A brave band of chrome yellow straight out of my paintbox streaks the sky. So observed Ronald Blyth of winter light opening up a portend of change to come in his opening lines of Next to Nature. I'd planned to be chubbing today not too far down the Stour valley from Bottengoms Farm, his home on the Suffolk/Essex border once the domicile of John Nash, painter of British landscapes Instead I skulked around the lanes of North Norfolk in a stygian gloom, having obeyed the foreboding Weather App and stayed firmly rodless in Norfolk. No band of any hue. just dank, wind filled murk.
Yesterday I had a portent of change in hues of silver, blue and fiery red. Only a river angler really sees those colours. Winter roach. I'd started on the mill pool above the Soay meadow, working out where the dace wanted the maggots to be in that slacker glide at my feet, tripping along the crease
Chunky dace too, and game battlers in the faster weir water. Wild brownies too. But a snag claimed my prized Loafer made balsa bringing proceedings to an untimely halt.
Roach Straight had been obliterated by the evil Black Plague hordes and had become a virtual Cyanide Straight. Perhaps the roach had regained a tentative fin hold again? On the fringes of legality I hunkered down as discretely as I could, so much so a passer-by remarked on the stealth green-ness of my presence in my new Big Coat and a green bucket, the likes of which he'd never seen before.
Rather than retackle the trotting rod I laid down a little trail of bait with a small 20grm cage feeder whilst I scanned up and down for tell-tile signs of fish as the roach often did roll on dusk here.
At first it was the timid little grebes hugging the far margins, then a splashy small fish and then a larger roll, a glimpse of red. The tip jagged as the the feeder sank, a fish on the drop. No netter and not even a quarter of the size I was after but that brilliant silver, metallic blue and the reddest of red eyes and fins. Not a hint of a cruel v-shaped beak mark to behold.
