Friday off. Most excellent. Rain stopped play till lunch time, charabanc loaded with the following plans;
1. Liquid Lunch
2 Try and track down spare locking nut for my ADVANTA RVS pin
3. See what was coming out at Wroxham on the tidal for future reference
4.Check if the lock was free for some simple fish catching (the joy of FB location clues)
5. If lock slot busy head up to the Royal Confluence for an Essox or two.
The route to Dangling Indirect handily passes the Horse and Groom where a pint of Lacons or Woodforde's bitters and crisps can come in at around a fiver. Eerily quiet, cars and vans being loaded. Another sad victim of harsh economic times. So I stumbled into Dangling Indirect purely because of my dyspraxic clumsiness, and not because of any hint of beery breath. Bingo...damaged stock check produced the Holy Grail of a spare nut for the pin. Hallelujah. |
And as the next pub was by the river...dire place the Kings Head, a non descript (could have been anything) Abbott and bland scratchings set me back £6.30 and mental note made to never go back. I suppose if you had been cooped up in a cruiser for a week anything would be a blessed relief. Must have been a quiet day for pike guiding as no boats and Fox/Savage Gear/Westin camo clad clones pilling into Maccie Dees. Instead a line of middle aged blokes pillaging the (smallish) roach and occasional perch stocks. All seemed to be vlogging live or engaged in Zoom banter with each other. Most strange. Might be worth a go though whilst the salt surges push the fish up into the town and marinas.
I'd walked off most of my poor beer so headed along to the disused lock at the top of the tidal. Two others walking that way but stopped by the back stream so all systems go. Hadn't packed a whip so simple swing out waggler an see where hey wanted it. Deep as you'd expect from a lock and clearly a decent respite area from the flow and frequent flushes of the main river, I'd hoped to get into a few chublets and the first fish didn't disappoint. Or did it? Brassy scales, dark tail, cigar shape and coral fins. But not really convex anal and dorsal fins. Chace or dhub?
I'd added a couple of roach and dace when my downstream companions joined me, having been evicted by two forceful cold water swimmers who clearly regarded the picnic table and the pool below the lock as their own personal space and woe betide any encroachers.
An entertaining couple of hours followed as my similarly middle aged brother of the angle and I amassed a considerable haul of "silvers" and a couple of perch. Me conversing with passers by and he patiently retrieving his uncle's tackle from the same tree, time after time after time. I hadn't got my big coat out of the charabanc and was glad of the thermals, bib and braces, Aldi hoodie and Aldi neoprene gloves.
The strange breeding habits you have down there they could be anything
ReplyDeleteInteresting session.
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