The fly fisherman is happy enough as the season settles into some kind of pattern for him, and his trusty wrist action is getting the fly where he wants it. More or less.
The fly hatches may be still not too predictable or plentiful, but they're happening. And if he's really not having the luck, he can always try for a few tame trout at the newly-stocked waters just to keep his hand in.
For the coarse fisherman, it's unsettling. He's either doing nothing at all, or fishing an area with no close season, or trying some sea fishing.
But there's a sense of not belonging, of dispersion, a scattering of the old gang, a loss of the old comradeship, and a feeling of unfamiliarity about the new venues.
April 1, of course, is time for the traditional April Fool jokes, which are probably helped along by the general feeling of boredom or restlessness. There's one angling April Fool joke which is reported as gospel every year; it's obviously an apocryphal story, but it must have happened at some time.
It's about two sea anglers. One loses his false teeth, along with his breakfast, over the side of the boat.
His mate, for a lark, ties his own false teeth to the line and pretends to catch them.
'Hey!' he shouts to his mate. 'I've hooked your teeth.'
'Great!' says his mate. 'Give 'em here!' He tries the teeth and finds they don't fit.
'These aren't my teeth,' he says. And chucks them over the side.
Leaving his mate speechless. And toothless.
To be serious. April is as good a time as any to start a wormarium, if you haven't already got one. (You can call it a wormery if you like, but wormarium sounds much more scientific: impresses the neighbours if not the wife.)
Dig over a small patch of unwanted or unproductive garden, and on it place a bottomless wooden box. Water the area inside the box well, and dig in plenty of damp, shredded paper. Throw on your old tea leaves, coffee grounds, sour milk and vegetable peelings. Almost anything organic will help: leaf-mould, straw, grass cuttings, dead pussycats, redundant mothers-in-law.
Every couple of inches, cover with a thin layer of soil: as well as helping the texture, it helps to neutralise any incipient pong. Now keep the wormarium moist and cover it with a sack. All you have to do then is keep adding the waste. By the time the coarse season starts, you'll have more worms than you can use.
They won't be all that tough, mind you: living has been too easy. So they'll need scouring through moss for a few days before you use them. (Don't forget to turn the container upside- down every twenty-four hours.) Incidentally, if you haven't got a garden or can't spare the ground, you can try the same thing in an old stone sink, or in a tub or box with holes in the bottom.
Anyway a short and sweet session this because the boat traffic was a nuisance because I managed a small zander before hooking this slab fishing bread tight to the far bank cover. It's not very deep there but often holds fish bigger than you think. This one going 4lb and 3 ounces on he scales so a nice one for the cut.
I've caught bigger on the canal but this one was pulling back like a hybrid. A decent fight on relatively light tackle, well for for me anyway. Apart from the small zed and the bream nothing else doing sadly and I fished a few swims, but when the water turns chocolate and flows like a river it was time to call it a day.
Decent canal bream Mick, well done.
ReplyDeleteIt was Gale, decent fight too !!
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