With all the moving in and the fact that I strained my arm lifting a part of my new-to-me woodturning lathe (but that is a different story), I have not been out fishing for the past few weeks. Today, I got up, grabbed a rod and a few bits. Armed with a box of maggots and a tin of sweetcorn, I took a quick trip to the estate lake. What a difference to living in London. Fifteen minutes later and I was sitting by the water fishing. It was, by now, about 06:15, no one about and the water was flat-calm.
 |
| No breeze and flat calm water, first thing |
The first cast produced a fierce bite that took me by surprise and instantly broke me off. I am sure that was a tench. After re-rigging I was back in the water and guess what? I caught a small bream. This poor guy had had a run-in with something, at some time in the past. It looks like a heron strike, maybe.
 |
| To one and only fish of any size caught today |
John arrived a few hours later, and we fished for another hour or so, but although he found a reasonably sized bream to save the blank, that was it as by now, the wind had got up, and the ripples were making it very hard to see the float, even with a big carp float.
 |
| What a difference a few hours made |
To make it easier to make the decision to leave, there is an event happening in the gardens soon and the riggers were setting up a stage. The clanking of scaffolding, and accompanying loud music was not what I came out for. Just after 10:00, we packed up and called it a day. I had not intended to do a long session today, so it was not a problem for me, I was happy that I had made time for a few hours by the water.
 |
| Who parked that by the lake? |
With the lake out of action for the next week or so, I will have to look into signing up to the local club and getting some river fishing in. This will be a good way to use the maggots I have in stock. next time I visit the lake, I will have meat, corn and maybe bread with me. Maggots just seem to produce too many small fish st this venue.
Ralph.
