What Summer?

What Summer?

The afternoon of the 15th didn’t at all look promising

We all met up around 7pm on the lawns and lit up the barbeques, got the table from the hotel, cracked open some beers and got the party going. Ten of us turned up, same as last year, and we had a really good evening relating stories told many times before of other opening days and various other good fishing events. The rain, which in the afternoon looked like it would spoil the event, held off and everyone had a really good time.
Sadly, only two of us stayed on late to wet a line and it was the other, not me, who said at five minutes to midnight, “Oh sod this. What difference will five minutes make.” No names, no pack drill. It made no difference anyway, as neither of us caught a fish and we both left at 12:40 having done our duty.

For someone, me, who doesn’t believe in the close season (not that again?) this was something different and I honestly believed that this new season would now be a lucky one full of good catches. Well, in the two weeks that followed we had mixed successes, I caught a bream of 81/2 lbs along with a barbel and some nice little chub.

Regrettably, when Wendy came to stay with us one night the river was in one of its off moments. All we had was bits of floating filamentous algae wafting against our lines giving off false bites, but that’s river fishing for you, no guarantees!

And then it started to rain

The ‘mystery’ man’s stories are so tall you have to stand up for them

We were spared that, thankfully. Please note, I say ‘we’, but where I live on top of the Chiltern Hundreds, if flood water ever reached our doorstep then the entire country would be in deep, deep trouble. Noah certainly would have built his ark and be offering sea fishing trips on a daily basis and my advice would be to book one and stay on board!

In the end the waters in Marlow were nowhere near as high as in December 2000 and that wasn’t as bad as January 2003, so big sighs of relief all round down this end. It did transform the weirpool though into a boiling heaving mass at one stage and it took quite literally weeks to return to normal levels. In fact, it was just about two weeks ago that we saw again what is a ‘normal’ level to the river, but even now, late September, there is still about twice the normal summer amount of water pouring through.

For a long time, the lock keeper had the central gates opened up and this pushes water back up on our side. Then he closed those, but kept the ‘laterals’ either side open and this caused swells and boiling to occur all round. That current in front of us was almost at a standstill.

Where did the summer go?

That was a great time for pike spinning, of course, and on one Saturday afternoon I had six pike out of one small area. Quite an unusual event for our little stretch. It’s the deep pool right at the end of the concreted section that often holds the odd pike, but on this particular day it even surprised me.

That has been about it, other than Kevin Perkins joined me one Saturday (see his story) and we had a very nice day together visiting a few stretches of the Thames. We have promised to get together more in future and perhaps both write about our episodes. There’s also the promise from him of a chance meeting with the mysterious Amanda!

So what else?

One week, little Al, my mate of old, spent a week nearby in his caravan and for the Friday I asked if he wanted to go fishing. He’s recovering from cancer and didn’t feel up to it, but his foster kid was interested. Alan and his wife foster children and there’s always two at least in tow.

So, I took this young lad on his own for a go on our mixed fishery in Colnbrook. That was a very quiet day too with no-one on the far bank catching anything. We set up a light carp rod of 11/2 lbs TC with a light method feeder and a small 14mm boily. That went out on an alarm leaving us to play with some other styles.

I rigged up a float rod with a small splasher waggler and an S-pellet as bait. Try as we might, nothing seemed interested, but the alarm went off on the sleeper and he landed a nice little bream of around a pound. I put a different bait on, an Edge Baits Fruit Salad, and out it went again.

Still nothing on the float so I rigged up the margin pole and tried in amongst the lily pads for a while, again with no result. The alarm went off again and this time it was a bream of around 21/2 lbs. I hadn’t told the lad that I was expecting him to catch a nice little carp of around 6 to 8 lbs as I thought it might build up he expectations unfairly or increase the pressure to succeed.

Back to the float rod and put on a new Dinsmores Zeppelin bagging waggler. These look great and are really well made and my hope was to see it disappear to a nice fat little carp. Unfortunately, my hopes on that were also dashed.

Still no-one on the other had caught and I couldn’t hear any commotions on our side either. I’ve not known this lake to be so still so I rigged up the float rod with a controller and a Sonu floating pellet and cast that out. It and the several floaters around it sat out in the water neither moving one way or the other, just enjoying the sunshine.

As a foster child he must remain unidentified

I got an absolutely fabulous picture of him smiling from ear to ear. Sadly, this and the other picture I took cannot be shown, neither can I mention his name. Because he is a foster child he must be protected and Social Services (the dreaded SS) are ever so keen on that.

It was even insisted that in the car he had to sit in the back seat so as to avoid any suggestion that I might have molested him. Well that was impossible anyway, because of the amount of stuff I take fishing, my car is more like a van and there are only two seats.

You should know my feeling on these overbearing rules that some pompous twits make nowadays to justify their positions, but that’s how it is. So, sadly, I have to apologise for not allowing you to see the pictures of a young lad in his absolute element holding a lovely 6 lbs golden coloured common carp. You’ll just have to imagine.

And now Autumn, with SAD to come

Where have all the conifers gone?

We have recently had four very large and overgrown conifers taken down from the front of our garden and the amount of light this now lets in is amazing! It also leaves us feeling a little exposed at times as people can see in without any obstruction and I have to remember to draw the curtains when getting dressed in the mornings.

All this means that I may be able to keep up my spirits a little better this year and perhaps not be so badly affected by my SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder, or Winter Blues). If the river behaves itself from now on and the fishing is as good as autumn should promise then we might get through to Christmas.