Mexican standoff

The rain has freshened up my river a treat, but with Little Un's   a midnight or silly o'clock start for the glorious 16th are a long way off for me. I do hope to get on this pool for a couple of late doors hours though. 

Saturday was most pleasant and I was dispatched to the Very Local Water and told to collect the booked street food feast on my way back home. Or else. Blazing hot sun and shrinking water don't make for perfect conditions and it wasn't until 6 that bubbles began to fizz as the sun hit the back of the treeline. 45 mins of fishing to extract something from the bubble fest then negotiate the self policing member numbers on Covid-balls in the bottles and the lock sanitiser, drop off the hopefully festering stink net and hit the street food vendor before curfew.

Spicy sausage 6mm and a 12mm Source under a Puddle Chucker, what else? Oh, the same combo but with a swingtip to make up the one on the float and one on the ledger duo.

It was the swingtip that shot up to horizontal first. I remember my first carp, from the Grand Union on an autumn day, the swing tip rose every time a tsunami heralded an oncoming narrow boat, all  flowers in chimbley pots and Rosie and Jim but this time it stayed horizontal and the 9ft Coleshill Classic was put the test by a common of all of a pound. This bream was 3 or 4 times bigger but in fairness barely troubled the 11 ft Sportex Avon.

5 minutes left and the net and mat were well and truly stunk up by another bronzey, this time on the puddle chucker. It was passing barely out of the catapult fresh 6mm Spicy Sausage pellets. 

Covid balls and stink nets sorted off I went to get the promised taco mixed meats feast. We had high hopes, the previous  paella for £14 was very nice. A fortnight later he'd got cocky, doubled his prices  and halved his servings. 12 tiny cold tacos, which tasted mainly of guac for 30 quid. No more from you matey.

Sunday saw the Commander in Chief's armed personnel carrier pressed into active service along the glorious North Norfolk Coast in search of an ice cream for the Little Un's via Baconsthorpe Castle.

My reward was an after tea sortie on the Very Local Water, it's surface ruffled by an incoming haar, or sea fret and wraiths of the swirling mist chasing themselves over the much warmer water. Just the puddle chucker set up and  the line was nicely pulled several times. 

4 times in fact though not by the hoped for tench. 

Rhodos hanging on.

This one had no ventrals, I'm sure it's a different one to one with very similar missage of fins from a few years back.

And the last one before curfew pretended to be a tench until it hit the net.

Happier days than of late.