June 16 - Pondwood
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After fishing the last two Mondays and having a cracker of a day on each occasion, we couldn't resist going out on Friday afternoon when Steve finished his half day's work. It was another nice day, a little hotter than I would have liked but nothing compared to earlier in the week.
Again we chose to fish The Snake... and again we were fortunate to have it all to ourselves. Not another soul in sight. We opted to fish the smaller pool further up stream from where we'd been the last two outings. It has two pegs which are far enough apart that we could fish independently but still be close enough to help with netting if need be.
I gathered up my rod, reel, bank sticks, tackle box, bait and chair and made my one request of Steve... could he please set the brolly up and my bank sticks... I don't have the strength to drive the brolly pole or the bank sticks into the ground without a mallet. (bank sticks have V or U shaped rests on the top, one cradles the butt of your rod, the other one is set so it supports the rod midway down it's length)
I set up my chair in the shade, opened a can of corn and proceeded to bait up my swim. There were reeds and bulls head water lily to my right and reeds to my left. The water in this pool is deeper and I could see no indication of a shallow bar out further, so I decided to stay close in and fed corn, trout pellets and halibut pellets at the base of the reeds to my immediate right and left.
That done, I put my rod together, attached the reel and ran the line through the guides. I'd just added my float, weights and hook when I heard the familiar buzz of line running off the reel and looked at Steve. He'd opted for surface fishing with bread again. Not having had to bait up a swim, there he was with the first fish of the day and I hadn't even had a chance to plumb the depth so I could set my float... my line wasn't even wet yet.
Ah well... I grabbed the camera, trundled over and picked up the net as I passed it. Before too long I scooped up LGF ( Little Green Fish ) and took his picture with Steve. I'm beginning to think that having one's picture taken with that tall, good-looking chef from Eton College has become all the rage among the fish in The Snake... sigh.
Steve with LGF
All finished with my careful preparations I baited my hook with corn, dropped my line in and sat back to wait. It wasn't long before my float started shifting back and forth in a way that indicates you've got something like roach, rudd or a small bream pecking and sucking at the corn. Darn... Some folks love fishing for roach and rudd, but not me. I don't find it challenging. If there are roach and rudd around, all you need is sweet corn and you can catch them as fast as you can rebait and drop your line. Great if you are match fishing, I suppose... I don't think I will ever enter a match, though. Don't get me wrong, roach and rudd are lovely fish, see the photo below.
Lovely Rudd we caught back in '04
I just like the challenge of carp fishing... you never know if they will be "on" or "off" on any given day; and if they are on, you still have to figure out just which bait they are on or you can come up dry. One day sweet corn may be what they like... the next time it won't generate any interest at all.
Sure enough, a few minutes later and I have a little run... it turns out to be a bream/roach hybrid. Bream are deep-bodied fish that cross naturally with roach and rudd creating a pretty fish that tends to be the color of old silver. Sometimes it is hard to tell you have a hybrid, they look more like the roach or rudd, it's only when you take a good look at the dorsal and tail fin that you get a clue you have bream X roach/rudd. Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of this little guy.
Not wanting to be pestered with the small fish I changed my bait over to halibut pellet. It's large and hard, too hard for the little guys to be interested in it... but always a possibility for carp. And then I sat back to wait. After landing LGF Steve wasn't having anymore joy, either and decided to prowl down stream with his loaf of bread. That left me to watch the world go by.
A mother coot came swimming by, her eye on the remains of the bread Steve had been tossing in hoping to coax the carp into feeding again. Now that he had gone walkabout, the coot came for lunch. She was calling her kids in that odd unoiled pump handle sound, broken now and again with a whistle. The kids, in turn were emitting high pitched, non stops whistles. It could get on your nerves if they stayed near you for any length of time. As background sound it isn't so bad. Fortunately, as they appeared from upstream, and saw that Mom had food they quieted down.
Coot Family