stevetheangler

Monday, 31st May, Liz and I set off again – a bit earlier than usual at 0700 as it was a Bank Holiday Monday and a few days into a dramatic weather change from the cold wet start, middle and almost end of an autumnal month that was May … April was warm and heading in the right direction but come May and the weather seemed to recede to the weather more expected in November … albeit not the November weather of the 50’s/60’s with the ‘smogs’ (fog combined with the smoke and pollutants from the factories and industry especially within the ‘Black Country’) whereby walking to school even your hand at the end of your outstretched arm (well, wouldn’t usually be elsewhere would it? LOL) was unable to be seen – no facemasks those days, best was a knitted scarf for all the good that would do! None of that these days – the Ready Mix concrete that was directly over the road from our house has now gone (and Mom never needed to use starch on the washing, just hung out the clothes on a windy day! Caution was needed though, leave them out TOO long and a hammer was needed to soften them up LOL … and just down the road, literally a catapulted pebble away were two iron large foundries and blast furnaces (Stewart and Lloyds and F H Lloyds) … and then there was the company of John Thompson where probably 70% of Bilston folk worked including an uncle in the pattern shop creating prototype moulds for pieces to be cast and used on construction in other parts of the group – and my father who started work in the motor pressings initially but studied at the local tech on evening courses and became a draughtsman in the Water Tube Boilers designing the equipment – and at one stage he spent a month in what was then Rhodesia (late 60’s IIRC – I know as Mom let me smoke in the house for the first time!! LOL) overseeing the construction and startup of one of his designs. And also. and I don’t want to worry anyone here BUT he also designed the Drax B nuclear reactor …. after having been given a course on reactors, etc that was ONE MONTH long!! But fear ye not!! From knowing my Dad’s work its probably the safest of equipment in the entire UK – he did NOTHING by halves! Even our greenhouse has anchors that were driven 4 feet into the ground … the garden shed has stood undamaged by the elements now for 60 years – and despite the fact that the wood frame is 100% rotten it refuses to budge – the only downside to it is that its made with walls of asbestos concrete/sheet and although we are looking to replace it (and a lean-to connected to the rear porch which also has an asbestos sheet roof) probably the removal of the asbestos will double/triple the price of the work after looking up the info via Google J Oh well, keep saving and buy less rods, reels and lures, I suppose! LOL.

An aside … a thought going back to the 60’s when Dad was working abroad.

One night of the week Mom would do her ironing whilst we both watched a programme on TV … and I’ve been trying to identify the programme without success… checked IMDB, asked on social media, friends, etc …

Anyone of my readers have any clue please?

What I know/recall….

 I seem to think it had a long name starting with ‘M’ eg Masquerade?

It was an hour long and made up of short skits/sketches each of about 5-10 minutes long and the genres of the skits were of all sorts – some drama, some comedy, thriller, unexpected, horror, ghost, romance, etc…

The thing clearest to me was that the cast included Fenella Fielding (possibly Dilys Watling as they have the same sort of voice)  BUT, as I say, I’ve scanned the IMDB listing of castings/works for both without joy.

The opening/title sequence was very much in the form used by ‘Tales Of The Unexpected’ today…

 Well, that’s the best I can provide … hope someone can shed some light on it.

Thanks!

So, seem to have deviated somewhat from the theme of fishing – so thoughts back together and on we go…

I started saying that we had an early start … and that was due to the excellent weather that had suddenly arrived on a Bank Holiday … and the expectation that people would have put their spouses and kids on the train to Bognor whilst they themselves raced to the waterside (AA-B)….

In the event, Liz and I were the first arrivals on the pool by a good couple of hours per usual – and so had our choice of swims available, the ones that we’d fished on our previous session at this water. There were a lot of floating catkins/lambstails on the water and we both had initial troubles with them catching on the line – normal weed just usually falls off but the cat/lambs wrap and ‘spin’ themselves like wool on the line and stop the free passage of line through the rod rings often jamming the line completely and are adhering strongly are difficult to remove at the best of times, having to pull it off in small pieces. Liz’s peg was ‘guarded’ slightly by a bed of lily pads to her left and not so bad and later a breeze drifted some more away but my peg, one swim to Liz’s right was more open and some of the cats/lambs were formed into bath sponge sized pieces with a lot of smaller pieces between and it made the fishing

Virtually impossible, so much so that with 30 minutes I’d up tackle and moved into the swim on the other side of Liz, fishing the opposite side of the lilys and this proved far better with very few cat/lamb snagging.

0845 First casts… 6lb line, size 12 hook to 6” 6lb braid hooklength – fished lift method style – worm
0915 Moved swim…
0930 I had my first (missed) bite as Liz landed a 8oz barbel on maggot (lift method)…
0940 I land a tench of 4lb 5oz…

0945 – 1145 I went through a series of 30 minute spells with varying baits… all to no avail
            Prawn/worm cocktail
            Sweetcorn
            Bread
            Meat
1145 Switched back to a bunch of maggots
1145 Liz – another 8oz barbel…
1215 I had another tench – 4lb 2oz tench…

1220 Liz has a small mirror carp…
1300 Liz has a 4lb 2oz tench

It seems that Liz is having a ‘glass roof’ as I did when my PB tench stood at 4lb 1oz and remained at that for 3-4 years despite catching numerous ones of 4lb 0oz and 4lb 1oz – frustrating! So many times has she been just an ounce or two off the new PB – but it’ll come soon – and even on this session a fish that was a likely candidate escaped the hook…

1420 Liz has another 8oz barbel…
1440 I lose a 3” silver which fell off the tail of my 4” worm on landing…
1450 I get into an untanglingless tangle requiring me to break the line to resolve – Liz comes round as I’m about to re-tackle and suggests we pack in … and as its hot and I’m ready for beer plus it being easier to retackle up at home I’m in agreement…
About 1545 – on the way home via the local…
1600 – arrive at the hostelry, sit in beer garden, peruse the beer menu …. Fownes’ Brewery “King Korvak’s Saga’ is on tap!! Part of the ‘Dwarven Ale’ series, all of which are excellent, this is, as the name suggests ‘THE KING OF BEERS’! However, as its been a long long time since my last mission with it I’m dreading my memory having been tainted by the ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ and it will not match my memories… BUT, in fact, it proved even BETTER than my memories … and I had to pinch myself to make sure I’d not passed away and gone to heaven! A splendid end to an excellent day!!

STUFF

I visit a number of different pools and thus, when going from pool to pool I have to adjust my pre-tackled float fishing kit to suit the depth ie re-plumb… and I thought when having plumbed the depth why not record it for future visits rather than do the work again? And so I’ve recorded my first depth for this pool – 112cm measured from bottom shot to the tip of the float… doing it that way the size/length of float doesn’t matter – a 4” float will just end up being located/stopped 6” further up the line than a 10” one. And this pool is seemingly very flat bottomed in that I’ve fished a lot of the swims from near end to far end and not visited any other venue in between those visits and have never needed to make any sort of depth adjustment. Swims on other pools do vary from each other and so I’ll need to record particular depths for each but I reckon it will save a fair few seconds on each visit plus not disturb the swims unnecessarily … maybe a bit OTT though? LOL!

PLANS

I’m planning on returning to this pool again on Thursday (3rd June) solo as Liz is working ….
And on Saturday 5th June Liz is going away for a week visiting family in Great Yarmouth so I’ll have a week free to myself and unrestricted car access in the meantime … I’m hoping to have sessions on the Monday, Wednesday and Friday of that week but that, of course, depends on the body behaving itself. Touch wood its been acceptably good most of this past week…. so touching wood!