When the Fishing gets The Bird

Distant washing moggy

At the crack of dawn this morning on former moorland by the canal with a young plantation nearby it was evident that willow warblers had this year arrived in good number, with three simultaneously singing from different perches both within the wood and in standard hedgerow trees

A mistle thrush struck-up it's somewhat limited repertoire from a distant branch and the occasional blackcap, chaffinch and dunnock joined in

Of greatest interest however was the faint calling of the lapwing later fully brought out of his carefree staccato patterings in an arable field by a passing corvid, causing him to take to the air like Mo Farah with dodgy joints. Rocking first this way then that with his over-sized pied wings exaggerating each movement and giving away the nesting activity his imperceptible mate undertook below on the bare earth

The bird interest was exceptional for a fishing trip, mind you my trips are never just fishing trips, they ought to have another name really, 'nature observation' or some such title perhaps. Again the enchantment stemmed from the numerous songs to be heard at various times. The morning had commenced with the slightest hint of frost on the banks in isolated pockets opposite the wood and it was there that the angling expectation took root with a good helping of mashed bread deposited down the middle of this narrow stretch, the first two casts produced roach of just over and just under the pound...no longer the wait of an hour or two for a bite with the gradually increasing water temperature. The peg was the most pleasurable, with a short section of subsided bank allowing a seat to be taken down at water level - always preferable for that feeling of being at one with the water and surroundings

Despite a burst of topping fish half an hour after dawn no more action was to be enjoyed. A first boat at 06.38 did not help greatly but that is the risk of early Saturday mornings, when narrowboats hired by the inexperienced need to cover too much water in getting back to the marina for handover, necessitating an early start for them too

So, armed with some knowledge gained in recent weeks, more bread was introduced some four pegs to the left opposite an open field. Immediately it was noticeable that the bird list was growing just for the sake of an 80 yard walk into a adjoining habitat linked only by the canal and its margins, as the gear was relocated while the feed settled. A male reed bunting could be heard forcing out his feeble notes in the now suddenly emerging rushes and the previously seemingly distant lapwing was now more visible and careering over his chosen field in a manner evocative of an age gone by; when, on many a rose-tinted balmy spring evening, The Old Duffer and I, would wonder at their ability to tumble apparently out of control without breaking any wings or losing feathers and yet braking before hitting the ground too. All to distract the intruder, and what a distraction! 

Of course the first cast in the new swim produced more of the same but this was some fighter. I prayed, in some sort of bizarre agnostic fashion, for a dream roach.....

Hybrid. 2-11-5 

Another big canal hybrid eventually relented and slipped into that dream-like state that finds them in the net. A couple more fish followed and an overall catch of over six and a half pounds was returned to the, by then (8.15am), strongly pulling water on conclusion of a brief but most enjoyable dawn to breakfast, pre-B&Q, session

Some chunky fish, now fully recovered from a hard winter but some showing signs of the excitement of spring with absent scales
Roach 1-2-5, 0-15-3, 0-6-0. Bream 1-7-8. RxB Hybrid 2-11-5

SPECIES LIST:
Willow warbler, carrion crow, blackbird, woodpigeon, mallard, moorhen, magpie, blackcap (singing, and female viewed), skylark, chaffinch, lapwing, bullfinch, reed bunting, jackdaw, dunnock, greenfinch, mistle thrush, goldfinch, collared dove, swallow, indet gull, wren, blue tit, robin, house sparrow.
Roach, bronze bream, (roachXbream hybrid).

If Saturday had been dream-like then Sunday was the real thing. Another early alarm call but this time ten minutes earlier to allow a longer walk should the opportunity present itself, as no decision would be made on destination until the wheels were turning. Last time this road was taken a barn owl was seen scattering jackdaws and this time it was in the same spot and slipped over a farm gate between trees to vanish into the mist

Only a few hundred yards on, Volpone trotted across the metalled surface with his bunny and disappeared into the darkness of the hedge destined to cause mayhem amongst the waiting cubs no doubt

I hadn't visited this stretch since match angling had lost its gloss but recalled two things quite vividly a match winning perch taken on half a pinkie in the depths of winter and an asthma attack from the long walk in a heavy frost; a day of extremes!

Similarities with today were initially limited to the frost with the fields white-over at 5am but soon cleared as the air warmed with the cloud cover that approached gently from the north-east. Mist gently drifted across the water as I approached an S-bend I had not seen for over twenty years, an area where I had learnt bread punch fishing by trial and error (and a few magazine articles) as a teenager

A narrowboat floated in the mist as if a cake decoration on icing with a deep ribbon of the frozen green field below. Soon the sky turned orange as the sun rose together with a number of large fish beneath the growing cloud cover and dramatically illuminated the whole scene with growing concentric rings of each topping specimen glinting gold

Rooks were the first birds to show as they ferried more beetles than the land can concievably support back to their young in bulging bald beaks. The first lift-bite came five to ten minutes in when a vigorous fight culminated in a noticeably silver fish coming to the surface, no hint of blue to the scales. A large silver bream pulled the scales down to 1-3-6, a sliver off the PB, and the best start imaginable

The first skylark took to the wing to declare the day open for business as a number of blackbirds practiced their own tunes from a variety of perches near and far

The worm line, 15 yards to the right at the bottom of the near shelf, was subject to the 'sleeper wand' but first cast the bait did not hit the bottom before a violent twang of the tip resulted in the hooking of a superb fat spring Dandy of the Stream resplendent in striped tunic and collapsible battlements. An all canals PB at 1-13-5

It was then fish for fish on the two lines but the undoubted highlight was yet another PB hybrid, where are they all coming from, and do they fight?! The seemingly impossible four pounds ceiling shattered by this fish of 4-2-3

The rest of the session was usurped by the bird life and a steady stream of smaller perch on the 'tip seemed somewhat insignificant as a mysterious repetitive warbling seeped from a scrubby patch to the left. Wandering along using the hedge as cover a closer view was attempted but the culprit was deep inside the thorns so I returned to my own perch but not before a pair of tree sparrows chirped their way from an ash to a field hedge in a landscape that has always been something of stronghold for them despite their apparent recent decline

Another hybird came to the net on the wand, this one 1-11-3 and swiftly followed by a good roach on the float, which seemed fairly modest until lying in the net, of 1-2-0

Soon though the warbling moved to a bramble patch with few leaves and gave the ideal opportunity have have another go. With all the stealth of a penguin in clogs I ventured closer and could see movement as the songster headed toward the camera. By this time the iPhone app had confirmed that the sound was made by a lesser whitethroat, all that was missing was a good sighting to ink-in the tick. Then suddenly, and equally briefly, he was all but in the open and a couple of long-lens record shots were reeled-off. Result!

Over eleven pounds of clonkers in a mixed bag including a few small perch out of shot and the surreal period of North Oxford Canal angling continues

What to make of this quality of fishing before the boat activity starts? Well, that's another story...

SPECIES:

Barn owl, red fox, skylark, tree sparrow, blackbird, indet gull, rook, mallard, moorhen, canada goose, dunnock, reed bunting, great tit, wren, chaffinch, lapwing, lesser whitethroat, kestrel, silver bream, roach, perch, rXb hybrid 





The Combined End of the Beginning

A weekend struck-through by a third bout of man'flu this winter set me thinking more widely than the usual particularly narrow field of view...

So many memories from the old days. So many days when luck was on my side and yet plenty when it wasn't, memories that mysteriously emerge heavily rioting from a fog like a ponderous bream from murky water as I attempt to draw them out for recollection

There have been days when one's fortune seemed overwhelmingly unjust to others and others that are simply forgotten, and for justifiable reason

I have been lucky to have found the outdoors, or maybe it is the other way round, but then that is no doubt the mantra of anyone who enjoys thoroughly an enthralling pursuit away from their work which is more than just sport or a hobby but a way of life, a state of mind

This for me is how I view being anywhere in fresh air but particularly imbibing the sights and being stimulated of the senses in the countryside, even though there is nothing natural about it if one takes the view that man's influence renders things 'unnatural'. There is not a single plant or organism outside the influence of man, without doubt, and the great outdoors is only great within those limits and set against that context. The range of our everyday lives is wholly subject to the influence of ourselves and our ancestors

50 years I have wandered where the feeling took me and at every turn there is regret, occasionally at my own stupidity, but more often over the actions of others

As a teenager, and maybe before, it was fundamentally obvious that unendingly and obsessionally tampering with what I will call 'life' was a means to a gloomy end. Even at that formative time of life it was beyond being unquestionable that there was no need for any car to be capable of less than even 40mpg; there was no logic in straightening watercourses and literally destroying the food chain and webs supported by them to such an extent that, even when the error is identifed, it can never be corrected as the true loss is just a faded memory; there was a noticeable decline in what is now termed biodiversity (yes, give it a name and we can all live with it, "My child is out of control!, He has attention problems", well have you considered that feeding him a diet of blue smarties, coke and electronic games might not be natural?); development goes ahead paying lip service to biodiversity because national planning guidance says it must, and for that reason alone; agriculture rapes every last inch of land and can only be diverted from its destructive combine by subsidy

It is no risk as far as I am concerned to state here that it is possible that in ours or our childrens' lifetimes the world as we know it may come to an end. I do not consider this the miserable rambling of one obsessed by 'doom and gloom' but just a calculated statement of fact

To my mind it has long since been questionable that the earth behaves as a single organism and that it can't be that long, in terms of the time-line of life on earth, that it is about to change, as far as we are concerned, for the unfathomable worse

Highly likely is the possibility that the extinction of one too many organisms will act as a fairly sudden catalyst for massive change as we head for the inevitable restructuring of Gaia to the exclusion of life as we know and enjoy it

Today was a strange one, two of the family were ill with heavy colds and yet we needed to vacate the house as building work was underway which we wouldn't be able to live with. The day therefore became one of wanderings and, in that now somewhat old-fashioned way, we drove. We drove partly so that we didn't visit friends or relations and spread the bug to them and partly to revisit areas of countryside we hadn't seen for a while south of home and into the north of Oxfordshire

We drove about forty miles and, in all that way, through drift-crisped verges and scenes of wild desperation; through stiff easterly winds biting on exposed arable fields; under snow-laden branches of apparently lifeless trees we saw just four mammals, two pair of roe deer, and I remarked how odd it seemed to see them wandering the fields and yet not being owned by the landowners but, of course, we should be used to the presence of wild animals we should expect them to be there and not have to search for them with a metaphorical nit-comb in the flea-bitten wig of the outdoors

Yes, so many memories. Memories of water voles pushing tiny flared nostril-speared bow waves and diving at the last minute sight of my presence through their tiny glistening pin-head eyes pursued to the edge by released mink and hanging like a milk tooth on its last eye-wateringly painful thread of flesh; of myriad multi-coloured butterfly species now seemingly lost for ever in any number and maybe soon for good; of vast shoals of tiny gudgeon now quite simply devoured by the dim-witted alien attack of the zander; on catching the diminutive native freshwater crayfish in a minnow-trap, inspecting it with wonder, and returning it with care to the stony sun-sparkled and commensurately tiny River Swift; of hundreds of yellow wagtails falling in fields from migration brighter than custard such that it seemed the whole population of the country was descending on us at that very moment; of hoardes of chirping house sparrows attacking the breadcrumbs in the back yard of youth; and imagined memories that can only be gleaned of a balance of existence never fully experienced from an era, indeed another world, when otters and bitterns, water meadows and working mills, red-backed shrikes and adders, lush growth and a vast and wide array of lifeforms washed around in a delicately poised environment such as we will never see again nor appreciate to even the most infinitely miniscule degree as common-sense fades away hand-in-hand with the advancement of the modern world

How I wish that, just occasionally, time spent by the water might be punctuated by the 'plop' of the water vole, how fulfilled life would again be

"But we're alright, we're nice and warm here,
No one to hurt us except our friends"

References:
Gaia - James Lovelock/Oxford University Press 1979
The Combine - Paul Weller/Universal Music Publishing Group 1977