A Quiet Morning by the Water

First swallow today, so its now official

Best fish - a roach of 1-1-3, which was immediately pasted onto the Idler's Quest (is that guy Jeff Hatt dead we ask ourselves?!)/FF&F spreadsheet of pound-plus North Oxford Canal roach

 

The sun rose rather too sharply for the fishes liking this morning, and the action was over as soon as it began, with just two skimmers and two hybrids to add to the actual quarry

Skylarks were tentatively venturing into the air and running through snatches of their song and the farmer's wife ran the perimeters of all the fields opposite (twice) with a particularly wired spaniel as if in training for a marathon. 

Chaffinches sought territories around the ash trees.

A tremendous smell of fox emanated from one of the three pegs I tried and a remarkably heavy dew sparkled upon the tips of the grass in the early sunlight

 

A swan cleaned-up the remnant bread pellets that surfaced as I struck them off against phantom crayfish bites with one of the armoured critters making it to the top only to drop off, thankfully, as it witnessed the shock of daylight

 

Yes, you guessed it today is Wednesday and therefore fishing day. Well actually it was not because as The Lady Burton is in hospital Friday having an irritation removed, no not one of our children but a cyst between tooth and sinus (I know, 'sounds painful!), so it was just a pre-work session for a couple of hours. I am hoping to squeeze an hour or two in Friday though, once she's ensconced

Many times over the past years 35 years had I trod this path, I suspect around fifty times in fact, and little had it changed. More boats certainly; moored boats back then were something of an event, now though they are something of an expectation...and the 24hr Emergency Potter was still in residence which is always comforting (you never know when the handle might come off your mug) although the union flag bunting was being removed so I assumed a trip abroad beckoned. Another pair of buntings, the reed variety, flitted into bank side vegetation perhaps in search of a nest site now that herbage is in the initial throes of impending rampant growth, I wonder if they could be related to the buntings that frequented this place in the 1980's?

 

Today was a recce really, trying to determine how far the shoals had spread as they move out to find suitable spawning substrates but the clear early skies taught nothing, roll in the cloud later in the week!