Every Loaf has a Silver-lining

The feeling of being cocooned in a hot chammy leather is as conducive to good fishing as snow melt. The two extremes of pointless angling activity.

Thankfully the tench campaign ended in July, having eventually traversed the boredom threshold in the same swim with the same birds, and reaching the point at which the resident bank vole acquired a name..."Vikram". Time to move-on.

A target of ten fish from the most reluctant of stillwaters was set and slowly but surely over the month from the first bites on June 16th, via sightings of dog otter, small and large skippers, greenshank and hobbies the list grew. Only on two occasions did more than one of these beautiful fish lay on the well-worn bank, being the occasions of the first and last landings. Three on the first day, two on the last. The latter causing brief mental turmoil as it took the total to eleven. To fish on until 20? No,  boredom cannot be extended that long. Eleven would do fine.

So what next?

HonGenSec had been pushing for an answer but nothing had gripped the psyche. A new peg is all-but ready elsewhere on the Stillwater for a late summer/autumn bream campaign.

It's a funny time of year, late summer. Personally, without doubt, the least engaging fishing period.

But school holidays have now been and gone and the prospect of a canal campaign presented itself, but, being that hinting at autumnal time, an early start isn't so early as to encourage a couple more minutes sleep.

Small rivers appeal too but not high reaches as would remain akin to a bottle brush in a gutter, with reeds and rushes bank to bank. No, somewhere a touch less narrow with steady depth - that would do nicely.

So we've settled on the Upper Avon and 'middle' Leam combined with Oxford and Grand Union Canals and the challenges are:

Rivers:
Roach over 1lb
Chub 4lbs.
Plus and other good fish that come along be they chub, dace, etc

Canals:
Roach - To add to the 1lb+ list (now totalling around 100 since rejoining the throng 4 or 5 years ago) but secretly looking for fish over 1lb 8ozs.
Silver bream over 1lb.
Plus, again, anything else tempted and of good size; bronze bream, perch, chub, zander.

So, with all that set, battle commenced...

Initially, it took well into the third trip before it really became engaging and pleasurable again after the obligatory summer break but sure enough with that early chill in the air the chase, spirit and sight of that first rutilus hitting the target did the trick and suddenly there aren't enough early mornings in a day, surely there should be at least three?!

The first of many, it is to be hoped

Having squeezed much of previous years' pursuit into the short North Oxford Canal this autumn the Grand Union locally is taking the brunt. After a couple of very promising fish last winter and genuine reports of fish pushing 1lbs 8ozs what size roach can the GUC offer?

One thing is for certain. The right technique will sort them out if they're there...and so the search has begun.

Finding target fish in the rivers will be a touch more hit & miss but slowly a picture will form, just the same.

Initial Grand Union roach findings are promising. The first target fish to grace the net being half an ounce over the mesmeric pound and, this very morning, on this first day after temperatures dropped from balmy 20+ degrees C., a first bite fish of 1.4.6 took centre stage in a mixed catch with some skimmers. It was landed to the call of a scarce Northants tree pipit.

Best of the short campaign yet at 1.4.6 thanks to tip-off from a long-lost friend

A nice net for 2 1/2 hours' fishing

On Wednesday however the silver lining illuminated wide-eyes and orange/pink fins when blikka bjoerkna came to the irresistible Warburton's blue feast laid out before it, at 1.11.8 this silver bream was probably the highest %age record weight of any species caught previously, made even more incredible by its canalised habitat. The record being just 3lbs 5ozs and canal record most likely Russell Hilton's 2.4.8 fish from the last Bloggers' Challenge.

Running the many photographs taken against various physical features for certainty became ever more exciting as the truth emerged from the fish i.d. mincer

Big-eyed silver bream dwarfing a perfect roach of 1.2.5

The catching of this fish however proved costly on the bite detection front with two of my 'best' lift-bite floats wrecked in the process. Ebay is being scoured but a suitable pattern for this technique on canals ain't that easy to uncover

Close at hand are numerous feature-filled stretches of all selected waters and so the prime spots could take some narrowing-down but it's mid-September and spring does not contemplate lubricating it's coils for 4 or 5 months yet. Time will be the angler's companion, for now and HonGenSec has his answer.

****STOP PRESS****
...and last night 8 degrees C with clear skies. We're on the cusp

THE STILLWATER - A MIDSUMMER UPDATE

Never entirely certain when the seasons end or begin it is with some risk that I entitle this piece as I do, but it feels right.

The Stillwater continues to piscatorially bamboozle me. Yes, the perch fishing had been a lifetime's best by quite some margin, approximately double the best other catch I can recall in weight per perchy capita in fact, but, as yet, the other fishes have tended to leave me alone quite nicely thank you. Obviously they think I am there for the tranquility and that it would be rude to disturb my peace too much. At all, in fact.

Recovering from a rather debilitating illness has seen me on the bank quite regularly, if dozily, these past few days, being ignored by the fish, and The Stillwater has set me to giving ever more consideration to birds, and especially the birds I am likely to encounter there.

The more advanced birders at the site have taken me rather into their world and now accept my record submissions with alacrity. Being immersed in the nature that appears magnetised to the place makes one realise what exactly one is missing by not fishing still waters of necessarily significant proportion.

On a personal level my birdwatching has been very much along the lines of my approach to angling over the years in that I have hardly ever knowingly 'twitched' a bird and the vast majority of the time have been, and remain, contented to compile a list of whatever species can be mustered from wherever I happen to be, or perhaps travelling to and from. In fact, very much like angling, it's the not knowing rather than the knowing that makes it engaging, enjoyable and rewarding in that very same order.

Since taking up residence at The Stillwater when the river season ended, it has been the birds rather than the fish that have engaged the most. Albeit a bite takes precedence over a passing bird in that moment, it cannot be denied! It doesn't begin and end there however for the attractions are many and varied. Butterflies still exist here unlike many of the places that used to have their flora spread with them not that many years ago. Dragon and damselflies abound and a good smattering of various mammals are more than possible, in fact likely, sightings too.

 

Southern hawker dragonfly at rest

Botanically I am generally totally stumped but there appears to be an interesting array of wild plants that, were I capable of pinning them down, would produce another even more extensive species list. The natural bottom line of course is that the botany dictates the invertebrates present and it is they in turn that dictate their consumers and so on it goes up that invisible line we used to call the food chain to top predators.

Like any former, but intrinsically since trapped, schoolboy it is the latter that seem the most appealing and cause the most excitement to the majority of us. Somehow they seem that bit more incredible with their extra, imagined, calculatingly cold-hearted dimension. Of course a kestrel catching a vole is no more unusual than a wren catching a spider from many different angles but the more advanced the prey the more impressive the captor appears to us.

This spring and summer I have had the sudden surprise of the noise made by the wings of a hobby pursuing sand martins in a strong breeze close overhead jolt me out of my slumber; the intermittent flap, flap, gliding of the osprey down the centre of the lake seeking those big roach I have never yet connected with; the floating giant moth-like foraging of the barn owl before my very eyes in daylight and the pursuit of all manner of small passerines by the sparrowhawk. Yet the most fascinating thing, the all consuming subject, is the wider picture. The whole wondrous ecological spectacle. It too I am happy to be bamboozled by.

 

Hobby silhouette

The all but inaudible high pitched squeaking of common shrews chasing in and out of rushes growing from the rocky bank.

The clouds of common blue damselflies flushed out of the grasses with every step after their daily emergence as marching armies of nymphs exiting the water for any promontory, however little it may rise above the water, there to transmogrify from little green alien larva to beautiful, here bountiful, imago.

 

 

 

The rudd, sucking sedge flies from the surface between phragmites stems with an audile slurp and the remant thick oily bubbles left long-term in the surface film.

The raucous barking of the muntjac from deep cover at dusk and the replies from distant cousins.

 

 

The frantically fluttering Small Skipper in search of a food plant for egg-laying.

The inquisitiveness of the sedge warbler, creeping ever closer through the reeds to check-out the large unnaturally dressed mammal examining it in return.

The creaking sound of the pond snails emerging through marginal water plant debris at dusk as they suck and blow at the surface.

All of these and more can and will keep me amused, quite literally, for a lifetime.

No fish? No problem!