stevetheangler

Monday 8th June, I headed off at around 0600 to the club pool I’d mentioned in my previous post (KF-WL1) arriving at around 0645 … a little later than intended due to a reason I discovered only yesterday … my alarm clock had been running 45 minutes slow – and probably had been doing so for some time!

I thought the alarm was quiet too but as I’m hard of hearing I had also put the quietness of the alarm down to that but…

My current alarm clock is a retro ‘twin bell with hammer’ battery operated type which replaced my previous similar manual wind clockwork one when that gave up the ghost … I had noticed that the ringing of the new clock was lower in decibels than the manual one when I first had it but it seems that it had been getting less and less as time passed but at such a rate that the change was unnoticeable in daily terms…

So, for some time I’d been getting up, going downstairs and doing the usual morning chores – loading bait and food bags into car, feeding cats, having a cuppa and toast, etc – but then I’d look at the clock in the kitchen/dining room and time seemed to have flown by faster than I’d expected… but, of course, I’d ‘lost’ 45 minutes effectively due to the slow alarm as I’d eg rise at 0430 by the alarm clock but it was really 0515 realtime!

And yesterday the discovery of the alarm clock’s error was made when I looked at the alarm clock and also caught sight of the clock of the (rarely used these days) Teasmade which sits behind it … and spotted the discrepancy between the two! Checked with my wrist watch, the Teasmade was confirmed to be the correct teller of time…

Quick change of battery since – the alarm is now keeping time AND the bells ring out far louder as it seemed that  the power of the old battery was barely enough for the hammer even make the slightest of contacts with one of the bells and didn’t even reach the other.

AND … only the day before the discovery of the cause, to resolve the ‘quiet bells’, I ordered a new clockwork alarm of similar type… so looks like I’ll have dual alarms going off soon!! :)

BACK to the fishing…

I was the only one to fish this pool all day – the club does sell day tickets for it too. There is another pool on the site too which is a ‘members only’ pool just a couple of hundred yards further on down the access track.

0715 saw me make my first cast floatfishing a worm on a size 10 hook, 6lb line, laid on. Slight difference to my usual set up was the change from a drift/windbeater float to a ‘stick’ type with a 2SSG shot 6″ from the hook that sank the float down to the barest tip and an AAA shot about 18″ above that to provide the ‘overshotting’ that would cause the float to sink if it had not been fished overdepth.

From the start I was having a ‘bite a cast’ – some of them stereotypical ‘lift and glide’ types but were unhittable on the strike. To try to resolve this, I changed from a full worm to a worm head section of about 1″ long and at 0735 a connection was made to an 8oz tench. No photo taken as (A) as I was landing said fish the owner of the site arrived and to check membership cards or taking day ticket money so the fish was lay in the water’s edge in the net waiting to be unhooked whilst the necessary display of card was made – so I thought I’d inconvenienced the fish long enough and released asap after unhooking and (B) as I’d been having consistent bites I was sure I’d have something worthier of a photo soon…

So, tench released, I fished on and had further missed takes on the following 3-4 casts – and then everything went totally dead with not a single knock, nudge, dip, etc despite trying maggot and prawn as baits too until getting well on for noon when a few tentative nudges started again….

So, I fished on for another hour or so with no result and then packed in for the day due to it being quite chilly.

The skies to the main part were overcast, and the large trees enclosing the pool tend to shield it from whatever of the  sun’s rays there are (unless the sun is completely overhead and then it becomes a hyper-tropical sun trapped zone) and there was also quite a chilly breeze … hence the decision to call it a day earlier than usual.

OBSERVATIONS

One reason for the visit to this pool was to ‘suss’ the layout as the club has closed some swims to maintain ‘social distancing’ and from the maps posted it seemed that the swims were too far apart for the comfort of Liz and myself and thus we’ve gone elsewhere. However, having visited and seen first hand the situation it seems ok for us – especially as we are not subject to ‘social distancing’ being from the same household. So its possible we will make our way there together in the future.

PLANS

I’m hoping to visit a local club water that’s close to home but that I’ve not re-visited since the fishing restarted with the post-lockdown relaxations. Mainly a carp and bream water, I’ve a certain swim in mind – as usual :) Alternatively, I may revisit the other club pool I’ve already visited a couple of times and had success with the bream and tench.