This Autumn Mourning

Mourning the passing of summer. Celebrating the coming of autumn. I sit in my small corner.

Anticipating movement.

Four days ago the sharp chill of early morning signalled that change. Bang on time. The afternoon sun still has the capacity for uncomfortable heat in its glare but this will diminish unless an Indian summer is to provide a thermal boost.

Rivers again run clear and are unapproachable in daylight hours. The canals awash with ignorant fools.

The option therefore? To enjoy some late tench fishing in the hope that something unexpected might trip over the bait too.

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So we have settled into our oft peaceful, always still corner of the Res for the dusk period on an all-but daily basis.

Large comings-together of hirundines are now evident in favoured locations and soon they will be gone, swifts long-since departed, with the current massing of gnats to be replaced by their northern cousins capable of survival on arboreal fruits.

Tiny furry mammals, at their most numerous and industrious at this time, forage and squeal underfoot - and sometimes over it. The company of bank and field voles, water and other shrews, stoat and rat has been enjoyed in recent weeks.

The decreasing temperature and increased humidity would initially suggest an associated drop-off in fish activity but the water remains warm to the touch and, like the sea, this will be maintained while the air gets colder. Cloudy nights will assist. The fish 'know' that the time for feasting is upon them and until the winter sets-in they will be at their most vulnerable to the angler.

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For now then the corner has been both comfortable and comforting. It's a snug little spot and for the last hour of each visit has produced precisely three tench to bread over a bed of hemp together with a smattering of roach up to just under the satisfying pound.

The hoped for unanticipated capture to take symmetry to asymmetry went awol through the steady string of lifts, occasional sailaways, dithers and crayfish interruptions but tench are never to be ignored, so obliging are they in the biting and fighting stakes, morning and, in these cases, dusk.

The green Goddesses and Gods were in the two to three and a half pounds bracket on the first two of three trips but, for no fathomable reason, the third brief session proved the best float caught FF&F tench catch ever with fish of 4.1, 4.4 and a hard fighting 5.3 last cast. All fish were taken on bread flake in seven feet of water late in the evening.

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Daniel Everitt has been tantamount to camped here for the past few weeks but, coincidentally, has now vacated in search of flowing water fish with the changing seasons.

Sunday evening, the fourth session and ninth and tenth hours of effort, took place under heavy skies and through light drizzle.

Inundated with passing visitors, as though they knew something I didn't, the lake was otherwise quiet in an angling sense.

Admiral Fudge and Ollie the greyhound; Committee Keith with Buddie the terrier and then Joe the bailiff. During which time (first cast) a roach of one pound eight ounces was a surprise capture followed by two sub-pound fish but it wasn't until just after Joe returned with bailiff no.2 Pete (I can be a handful), and we'd exchanged pleasantries and tales of woe, that it happened.

By way of a change I slid the BB tell-tale shot up to pop a piece of crust up 5" just above a thin layer of Canadian pondweed fragments littering the bed.

Minutes later the float dipped and lifted and the strike met with decent resistance. The fish moved off right and then treated me to a juddering sensation reminiscent of an eel but less insistent. I immediately allowed myself to dream. Then the rotund side-plate shape confirmed it.

"I've got a crucian guys"

Back came Pete and Joe in a hurry.

The fish had ideas of escape however and took a while to subdue even on the specimen float rod but at the second attempt a geriatric crucian skimmed over the rim to be consumed by mesh.

An old fish.

Battle scarred, with split dorsal and otter-ravaged caudal, this beaten character (in both senses) was to shatter the p.b. set in the height of summer by a 1.2.6 fish.

Pete estimated "Two and a half". I didn't venture a guess but hoped it might just exceed that. Joe fell silent. In fact both did when it came to the maths.

The roach had gone 38 ounces with the net but this magnificently ancient individual would, with 14ozs to deduct from 56, reset the bar at 2lbs 10ozs.

Photographs were kindly taken and the boys said their goodbyes.

Danny was able to confirm via the ether that this fish was caught twice in 2016 at exactly the same weight give or take the loss of the top of its tail in the meantime. I declined giving it a name but if I did 'Grand Cru' would seem appropriate

Darkness fell a good fifty minutes earlier than normal due to the weight of cloud cover somewhat bizarrely requiring an isotope to complete the session, but, with no more action, the car beckoned and we, that is myself and the memory, hit the road...floating on air.

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It is now the two day 'anniversary' of the capture and it barely slips my mind at any time. Compared to a specimen roach it is admittedly not quite there but otherwise perhaps the most satisfying of captures. In this Bloggers' Challenge year personal bests have fallen regularly with the commitment to try to load as many points on the board from all available sources within a range of about 30 minutes travel. There have been the river bream, barbel, carp, etc., but the smaller species never cease to give me greatest pleasure. Somehow they just seem that little bit more difficult to catch. If I were to list species in order of personal significance it would go something like - roach, silver bream, crucian carp, rudd, tench, chub, perch, etc., but this is splitting hairs really as any species is good to catch if it proves to be a challenge.

Darkness Falls and Possibilities Grow

On increasing air temperatures came rising water levels. Spring on the horizon and springs in peak production

Those bursts of strengthening sunlight, once again blinding in intensity, squeeze moisture as vertically drifting mist pockets from rotting remnants of summer past. The rains strangled from their  reed insulated bed of earth

Skylark and reed bunting burst-out their wildly contrasting pleasure at the seasonal change afoot. Their brethren in the knowledge that they would need their own space in which to bring forth the populace of future grass and sedge

The occasional optimistic and ever-enthused dace breaks surface, and a brief circling sign of its excitement smooths back into the surging, rolling flow

Small whirlpools slowly swizzle down the torrent seeking compatriots to combine to a larger vortex but as the approaching deepening bend pulls them into an accelerating glide, magical, mystical and short-lived, they shrink and close

Overhead the hoarsely kronking jet black raven flaps and flops through the heavy cloud, into which the sun does boldly beam through low trajectory, and on drifting breeze he is taken-off over hawthorn and out of sight.

A ripplet in the margins. First here, then there and further too. Tiny indentations and evidences of movement against the silty, here steady, high water. Below I imagine an oblivious pike, masked by the turbidity, slumbering in wait of clarity of view and ambition. It may be some days. The inundated grasses twitch and twang as though plucked by a subsurface picker. Then a foot, a head, a muzzle. The water shrew pops its foraging face through the stems to view the onlooker square in the eye and he too is gone, beset by fear

A twang, a flinch but then no more

Turning to view the scene a splashing, sploshing swirl of power and spray moulds a shocked expression and a search in the gloom with focused beam. The true controller of the stream, flushed from it's evening hunt in terror, re-emerges beneath the tunnel of arched, looming far bank growth, its eye gleaming in, now, bright moonlight pushing like an illuminated OO loco against the flow and it too, like the shrew, was gone. The otter, elusive, exclusive and demonstrative of a recovering world, was on the prowl but caught-out by the ultimate predator; though on this day, some eight hours' effort resulting in one average capture, but one of valour against the odds, once again confirmed fulfilment by the water meadows

The stream may ebb and flow, it may twist and turn and, in devastation, alter its course, but here is the truest reality of the modern world. The water cares not for the interference of man, its indefatigable motion restating its own form and community year upon year; decade after decade; millennium in, millennium out

River is king, make no mistake