Red handed

In amongst the delightful couple of hours with the Little Uns on the whip l also had a few hours on the waters edge over the weekend. The big wind on Saturday was hammering into where I fancied, and with rain threatened I took the easier option of the Royal Box. The Black Bream ground bait smelling far more appealing than it looked. Intensely sweet and chocolatey. With some golden grains and oily hemp. I'd post some fabulous scenic oily slick shots but Farmer Giles would be firing up his Reaper drone to exact horrible revenge.

I started on the method feeders again, quickly getting "blooded up" by the sticky spicy sausage pellets.

First decent fish was this very game tench that really pulled hard in it's efforts to evade the proffered stink net. not sure what caused those uniform v marks. Perhaps the Preppers in Oregon were right after all about that Gulf War Coalition  Zionist UN New World order bollocks after all....

 

Mucked about with a waggler rod for a little while, pleased that I did as had this nice bream on the golden grains, one of the ones with a St. Peter's thumbprint. A very solid fish indeed.

I'd had  a skimmer that tried to get in the pads, and I  soon found out why, when  I slipped it back a very large pike snaffled it with an impressive swirl. There  a couple of units in the pond, which have spawned the usual myths of bulls being pulled in by the rings in their noses and poor unfortunate carps anglers getting their hands bitten off as they fill their regulation Trakker water buckets.....

Down to my last method feeder full of damp pellet and just one rod left out and  a proper take and a decent scrap made me think of tench at the very least. Surprised to see a slab of  a bream roll at the stink net, very decent indeed. Sadly it flipped itself back in off the mat whilst I readied the weigh sling, one of the bigger ones and pushing 9 lb I'd say. Not even a phone snap as back up.

Sunday and a change of scene. We only have one official canal in Norfolk, some of which is being restored and it does hold some lovely fish, and to be honest I don't fish it enough. It was still quite busy, with swimmers, paddle boarders and this very noisy and very purple weed cutting contraption.

The spot I was fishing is a large pound above a recently gentrified mill with a spillway and a lock. As evidenced by the contraption its quite weedy. I started close in on double red maggot and it wasn't long before I had some interest other than the fry attacking the lock shots.   Some lovely deeply coloured roach (I checked the dorsal/ventral fin alignment) followed

and a couple of perch as well.

I'd been firing some maggots a bit further out as well and saw some boils so went out amongst them, first fish was  decent enough to take line until it shed the hook, and the next confirmed my suspicions as a lovely rudd hit the net. Scale and fin perfect.

I wasn't really set up to fish properly for spray wag and mag and short of bait to so I couldn't hold them for long. Interesting enough to want to go back for a proper go once the kid are sort of back at school. Back short and with the last few maggots hit into a small shoal of dace, which I wasn't really expecting.