the skimmers and hybrids

And a brace of lovely big bream which filled the stinky pan net. Great catching them on more refined tactics for sure. This is the smaller at 6.06 with its spawning tubercles. The bream on this water are thick set buggers. 

And this absolute pig at an ounce under 9lb. It's the shape all bream should be. Imagine what an 22lber would look like?

Looks like my lucky new hat is working. The Commander in Chief is not impressed but  it's a rarity in that it is not to small for my unfeasibly large head. It's from my hatter in Primark. That bream though.....