There are times when pleasure fishing almost crosses over into a form of attritional angling. I've just returned from a short session at the Estate Lake (it's more a pond than a lake, but it is on an old estate and is venerable in terms of age, so is worthy of the title) on a day when the TV weather forecasters cheerfully informed us that we were due for a month's worth of rain in a single day. This wasn't just the constant drizzle that's marked this summer so far, but the kind of downpour that sent Noah scurrying to the ark in the day's of mankind's infancy. As ever, the target fish were crucians and so with the rain hammering down I set up a pole rig, dropped it into the margins and tried to convince myself that this was going to be fun. Sport was initially slow, but after about an hour the fish started to respond to my steady trickle of loose-fed maggots and I started getting bites. I sat grimly underneath the umbrella for about two and a half hours and ended up with this netful of crucians, two or three small roach (which were returned immediately) and a solitary perch.
Each fish felt like a minor triumph in the face of adversity, and while I'm beginning to doubt if the lake will provide me with my hoped for two pounder (it looks like I'm going to have to catch a lot of smaller crucians before I get lucky), once again the lake fished well.
On the way home, sat in the car and soaking wet, I saw a couple out jogging in the rain ..... now that really is silly!
No comments:
Post a Comment