It was very much an on/off affair for me today, I had originally planned on an eagerly awaited trip out with one of our esteemed but due to circumstances beyond my control I reluctantly had to cancel although I’m very much looking forward to rearranging it for another date.
That resulted in me effectively losing the first few hours of the early morning and also having a kilo of worms on my hands and inspiration came in the form of a chance phone call from nottskev and where a plan was soon hatched to fish my (largely overlooked of late) local club water just a couple of minutes up the road from me.
The rivers aren’t the only places that are suffering from a lack of water at the moment, when I arrived I found that the lake I had planned to fish was closed due to a low water level and so I chose another and one that I had yet to fish.
It was around 2pm by now and Kev would shortly be travelling over to spend what turned out for me to be a very pleasant afternoon in great company and I had already set up a small waggler on the edge of a lily bed where I had put in an initial helping of chopped worm and dead maggot before it was time to put the feet up and enjoy the afternoon.
It’s a tough job someone’s got to do it…
It was quite hot and sultry at this point, I would have taken that but the sun eventually broke through which pegged things back a bit on the bites side of things but I was getting a few and picking up the odd small fish and it wasn’t long after Kev arrived that I was right royally done by a fish which tore off into and through the lilies in double quick time.
I will point out at this point that I had taken two rods and 'pins and in light of the lily situation I elected to fish the heavier of the two.
Despite this happening on no less than two other occasions throughout the afternoon I did manage to put a few fish together, more notably after the sun had dipped below a line of tall Poplars on the far bank at around 5pm and these included two Tench of a couple of pounds each even though I think they were one and the same fish, a rather nice and wild looking Carp of 5lbs or so, a couple of small netter Roach, some skimmers/hybrids and a few small Perch in addition to this rather handsome one…
Most people's arguments regarding keepnets are based around fish welfare but mine is based purely on the fact that without one it's possible to catch the same fish twice and count it as two
I packed up around dusk and reflected on what had turned out to be quite a magical afternoon in many ways and certainly something from nothing when you’ve spent it catching a few fish whilst enjoying good company and conversation which was only ever really interrupted on the occasions when the lilies began to tremble and those fizzing bubbles began to appear around the baited area.
Cheers Kev… :w
