Three Strikes

Its 5am on Saturday and I'm awake. Better get up then and go fishing. After the usual pre-fishing tasks of feeding moggies, getting car loaded with tackle and bait I was off and on my way to the river.

The rivers about an hour away, but I really enjoy the drive for the most part. There wasn't much traffic on the road at 6am, apart from some truckers and people off on they way to work, home or elsewhere.

I had already decided that I would fish the same spot as last week in the hope that the river cow's could be tempted into feeding, but conditions weren't great. It was a bright clean morning and i could already feel the heat of the morning sun as you shone through the windows of the car.

After a non eventful drive, I arrived on the bank and was soon unloading the gear onto the bank of the river with the sheep. They greeted me with their usual panicking activities of running down the bank with the morning dew dripping from their woolly bodies.

I quick set about raking some of the weed that had regrow from last week,

using the new weed cutting tool that you attached to a bank stick or landing net pole. The cutter is double sided and cuts through weed and reeds with ease. If you don't have one, get one. Anyway, after 15mins I had cut a new channel to land fish through and had trimmed some of the bull rushes back.

I then proceed to mix up the ground bait and moulded up ten balls which were deposited into the swim at a short distance out. The swim was soon fizzing with fry activity as the active ingredients in the ground bait woofed up in to the water column. Whilst I let the swim settle I tackled up the quiver with a light tip and also started clearing a new swim further up stream.

Upon my return, the swim had settled down from my weeding cutting and baiting up antics, so a first cast was in order.

The quiver had hardly settled before the small fish started grubbing around the feeder and hook bait.

After an hour of none stop tip twitching, the first skimmer bream was landed. Not huge but a start. The skimmer was the first fish to grace the new Dinsmore pan landing net that I had acquired in the week. The old net has seen better days and was retired to the shed as a spare.

At the point of lifting the skimmer out of the water there was a cracking sound from the landing net pole, strange I though, but carried on fishing.

New type of dragonfly?!

Bites continued on the tip and a few perch and a nice roach were soon landed, then the tip shot around a a bream of 5.1/2 lb was fighting at the end of the line, but it was soon over the net and lifted out. The pole gave a louder and longer cracking sound. Oh hell!!

The threaded end of the landing net pole, was handing off. I inched the landing net bank and grabbed hold of the rim of the net just as the threaded end parted company with the pole. Oh heck, what know?

The swim needed a long landing net pole in order to effectively net fish out side of the weed/reed line, so my normal back up pole on a still water would have been one of the 1.5m (when extended) bank sticks.

But as I was on the river, I really need at least 2.5m of length to get out beyond the weed/reeds.

After some running repairs involving a Swiss army knife, a boillie drill and some elastic bands, the threaded head was back in place.

By 11am, after landing more small roach and perch, the tip was pulled around and I was into a better bream again. After a longish fight, the big bream was ready to be netted. The repaired net was swung out and as I netted the bream the pole gave way knocking the hook out of its mouth. Oh for F**ks sake!!!!! (Normally I don't swear, but this warranted swearing).

The landing net head, was just still attached by a thread of glass fibre, so at least the new pan wasn't lost, but the bream was.

The net was repaired again, and I felt it was done better this time (famous last words) and I was soon back in action.

It wasn't long before another bream bite came on the quiver and soon a nice river bream was in the net.

The afternoon was soon upon me and whilst I did have some bites, all were from small roach or perch.

Someone enjoying the sun

By 3.30pm I had had enough and with the ground bait running next to empty I decided that I should pack up and head for home, but not before I had done some more work on a new swim. The nice new weed cutter was screwed into the repaired pole and I got to work cutting weed and reeds, after 5minutes I was making good progress, but as I was cutting a tricky clump of bull rushes, that fatefully cracking noise was back and as I pulled up the pole, the weed cutter was gone never to be seen again.