Friday, January 22, 2010

In search of fishable water

Yet another week (the fifth) has gone by without me wetting a line. Mainly because it's been all go, to be honest. Running around on work related errands on Monday and Tuesday, a high powered (not!) business meeting on Wednesday, rods to send out and more to build on Thursday with a late trip to my local tackle shop to pass an hour or two - during which I purchased some rig bits for tench fishing. If you can't fish you might as well buy tackle!

That left today for an afternoon's jaunt which hasn't exactly inspired me to get the tackle ready. The first water I saw was my local river, where it's tidal - but a good couple of hours before high water. It was up to the flood bank, looking like liquid mud and churning merrily. Lovely.

Thence to the Land that Time Forgot. A duckpond I passed was ice free, but a flooded patch of land was still iced over. Sure enough the lake was in it's own micro-climate. The valley was filled with a thick mist, the water's surface was invisible from the road as I drove past. I'd stretch my legs and go check it out. There were gulls to be heard mewing from the direction of the water as I walked through the copse of tall, bare beech trees. It turned out they were standing on the half (or more) of the lake that was still frozen. There was a piker starting to pack up who hadn't had a sniff. Cross that one off the list of options.

I took a circuitous route home, not entirely by design... Some roadside waters I passed by were clear, others not. All the rivers and streams were belting through and looking like sludge. At least the local canal, which was still frozen when I looked at it yesterday, appeared clear where I crossed it if nowhere else. Sod it.

Wherever, and whenever, I do get out again I have a new fishing buddy. I ordered some batteries yesterday and they arrived bright and early this morning with an unexpected free gift. A 'Magnetic Duracell Bunny'. I hope the little pink bugger is lucky because he's not very magnetic!

Don't look at me like that!

For those who missed the brazen plug on my dlst.co.uk site I'll repeat here that Derek Macdonald can be seen using a P-3 or two on the Sky Sports website. I'm going back into hibernation.