The Tiny River Alne - Cantilupes and Campanology

Now between the river and the village are the earthwork remains of a castle of the Cantilupes. The earthworks lie close to the river and are roughly circular in shape, surrounded by a single ditch where this 12th to 14th Century fortified house or castle alongside the River Alne sat. It had been abandoned by the 15th century.

Lidar imagery clearly shows the castle earthworks. The roughly triangular 'ringwork' still contains remains of buried foundations with in particular the east side appearing to show earthworks of two straight sections of curtain wall meeting at an angle. An irregular bailey exists to the south-east and this and the 'ringwork' are surrounded by a wide ditch, presumably once water filled from the adjacent River Alne.

It feels abandoned now to be honest, an area where solitude is in abundance with no public access on most of it, where it is 99 times out of 100 me and the sheep.

The fishing isn't all that, I must admit but there are some lively trout to be caught, some monsters that have still eluded me and also some nice dace, and chub when they decided to frequent the river that is. It can be unpredictable I must admit but sometimes it's not about catching but having some peace and quiet in some lovely surroundings. 

I grabbed the lure gear and headed down there where I wanted to fish the larger Salmo butcher to try and catch something a little larger than I have been catching.

With the polarised sunglasses the green lure could be seen from the first retrieve the silver lure only when the lure got much closer. I prefer sight fishing for fish down here so with some colour in the water I stuck with the much brighter colour.

I couldn't believe it but in the first swim I had a chub follow the lure initially and then the second catch a trout that came out of nowhere and swiped at it, and then came out for another look on the subsequence cast. 

And that's the way the session went, in quite a few swims the same thing happened and a change of lure didn't make a difference and even on the last resort spinner.

The only fish I manged to catch was a really angry small perch who's afternoon was spoilt judging by his raised dorsal fin and aggressive manner. I was even biteless in the weir pool which said to me the fish were having a chill day and no amount of lure bashing was going to bank me a decent fish. 

The river has now taken on quite a bit of cover in some of the swims so I might give a ledgered worm a go or maybe bread so try and tempt a fish that may be laying up under the darker cover out of harms way.  Still a couple of hours fishing and all is good in the world again, I wasn't complaining and when the church bells sounded at 7.00pm I was off out of there.