The Summer Stream

This past couple of weeks the stream has intermittently forced itself to flow with the irresistible weight of a little rainfall easing it's reluctance. The Leam is never keen to flow in the summer and it's mysterious deep holes from 6 to 16 feet barely enjoy any movement between winters.

When the sun bakes the surface to a duckweed crust there is little to attract the angler not prepared to approach with extreme caution. Though the fish are distinctly active double rubber floats become redundant and this particular angler has had to learn to free-line lobs and bread to muster an enquiry or two.

The Stillwater offers no escape from the heat of the day and, as such, it's attractions, while needed in the world of The Blogger's Challenge, must be left for another day, month or maybe even a season.

On my tiny bankside scoreboard, Captain Cook's men, having had the drive drained out them by a literally unbelievable Ashes win, toil in the sun in the south of the country in the final test, as the remnant Aussies that haven't declared retirement play for their futures.

Clarke may not be liked by many it seems, and maybe his persona close-up and in private is not what it appears to the distant viewer, but for me he has been a top class cricketer and individual, even if his record in away Ashes tests is so poor.

This is not a great England side but the opposition is a very good one and their capitulation in the face of alien English pitch conditions has been as out of character as the beligerence of the home side  when it mattered.

For my part I now sit here in the nettles and remnants of now unidentifiable umbellifer seed heads awaiting another equally unlikely event. Despite my care, the irritant of the nettle stems bites at most of my fingers as I wait, expectant.

This, the most discreet of pegs, which produced fascinating winter fishing indeed some of the most exciting I have known in high water conditions last back-end, has delivered via the great river God two unexpected chub. One a baby of a pound followed, unexpectedly, by it's dad at 2.10.11.
Two other twitches have materialised between flicking slow-sinking bread pellets, through and among those overhanging nearside nettles, into the margin and pouring a steady trickle of strong sweet coffee over my parched throat as the temperature rises from 20degC at arrival before lunch to a predicted 28 by tea.

A flock of, it seems, somewhat over-chunky sheep lie in the shade of a giant ash in escape from the torture of the mid-day heat, compounded by as yet un-shorn fleece. They view me with caution as I pass, slowly, wishing not to flush them into the sunlight, and a small number get to their feet but resume their slumbers once they realise my intent.

As I wandered the length of this simmering watercourse on reluctant legs hawker dragonflies checked me and each other out. How they crash into each other to defend their territory! Head-butting the thorax until the intruder relents and a normal insectivorous foraging patrol may resume.

Much of the exposed water is so overgrown as to be unfishable and under more overcast circumstances each little clear patch may have been tested for life but today the shelter of overhanging trees was essential to provide anything but a lack of fishy interest.

The local buzzard, the closest we could get to an eagle in these parts, is mewing overhead and opposite, above the high clay bank, harvesters gather the grain in vast swathes as the breeze carries dust up and away over the hill to irritate the throats of villagers down-wind to the north.

Eventually what little evident feeding activity there has been declines and with the two chub in the metaphorical bag I trudge back through the mid-afternoon, shaded by my over-heavy winter hat; remembering as I go why those two colder seasons are so precious to me, and ponder the prospect of hemp, tares, and even elderberries. When the harvest is underway and water temperature high it is always peak time for those the most unlikely of baits.

Just as proof - a dace of 0-4-3 from a previous session in The Bloggers Challenge

This Contrary Life

Rodney's advice has struck again...

I have previously talked about my outstanding ability...dramatic pause...to do the right thing at the wrong time

Allow me time to explain, please, before you think, "He's gone all conceited on us".

The contrariness, or is it 'ossity? (I wish it were either option but suspect the corr-r-rect gr-r-rammar would be 'contrary nature') of my approach to angling has somehow got me by over the years to sufficient a level as to enable me to enjoy myself, at least.

Way back, it was practising for matches in really poor areas of the length that set me apart from the others, or was that 'the winners'? Probably. The idea that one could extract blood from a stone, or sticklebacks from puddle, appealed and yet often on club fishing trips I would hear people say that the best anglers perform best on the worst pegs because they can conjure a piscatorial rabbit from the concrete-lined flooded hat. Not true. If there are no fish there no one can catch them but the more there are, and the bigger they are, without reaching specimen proportions, the more the 'better' angler will catch and the proportionately less the lesser angler.

In the present day. I do tend to do what I fancy and, having quickly got the annual Highlands trip, resplendent with eagles, otters, divers, pine martens and wood warblers quickly out of my system this year, I took the considered decision to recommence my thus far terminally inactive Tench campaign back at the Stillwater.

 

Let's be clear (the water has been...part of the issue) this is no ordinary Stillwater, oh no. This is a Stillwater (almost) to end them all. A water where a bite means a P. B., for me at least with my weedy canal list behind me.

My only proper bite to date (pike excluded) produced a stillwater, in fact all waters, P. B. Perch of 2.12.0 for instance, but it can be long wait.

Tench probably touch 10lbs and so the idea to persevere through the summer when normally I would have my tackle tucked neatly away (don't go there!) is seemingly logical with the bloggers challenge to address too.

So Saturday The Dog, visiting from his Cornish hovel, goes back to his old cricket club and reels off his first century, carrying his bat through the innings and following up his last innings of 52n.o. almost two years prior.

The Dog. Not looking unlike bloggers challenge guru Russell Hilton here, it must be said.

Meanwhile I, being the ever-attentive father, am baiting the swim for a Sunday p.m. vigil (a word that nearly makes me think of Thunderbirds, nearly). Anyway, when I get back the grin is unbearable so I hide in the garage and fiddle with my worms. Lobs and reds were delivered this week and the reds, while tiny, I just imagined would wriggle like a bloodworm on speed when introduced to the water 

 

Saturday was also punctuated positively by the purchase of 'Ogden's Nut Gone Flake', the last Small Faces studio album. Oh what joy this has brought to myself and Parps! With Professor Stanley Unwin in the mix too. 'Deep joy' in fact. If you're under 40 this may well be leaving you bemused. I suggest you might engage with Google, but not forgetting to return for the contrary punchline below of course. This was all triggered by my reading a buke about yoof culture called 'Mod!'. Fascinating.

Anyway, back to the plot...

So Sunday morning I feed the new swim again and note it's enticing colour this side of the pond. Nothing topping, but that's quite normal.

Come 3pm, with various wrinkly family members deposited in various locations, (the sponging so and so's) I returned.





No flies on me...all in the air



The fly-infested wind was now off my back and I feared the colour may have dropped-out but no, so maybe the tincas were feeding? Mayfly, sedge flies, gnats, midges (aren't they the same thing?) and quite literally thousands of common blue damselflies were on the wing. One could not walk for flushing hoards/swarms/flocks/shoals(?) of them into the air

Bank space was so tight they fought over the landing pad at the tip of the float

Two rods were employed as normal in this post-match fishing era. One a lift bite method float rig on specimen float rod and the other a light feeder. That said the feed was introduced by catty but I had no bombs with me. I always forget something.

The sun beat down and land and sea swallows flitted and fallollopped respectively over head.

A reed warbler rattled in my left ear all afternoon and by 6pm it had reached a point at which I felt  I'd been at a washboard players’ convention all afternoon. An enjoyable one though with accompaniment from other warblers and Cuckoo-ing males, and indeed bubbling females of the parasitic imposter.

An hour or two in and the strangest thing happened.

The float quivered a couple of times and disappeared. Could this be an hallucination brought on by too much sun? I struck into a lump. A ragingly irritated head-shaking lump.

Fight it did, but other than the banging of its noddle no runs brought the clutch into play and the curve of the rod coped alone st surfaced, red fins evident, on its side and one very untench-like but very annoyed monster Perch slipped into the net.

Being still quite new to this game in relative terms I find it difficult to judge the weight of anything over two pounds. So after a couple of quick photos I weighed him with the net at 74 ounces. “That sounds quite promising I thought”, (riddled with expletives). The net went 21 ounces (soaking) and after applying, what was then, middle school maths I drew the conclusion this almost stripe-less fish was over 3lbs.

3.5.0 in fact.

Words fail. Occasionally. The scales left looking like a toy.

Obliteration of the previous P. B. was immediately evident and it had only taken 52 hours or so to get the bite. The change of swim was justified even without the Tench.

Two hours later I looked up from photographing snails to see the float antenna waggling about and struck into another fish that fought like a real beast and, as is the way of these things, fully expected a bigger fish of another species.  No head-banging just really strong surges of power. This fella turned out to be another overweight footballer of 2.13.0 though.

A proper stripy perch this one

Contrary again.

So, bloggers challenge testing tench it may not have been, but it was worth a thumping great stripy 54 points on the Stillwater score board plus currently 10 more for being the biggest of the season (so far, until Leo gets going). More than an unexpected bonus but it justifies the hours put in for the tench when anything you catch is this momentous

Roll on the next visit

 

Tench. Time.

Time is a strange concept i'n'it?

My whole angling life has been driven by relatively short sessions on a variety of venues, but groups of venues that have come in fads over the years. Warks Avon & Trent; The East Midlands/Anglian rivers and Lakes; Thames; South Midlands Canals; West Midlands canals and, now, various appealling waterbodies and courses of the Feldon landscape.

The earliest visits were often quite long by my more recent standards, perhaps eight hours or more. Then as club fishing kicked-in with the, then, Rugby Midland Red bus co. angling club, they reduced to 5 or 6 hours and, as time passed through open matches on canals in the East and then West Midlands to the past three seasons of increasingly short sessions around dawn and dusk, they went to four, three, two hours, sometimes even less...and rarely the same peg fished twice.

So the past month has seen a massive change of outlook and direction since the river season ended.

 I am now around 40 hours into what I hope to be a real, not fantasy, tench campaign without even so much as a nibble to show for it. Not consecutive hours I might add, but 40 hours' fishing the same peg in bursts often preceded by baiting visits the night or morning before.

They've been rolling and laughing at me, and the pike have been avid munchers of the inanimate as I've wound back in various contraptions of bait placement but not a proper bite to show for it

Metal crunching, feeder munching Automaton

When I first stepped-off the river bank onto The Stillwater the water immediately seemed quite 'warm' to the touch in comparison but I now realise that it had been heated by the sun in a manner impossible for a shaded, narrow, winding, deep stream and, in fact, to its inhabitants it was still inconducive to much feeding activity.

Now though, a month later, the water temperature is approaching that level at which it starts to be similar to hand temperature and, were it not at the same time wet, it would be undetectable

Comforted by the fact that others are not lowering the water levels by removing myriad tincas I have become, on the face of it, bizarrely content to watch motionless tips

Superficial this situation certainly is however as what this outwardly tedious, if not pointless, exercise has rekindled is my passion for birds. Having been a birdwatcher for as many years as an angler I have hopped-off the ornithological perch in the past decade, largely due to work and the boys' cricket commitments but, since the end of the so-termed noughties, also by an earlier resurrection of angling interest of course.

Here though, at The Stillwater, I have a specific view from the peg combined with the walk back and forth, and suddenly the local recorder finds himself inundated with sightings. Largely common or garden, yes, but the odd flashback to birds not seen or enjoyed for so long together with the returning migrants...and bats

Highlights thus far have been green sandpiper, the returning chiffchaff, then first willow and sedge warblers of 2015 for the location and flocks of twittering sand and, eventually, house martins interspersed by swallows, as well as departing goldeneye, regular barn owl foraging activity and then more arriving warblers such as whitethroat

Chiffchaff

Wednesday I was also able to wend my laden way back to the car park listening to the 'slapping' of common pipistrelles, the 'chip shop, chip shop' of Noctules, our biggest common bat at 16" wingspan (no, that's not a typo!), and the Geiger-counter-esque Daubenton's bat...that hovercraft of the natural world...as they fed freely over the water, margins, carr and treetops. Their calls interspersed by the raspberry-like 'thrrrrripp' of the feeding buzz on contact with tiny and not so tiny prey

The, close to, two days of wider natural study has rekindled this naturalist and I am sure my friends and colleagues are sick of me ranting about observations but sometimes it just has to be shared to extract true value. I know I've seen it, but sharing it and making use of it in the written record adds an extra dimension that's been missing for so much time.

Buzzard and mobbers

Yes, tench time has its benefits, even when they are not quite ready...yet

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Mouse training update:

'Big set-back when Monica went stiff and had to be ejected as she was becoming food for Potty. Well, it's just life (and death) in the FF&F study

Subsequently Potty became less trusting but, only tonight, a breakthrough that took us back in time and fast-forward simultaneously to the point at which she clumb (that word has a wiggly red line under it, I wonder why?) completely onto my hand for a black sunflower heart...irresistable to Pot-Pot are those

So we're back on course and I'll be able to imagine taking her to school in my pocket again soon

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Bloggers challenge diary:

Only 7.5 more sleeps to the starting cast

Still time to book-on at:
http://canalangler.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/blogger-challenge-who-in.html
and if you struggle with the link feel free to comment on this post accordingly and I'll happily let Russell and Jeff know

More time. Less fish?

Two trips down the river this weekend, both p.m. and both in swims I has fancied from previous visits but at ten minutes door to gate it ain't no hardship

Saturday was spent trotting bread under a balsa in what appeared the perfect smooth water glide, up to and beyond a bush, and then a link-leger into dark under the bush with two reasonably decent bites, one missed, one pulled-out, and therefore no fish

Ever-present family of swans slip past backwards in the dark...why?

The seed was sewn however and with the river falling to inversely reflect a contrary increase in air temperature predicted on the Sunday all seemed to point to an unavoidable opportunity. Shopping was pulled-in early with Parps and I waltzing into the shops as soon as they opened and Sunday's first gentle indoor net as he builds up for next cricket season between ten and eleven this would leave a good slot after dropping The Old Duffer and The Old Trout for a show and then night out just after lunch

Having enjoyed running a float through with the centrepin, but sadly not having anything to show for it, I decided to revert to the new pole method which had been reasonably successful a fortnight ago tempting a nice chub first put on the pole and then a sequence of roach

Slowly the tactic is starting to evolve into something worth using regularly and, if anything, it seems slightly more productive than the standard techniques, largely because, in a river dominated by 3 to 12 ounce roach hitting their bites on the 'tip is a recipe for certifiable frustration

A peg was chosen at the end of a mid-river crease where a glide started and I intended to pole-fish that line. The river was still two foot six above normal and nicely coloured with a few smaller roach topping from middle to far bank. An added bonus was a nearside slack downstream of the peg behind a rush bed which I would drop a link leger into as a sleeper option (wit' lobs on't t'hook)

Somehow I wasn't quite 'with it'; the wind was painfully awkward, despite not hitting the water as such, and I was easily distracted. Fifty fieldfares flapped their staccato randomly undulating flight overhead and buzzards mewed as the rode the gusting breeze over the paddocks off the far bank with an eye out for the local bunnies. Other things drew my attention. Dog walkers, wrens, car headlights in the distance, anything but the fishing. On dropping in however a sail-away bite resulted in another first cast chub on the hook, probably around a pound and a half, and in taking one too many joints off the pole too quickly I allowed it to bury itself in rushes under my feet before I had it beaten!

A series of nice hand-sized and just swingable roach followed, and maybe during the forthcoming holiday I may just ditch the effort to seek slightly larger samples and try maggot under a waggler just to see what is in really in there

While the breeze subsided I decided to have a hot drink and triangle of pork pie, only a Pork Farms  jobbie but welcome none the less. Head and tail of lob meanwhile were lowered into the slack while the pole was rested in the field for the time being. As I tightened the rod tip dived toward the surface and a good fighter was on. Ten feet of murky water and a light avon rod helped and hindered the prey but soon it was at the surface and what I thought to be a guaranteed 2.8.0 perch, angry with its erect dorsal flagging capture (and later stabbing my index finger) was netted.

This was one a chubster of a perch, very wide for its length, but it must've swallowed a tennis ball as it went 28.5 ounces on the scales; which was on the one hand disappointing and on the other quite brilliant as it beat the river p.b. by around six ounces and was the second Leam p.b. from the stretch in around three weeks

A veritable pig-perch but quite a beauty nevertheless

At the close the local barn owl screeched just once as it left to quarter the river margins and rough grassland further afield in its massive winter vole-producing range. The net was lifted and three pounds ten ounces of quality fish were carefully returned to the cold water in this the shortest of days, though without a photo as I was rather keen to get away on this occasion

The quite incredible, nay delightful, annual display of Christmas lights in the local village made the single track lanes akin to motorways in weight of traffic with every under twelve, and quite a good number over, visiting to absorb that festive feeling. I however, wishing to avoid the melee, comforted myself in the prior sunset

Revivial Pursuit, or, Some Kind of Bored Game

Misty sunrise near Farnborough, September 2011.
One of the benefits of a job that sometimes has me out at dusk and dawn

Well, here we go...

It had to happen eventually. I tried to resist, really I did, and managed to for about two years, but the temptation overwhelmed me in the end, although I can’t explain why - even to myself

Having spent the best part of the last two weeks laid-up with some kind of flu-bug, the possibility increased as I started to improve and amused myself by reading a wider range of blogs but kept coming back to the same few that I found most appealing...largely centred around natural history and angling in and around Warwickshire (clearly some kind of hotbed with an apparent, perhaps disproportionately, large contingent of Bloggers in this very County...with Daniel having just started too and now this - what is going on?)

Possibility became probability, and, before I realised what was happening, I was trying to think of potential names for it, most of which met with the word ‘rubbish’ when consulted upon in-house (literally), perhaps I should have called it that?, (no comments here please, it’s too early to cope with any criticism!)

Anyway, I had to put that to one side as the temptation to be too ‘clever’ and produce something with multiple meaning took hold, which isn’t good for me. So I by-passed the name and went for the word on the basis that the name would come, like naming a band. It remains to be seen how long this will linger as a word doc until such time as I paste it in, all tidied-up like, as a starter for ten...but only I will know in the end (it was a week)

So what’s it all about? Well, I was in discussion recently about influences that make children turn-out the way they do. One could say it’s luck, and clearly to a degree it is, but if you bring ‘em up right it seems likely they’ll come back round to it at some point in the future, i.e. after the 13-25 period which, let’s face it, is probably only 10% of a lifetime, so not too bad at all

In my own case however that period was peak ‘getting out there’ time. Having been treated to an interesting bird sighting after school, visited the favoured watercourse of the time at a weekend or simply spending time somewhere, anywhere, in the countryside in my childhood - combined with general chit-chat about, and a, then, ever-increasing interest in, various sports and music this continued right through to that time when life takes a different course and one immerses one’s own fruit to be simmered in that multi-ingredient juice blended with your own twist in the hope that it, too, turns-out in a similarly rounded form

That said, it is hopefully (...be more positive!...) probably, beginning to show through that this embryo-blog, more of a blegg at this point, is to make note of and consequently share events as I seek to revisit that world I once inhabited and extend it into new areas. I do not intend to thoroughly explain that world before I re-enter it as that will become more fully apparent as I proceed but hope to compare the present with the past in an objective manner when it seems relevant. The past will range loosely between 1975 and 1995 and will be contrasting various periods, mainly within that range, over-arched by the pursuit of coarse fish (the latter initially as an all-round pleasure/match angler and then for at least a decade solely as a canal match angler), birds and many other aspects of the natural world

Fortunately I kept my optical gear, as I use it for work, so no problem there, but the tackle collection has become denuded by sales, gift (by left hand rather than right, as the old saying goes), general rot and the tendency to narrowly specialise last time around. I won’t be match fishing again so there is another contrast to be experienced as I, perhaps, try to shake-of that ingrained desire to get a bite, any bite, and catch 'anything that swims'...or maybe I won't. That other contemporary ‘hit’ eBay is therefore taking precisely that and I have just taken delivery of what I would call my first ever ‘specialist’ rod, an AVON, my God, and me 50 next year!


We are fortunate enough to have a garden adjoining a marshy field which frankly offers sufficient interest in it's own right, especially in the depths of winter, not to need to venture far. The most unexpected visitors occasionally join us in the garden stream from time to time to avoid being frozen into the pasture and search of the odd morsel

Snipe from bedroom window. A winter visitor for a third consecutive year

Next time I post [if that is the correct ternimology (sic)] I hope to have something mildly interesting to record; it might be about revisiting an old fishing haunt, it could be about bats (flying, or cricket), birds, newts, anything that moves in fact (and some things that don't) or a wider comment but hopefully overall it will be sufficiently engaging to be shared by a few others as I re-take this journey

I hope to be introducing little quirks that have stuck with me from my trips, of whatever type, over the years but that little lot dear reader, if indeed you are yet out there, is where I’m going to be coming from, or more to the point, going to...'can't wait!