Where have alll the QM1 #10s gone?

Another hot afternoon, the surface of the pond was covered in poplar fluff and great hippo like bream slowly rolled on the greasy Limpopo surface. Time to seek shade and ditch the flat beds and fish for bites, not fizzing baitrunners. A few handfuls of pellets and  a sprinkling of Source minis and draw the puddle chucker back over that bed of oozing attraction, just off the pads.

The flouro orange tip of the puddle chucker wobbled and slowly sank away, the strike hit home and the anti- reverse slipped off, The fish, a lovely hybrid did the usual, punching way above either parents fighting weight. A thick set fish, a good two pounds plus I thought.

Another bite, and another fight, unmistakeably a tench, sorely testing the 13 foot Drennan, in the pads and  then the bankside fibrous roots and trailing briars. A cracking spawned out female with an unusual white edging to the ventrals. Lovely custard yellow belly and those teddy bear red eyes.

Disaster, the next fish tore off before the grudging clutch kicked in or I could slip off the anti-reverse and I was pointed, the line parting just above the short ready tied hook link. I knew it was the last one I had, I think the bigger hook is better when using the 12mm boilies as opposed to the 8mm wafters or pellet O's. I've been searching every tackle shop I go past for a month now, plenty of #12 or #14 but no #10. Delivery and order sheets drawing blanks. A head scratcher indeed. I do like the simplicity of the push stops but the bait has to be soft or the stops split and are useless. So much so I keep my 8mm wafters and these Source 12mm quite moist.

Anyhoo, on with a back-up QM1 #12 hook link and as it happened straight on a bubbling fish and I'd only got the rod on the rests when the float slid away.  

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Another decent scrap and another female was eventually in the onion bag. They fight so hard.

Wasn't long before another one slipped up, skinnier than the first two but still as strong.

I'd chucked a sleeper  rod out with a standard mud pig and a bigger Source wafter, it did go just on packing up time, an out gunned and under performing bream rounded off my nap hand. Drove home listening to England setting up a likely day 4 loss.....

Catch up

 Haven't fished much over the last fortnight or even checked into Blog land much so this will be  a quick catch up.

Had a splendid couple of hours last Saturday catching up with Bream Slayer and had an equally splendid pair of tench and pair of bream on the ever faithful flat beds and wafters. We both remarked on the quantity of fry and slightly bigger 'silvers' feasting on a massive hatch  that had also attracted large numbers of swallows.

This tench thought it was a mud pig, steamed off super quick (phone shot)

Back on the DSLR

  

Been warm enough for a garden night cap or two. 

With some welcome rain as well. Didn't put the crabs off (I was on Scouts taxi duties.

Much slower yesterday with just a single bream but it did put  up some resistance and took a detour through the pads.  

Last dtch

No early doors river opening day river trip for me, the Commander in Chief wasn't keen and when I did call in at the mill pool on the  way to work to see what I'd missed it was full of old women swimming. I think they had driven the kayakers off down river.

Just an hour on Saturday evening in a lily fringed corner of  Golden Pond. Just one bream tripped up at 21.02 which should have seen me crunching down the long gravel drive of  BureBoi Villas as nine o'clock is wine o'clock. It's not far and I wasn't too late.

Back to it's milky warm home. Net forever stinky now and stiff as a teenager's sock.

Scum

Headed off to a shaded small corner of the pit where the wind had pushed the scum line up to the pads. Still warm in the shade but comfortable. Small clumps of bubbles but not fizzers. Decided  to go easy on the pellets and (new) Source minis as they had their heads down. Float moving a bit then gone. Missed three. What was going on? Put down phone and can of pop and concentrate. Bingo. Tench on, lovely scrap flirting with the pads one of which ended up in the net . Cracking fish, may be pushing six? Didn't weigh it so that's just conjecture. Just a lovely plump clean female tench.

Found out what the missed bites might have been. And the bubble makers. Very different to tench or bream or big slobbery mud pig bubbles.  Not sure how it got the 12mm Source in its gob but it did.

I did hook a big slobbery mud pig but after a  ponderous run the barbless hook fell out. This bream stayed on though.  A lovely quick after gardening (chopping down trees) couple of  hours well spent. Them muntjacs are noisy old things aren't they?

Heinz 57

The Loafer sent me a picture of  a splendid breakfast the had made the other day. Which got us thinking. What is the perfect breakfast? The Holiday Breakfast. The Christmas Day Breakfast. Or an All Day Café Breakfast after an early start? Here is one that is half way there at least. The Commander in Chief rarely does a sossidge and bacon combo, it's usually one or the other.

My perfect breakfast is: Sossidges (plural, 3 if possible). Nice meaty proper ones. Bacon (minimum 3 rashers), smoked back of course. Eggs, fried, nice clean whites and runny yolks . White and black pudding, one round of each. Fried bread (well, that's probably Christmas), just one round of sliced  white (triangles please). Shrooms cooked in butter, natch. Fried left over potatoes or mash. Maldon sea salty fresh ground black pepper. Brown sauce, plenty of fruit and tamarind . Proper black coffee, brown sugar of course.. And one round of white toast and butter (triangles again) to mop the plate. Wait you say, what about the beans? Of course there will be beans. Not in a ramekin. Ever. And probably, no, definitely never Heinz. They taste of the tin and are way over priced. More or less any old baked beans, the key is to cook them low and slow so they are soft and sticky, like the proper Café ones, kept warm under  a salamander. Now, if someone has gone to make them with haricots, ham hock, home reduced tomato puree, molasses and balsamic vinegar on their Range for hours I'll begrudgingly have those  as a second best. Then out with the papers, a big pot of tea and a rack of cold white toast ( triangles) and marmalade.

Which is a long preamble to this weekends Heinz 57 hybrid bothering.  Just the one fish on a get out oft the house foray onto Golden Pond. Crane Man on '/my' Island Paradise so a rare venture along the shade, hence colder City Bank. Pretty as a picture now.

Playing about with light link ledgers and striking bites, not runs off the baitrunner. Lead too light on the corn rod as nothing to strike against and the corn was getting blitzed but a slightly heavier lead  and  mini source saw one hittable take and a spirited dash about on the lighter 1.25 tc rod,.. A flash of copper had me thinking hybrid but it was one of the ponds distinct strains of smaller bream with  pointy fins and a set apart colouration.

 

My post half way there breakfast next day trip saw me hit hybrid pay dirt first cast with the less troublesome flat bed/baitrunner combo. I must have hit the Mother Lode as I had another, and lost one in short order. Fight much better than daddy or mummy it has to be said. First one was around 3lb, the second somewhere around 2lb. (Not 42 inch arms for scale Loafer)

And the smaller of the pair, crushed water mint and all

I've been running down my bait stocks and the last of my mini Source from last year are almost gone, and the 'last cast 'tangle reducing bag was the last of my pva mesh too. Came up trumps with this male tench.

A surprise pikelet and a young gun bream made up the quartet, on what was a pleasant warm afternoon , surrounded by swifts, swallows and house martins. 

Party seven

Weather is on the change and there is quite a bustle in the hedgerows with far more than a sprinkling for the May Queen, don't think I've ever seen such a display of hawthorn, wild garlic (ramsons), cow parsley (keck) and horse chestnut. A blizzards of white along the Norfolk verges. I've been tracked and checked in and out by the spy in my work cab  so just glimpsed not savoured but hopefully this Bank Holiday weekend may see pictorial evidence of the splendour.

Which is a round about way of saying  the fish are 'aving it as the water warms up, plenty of grub required now to keep them from a wandering. Black Bream cut with brown crumb and the remnants of the caster meal to keep costs down, pellets (no corn this time ) and a few glugs of this poor substitute for ACE worm extract balled a sturdy under arm out.

 

The ever faithful flat beds, one with pink peril tuna (right hand ) and the left with pineapple yellow temptingly peeking out of the compressed squid and krill. I also chucked a bag combo down the edge.

The mean north easterly seemed to bypass me and the May Queen  pleasing sun bought out my white knees and this bedraggled Duffer's Fortnight early bird.

I toasted it with a can of summer brew, perhaps the 'light' refers to fiery gingerness as it was not as fiery as I like, Old Jamaica or not.

Like buses, bream often came in twos, perfect male/female combo here and the next net sharing double take binary brace after this pair would have just about troubled 14lb on the scales. 

Spawny males are not nice to look or touch, but the pump females take on really nice proportions. This is a fresh young example, almost straight out of the mould.

A touch of the seasonal cow parsley for added interest and tarting up of this tubercled male

and waste not want not a garnish for this spawny female tench taken in the bag rod, gave a really good account of herself close in on the 3lb tc rod, much to the delight of watching Bream Slayer.

I had no audience, save a kingfisher darting about for this bigger one that I weighed at 5lb 3oz and fought just as well, the classic end of session just the rods on the grass, everything else packed away, the baitrunner for an alarm.

I wish I'd landed the tench that picked up a pink peril wafter on the lighter rods, different gravy but not meant to be. So, 7 bream and 2 tench and  a faint darkening of the white extremities. Can't be bad.

Stuff

Friday and it looked ok for a quick dash after work, charabanc loaded, short drive to Golden Pond. Then it chucked down a Coronation Rough Sleeper soaking monsoon. Funny that the low tolerance Met turned  blind eyes to the great red white and blue pop up Glasto. Makes a pleasant change from tasering the homeless. Back home, turkey twizzlers for tea etc. then I returned to a mill pond like surface, with mist wreaths rising. Looked bob-on for  a bite but the bubbles only started as curfew called  so fishless off I went.

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Coronation Quiche Day saw me and the Little Un's heading down to Devil Dog land to see Pops, Brother Paul and Niece Hollie. Oh and hope to see the Royal Fly Past. No adoring crowds lined along the A12 this time, they must have known bad weather had scuppered Algy's plans. We popped out of the pub just in time to see the Red Arrows swoop by.

Sunday and Monday mostly saw me bothering bream and tench after a quick sortie with the Little Uns who had  a waggle for some roach and perch. perhaps we'll put one of these down the edge next time. 

The bream and tench? Nothing massive but nice none the less.

This poor old tench is in a right state, recovering slowly from cormorant damage. it's quite a friendly fish though (3 times out in a week or so for me) and hopefully it will heal enough for  a full framer soonish.

First cuckoo heard, and as I was surveying the insect laden surface of the Pond two swifts burst on the scene, scything, sickle wings and screaming. The world is turning still.

Spawn Hub

Bream seem to start thinking abut spawning about March and the daddy bream often have their tubercles until late summer. When they have just finished they are horrible things to touch, dry with scales all lifted up. 

Daddy Barry

Mummy Barry. With St Peter's Thumb Print.

Apart from in a decent river bream don't tend to do much when you hook them but they can bend the rod if it's light enough (Drennan 13ft Waggler that must be at least 3 decades old and 3.2lb bs line) and when a shoal gets their heads down you can bag a few, nice and simple, corn/dendros on a B560 #12 over Black Bream/Caster Meal with a topping up of pellets and corn now and then.

Could you think of a nicer spot right now?

Wish this weather would sort itself out. Doing my nut in, it really is. And I still haven't tried for those pit chub yet.

Nirvana

 Short  and fishy this one

Fish magnet. Dampened pellet in a nice neat package. Don't forget to take the mould off before casting. They sink.

 

Someone has been a very lucky bream...

Hope to prospecting for some stillwater chub this weekend. That will make a change although the bait rules are a bit restrictive. A challenge I suppose. 

Slow burn

It's been a slow start to the spring campaign, short local trips and sometimes rain has meant I've sat in the car park and not even got out. Bream and tench have come my way, nothing big put pleasing anyway, especially the tench. Flat bed method feeder tactics or a float close in. This bream must like my net as it's been in it a couple of times already.

A bit cold for me still, bib and braces and often the big coat. Not long and the rhodos will be out on Golden pond  Not yet though

Oh. LIDL have Champion back in at £1.65. Happy days