Wednesday the 25th to
Thursday the 26th of January
When I opened the front door to load
the van at 4.30am it felt more like March than January, not much over
a week ago I'd been greated by a frozen van followed by two nights of
minus five. What a strange bag of weather we've had for the last
fourteen months or so, winter 2010 came in like a ton of bricks
before the end of November and gave us tempertures lower than we had
experienced for decades for weeks on end, spring was early and more
like summer at times, summer was incredibly dry and this winter so
far has probably only chucked up ten days of frost. That little lot
has had a massive effect on this years fishing, lakes froze solid for
long periods for the first time in years, rivers ran so low that you
could see river bed that had probably never been seen before and I'm
trying to fish a single maggot in a lake full of fresh weed in
January, good eh!
I was back on the banks of Willow just
as the first sign of light broke on the horizon, as is quite normal
for me the gremlins had been at work and my barrow tyre was flat as a
pancake when I came to put it in the van the night before meaning a
trip to my dad's to fetch a footpump, I feared the worst but it still
seemed ok and thank god had held up on the long walk up the track. I
fancied trying the swim that I had seen the grebes and cormorant
working during my last visit and as there was no one else on the lake
thats where I went, I'd already had a cast around with the marker at
the end of my last session and so I knew I was in for a treat for
once as there was considerably less weed than any of the other spots
I'd fished so far. I was also fortunate in that someone had dragged
out the substantial bank of marginal weed that was present a week
before and that had prompted me to bring along my throwing rake, most
kind! Getting the rods marked and clipped up didn't take long and I
was fishing not long after 8am, this time I'd got the double hook
rigs on, a bit of a pre-emptive strike job as I had the swim in mind
all week and knew how clear it was, in most of the other areas I'd
felt it was too much of a risk having a second hook trailing behind a
hooked fish with the amount of weed about.
I was recasting the feeders every half
an hour for a start and it had got to mid morning with nothing
showing except a fox on the far bank and dozens of diving birds as
usual, somehow a coot splash makes me get up to have a look every
time. The right hand rod had bleeped once but there was no other
indication of anything happening until I wound that rod in ten
minutes later to find a signal cray hanging on, oh joy oh joy, my
favourite, alien critters from a far away land, I hate them with a
vengeance. I was very fortunate in being able to fish the syndicate
stretch of the Claydon Brook for a day with my mate Steve last year,
imagine the build up to that trip, years of seeing all of those
monster perch pictures and reading about the place had got us raring
to go. We walked down the fields looking at all of the lovely looking
spots not knowing where to start but I decided on a swim and cast in,
within minutes the crays were on me and they followed me all day and
drove me insane, horrendous things. Back to the current session and after catching the first one they pestered me for the rest of the day
and worst of all gave very little indication bar the odd tiny
movement of the bobbins, the first I knew about it was winding one in
or finding the maggots missing and rig mangled. What a nightmare, I
finally fish a nice clear swim and it was riddled with crayfish and I
wasn't sure wether or not to move, even if I could keep a bait in the
water how would roach react to a cray sitting over the bait, I can't
see them liking that. I decided to persevere and see how it went the
next morning and perhaps look at other areas of the swim, strangely
no one else seems to have had any bother with them and in the last
six days fishing neither had I, perhaps they were very localised. The
carp also were certainly active and I was able to watch them feeding
in the snaggy margin next to my swim throughout the day, it comes to
something when you can find carp but not roach doesn't it!
 |
| The horror.... |
Thursday started with a good dose of
rain from the early hours that turned the swim into a mud pit. On
winding in the rods all of them had been stripped of their baits
which wasn't much of a surprise, I decided to put them back to the
same spots for a couple of casts and see if the crabs were still
about, within an hour they were and I landed one on the left hand
rod, then one on the right hand rod so I wound them all in and recast
them shorter in the hope of being left alone. Unfortunately I was
winding another one in within the hour, its hard to know what to do
in that situation really and to understrand why I was suddenly
getting bothered by them, its not like the water temperature could
have suddenly shot up making them more active, besides I've had
problems with them on rivers when its been really cold. Strangely
that was the last bother I had and the rigs remained primed and ready
for roach all until I had to leave in late afternoon, its a shame the
roach didn't appreciate the fact but at least they had the
opportunity if they changed their mind.
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