Steve fished a swim named Charlie’s, named after his young lad who sadly passed away, and I fished the sociable swim next door, number three. There wasn’t much in open water to go on, especially knowing that I’d have to find any spots in the dark without line clips, so two nice clean margin spots were found and two rods were cast out.
This session I was using my newly converted Heron alarms, the inner workings are similar now to ATT alarms, and are wireless too, but have kept the croaky buzz sound. I just hoped it didn’t rain as I wasn’t sure how waterproof they’d be. Plus, I had my oval brolly with me which tends to leak if it rains too hard, although, I think all brollies do that.
So, with the houses built and the rods doing their thing we pulled up a chair, made a pot of tea and chatted until well into darkness. It was great catching up with Steve and the stories bounced between us beautifully. It was time to retire for the night when we heard a few rumbles of thunder and the sky lit up.
In the sleeping bag I began to get warm, very warm, but even though I lit a mozzi coil, I could still hear them buzzing around so didn’t dare expose any flesh. Then the rain started, and the wind. The rain got heavier as the rumbles of thunder got louder and the lightening lit the sky ever brighter. It was a proper storm, my brolly started to leak as expected and the wind ripped my storm poles out a few times, but I came through the night unscathed and in one piece. Also, the alarms still worked perfectly.
I didn’t get much sleep at all and when Steve woke me to tell me he’d seen a couple of good fish roll on the opposite bank I think I may have come across a little grumpy. Soon after I emerged from my pit and apologised for still being half asleep. While we chatted and ate breakfast we saw a further two fish show on the other side, which attracts the first of the morning sun and had no anglers on this particular day.
I think it was around 10am when I packed away, said farewell to Steve and headed round to the other side with my stalking gear in the hope of eliminating something close to the bank. It was more ‘my sort of angling’ anyway and although the social was first class, it was nice not to be sitting behind static rods.
I got to the middle swim and spotted a few fish cruising through the weed. It looked brilliant and I started to trickle mixers in the area. The carp seemed to acknowledge them but never fed on them. I fed three separate swims and, although they all had carp present, no fish fed. It was about an hour or so after arriving that I decided to sit in Dug Out and flick a bottom bait along the margin under the oak where we’d seen the fish roll that morning.
With one rod fishing to my left I began firing a few mixers out into the channels in the weed. The rudd were ravenous and I even think some managed to eat the mixers whole. With this I downsized my floater gear to fish a size 8 hook and with a small piece of mixer on the hook point I attempted catching a rudd. I caught three, all were like solid silver with the deepest crimson fins. They weren’t big rudd, but they were the most beautiful fish in the pond...in any pond.
With the rudd fishing done and the margin rod looking increasingly redundant I looked at the time and thought it a good idea to pack away and head to Carron Row for the last couple of hours. I made my way back to the car park and started to load the car. Just as I went to grab the rod that was leant against the car I spotted the weirdest green grasshopper on the Mark IV, I took a quick snap.
At Carron Row I did my usual tour of the ponds and found that number 2 was empty, number 1 had two anglers and number three had 1 angler. I fished 2 for a while, got to bait and fish three swims but nothing rose. After about half an hour I gave up on 2 and switched to 1. A guy was just leaving the causeway swim when I got there. He told me that they weren’t taking floaters and that he’d only had one tench all day, also that I should use luncheon meat. I thanked him and said farewell.
As soon as he was gone I threw a handful of mixers towards the sunken tree. A couple of minutes passed and the swirls appeared. My double mixer hook-bait was snaffled shortly after this and after only 3 or 5 minutes in the swim I had a wildie shaped common on the bank. I went on to land another shortly afterwards.
With two fish on the bank I was happy, and felt totally fished out and in need of some butterfly therapy. If you’d read my last session report you’ll know that it is my intention to learn about butterflies and try to photograph a new one whenever I can. Well this trip I was lucky enough to snap two, a wonderful Red Admiral and a Comma, one I’d never seen before. Although the Comma was facing me so I never managed to get a wing shot. Perhaps next time...
Red Admiral
Comma
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