And now something completely different

Its  been a strange week for me on the fishing front, at times it has been fun, and at other time thoroughly frustrating.

It started well enough with a evening session to a local pond with a review of catching a few of the resident perch and carp on the fly rod. This was to be part of my new 2013 challenge , well not the use of the fly rod, but catch (hopefully) coarse fish on the fly. I had tried for chub on the fly a couple of weeks ago, but whilst on that occasion, I did get the chub to take the fly, none were hooked.

The evening started well enough and there were an number of carp and roach coming up to the surface to take bugs and beasties from the surface, but no signs of perch striking at the fry shoals.

I decided to first target the carp and started to work my way down the side of the pond.
The first fly was to be a Caddis fly which would sit nicely in the surface film and hopefully get a take. My casting was a bit rusty and it did take me a while to get the fly to land nice and straight.
But I did in the end get it to settle on the edge of the lilies were the carp were sucking the underside of the pads for leaches.

After 5 mins of nothing, I stripped the line back in and recast, this was met with a near immediate take by a hungry perch. Not quite what I was expecting  on the surface Caddis, but it was one of my chosen quarry for the evening.

The next few cast were uneventul, and the carp seem not interested in any of the flies presented in front of them, including the bread flies. It was time to change tack and have a go for the hungry perch.

I took off the caddis and replaced it with a orange headed buzzer and began by casting it out into the shadows were I hoped the perch would be lying out of the evening sun.

I soon had a take and another small perch was on and lifted clear. Not very big, but another perch

I continued fishing for another hour, but didn't have more takes so headed for home.

Saturday saw me go down to the river for a dawn raid for the bream and tench. I headed out nice and early and arrived to find a friendly face in the car park loading his barrow.

We had a chat and formulated a plan to fish one of the deeper sections of the river. After I had load my barrow, we trundled off down the tow path and found a couple of swims that looked likely to produce. I also spied a couple of spots for a spots that some pike maybe lurking, but that will wait for the autumn/winter.

After a short stroll of chatter we arrived on the stretch of river we wanted to fish and unloaded the barrows.
I decided to fish the tip rod again and soon the rod was setup and a few balls of ground bait were introduced. Even before I had gotten the first bait out, the fishing companion had a fish. Curses, I know I should have fished that spot. Within 10 mins, I think he had had 3 or four fish including a skimmer, whilst I was biteless.

After an couple of hours, bites had started for me on the tip, and then the first prober tug. This was hit and a nice small bronze river bream was soon netted. Feeling a bit more confident, the feeder was loaded up again and cast back to the main channel.

Bites again started and the tip gave another jangle and a small perch was on the end. This was soon unhooked and returned.
In the distance upstream I could hear some splashing, must be a dog in the river. No it was a coxless pair who decided that a straight line down the river was the best navigational route. Five minutes later and a coxed four boat came down, followed by a single scull, another coxed four and finally a coxless pair. All of which gave no regarded for the presence of two anglers on the bank.

After an hour of f'ing and jeffing, we decided to bugger off before our tempers frayed any further.

I decided to head to a downstream weir pool over beyond a sluice thinking this would be a quiet spot. Wrong!!!!

To cut a log story short, after the move and settling in, an armada of canoes, kayaks etc all decided to descend on the weir pool and frollock about!!! Well that truly ended the mornings fishing. The pool turned for clear blue to muddy brown.

By 11:30am, I had had enough and head for home.

TL