Monday, 30th May, Liz and I set off from home at 0630 heading to the club’s bream/tench pool (AA-B) and, having arrived onsite, parked, and barrowed/carried the tackle around to our chosen swims – Liz on peg 22 and myself on peg 21, the peg used on my previous few visits – settled down and started to tackle up and prep our swims at around 0715.
Again on arrival we were the only ones there but one other did arrive around 1100 fishing on the pole about 6 swims up from me… which leads to an interesting ‘thing’. Just before we packed in for the day I was fishing as usual alongside a patch of lilies with my orange tipped driftbeater when what looked like a slight ‘beam’ orange appeared alongside… I thought it was an reflection of my float tip on a ripple or a small piece a reed or possibly a mark on my specs … anyway my float dipped and I struck momentarily feeling a fish at first but then went … wound in and on my line I’m caught up in a bit of tackle, a bit of line with a pole float, hook, a slotz type shot and a snapped off bit of Dacron connector attached, all looking quite new. So now we’ve packed in and pass by the other angler and, as one does, asks if he’s been having anything – reply comes “had a few small ones and got bust by another…” so now, the next day, I’m wondering if that pole tackle I snagged was his? Quite possible although I was easily 50 yards or more distant from him?
So now I regress… It wasn’t the best start of the day for me as I didn’t make my first cast of the day until 0815 mainly due to getting a tangle in my terminal tackle as it swung about as I connected the three sections of my pre-tackled 13’ Hardy Matchmaker together. The rod is carried with the hook embedded into the end of a small cork which is pushed lightly into the socket end of the top section which I usually leave in-situ whilst I connect together the middle and butt sections and only then remove the hook/cork and connect top to middle sections – however, for some reason on this day, I removed the cork/hook from the top before assembling the lower sections – and probably adding to the damage by removing the hook from the cork too. So, with all the freedom of movement of the rod’s sections and the exposed hook, the end of the tackle got itself tangled … a tangle also compounded with the fact I use braid hooklengths so it produced an untangleable tangle. With mono, tangles can often be cleared albeit may take a bit of time.. even braid and mono tangles can be undone so long as the braid is only caught inside a mono tangle and not part of it (eg mono wrapped around braid) but as soon as braid itself becomes an integral part then 99.99999% of the time its something that can only be resolved with scissors and at least a partial re-tackle, if not a full one as was the case this time. Thus Liz stole a start on me of about 10 minutes or so whilst I retackled and plumbed up…
Wish I could say that was the last tangle of the day but I also suffered another couple during the day, usually as the line was freed from a snag and catapulted back overhead, that required the scissors…
Weather for the day was a bit mixed – sunny and calm at times, overcast at others and we also had a couple of short showers, one of them quite a sharp heavy one
As for the fishing, Liz had a good day fishing her usual cage feeder tactic… 8lb mainline, feeder with maggot plugged with cereal groundbait, size 16 hook baited with maggot. Her first fish of the day was a 4lb 3oz bream at 0845 – and it was a new PB for her too taking top spot from her previous 3lb 7oz caught at the same pool in March of last year. Then she lost a fish to a snapped hooklength at the net at 1000 … landed a 2lb 6oz tench at 1030 … had a fish shed the hook at 1135 … and landed a 3lb 13oz tench at 1410.
As for myself, I fished as usual ‘lift method’, with the usual set up and gear, size 12 hook initially baited with maggot but then switched to ‘jelly bread’ around 1100 for most of the rest of the day. Results – mostly twitches, lifts and nudges – all missed until after doing an enforced re-tackle during the heavy shower due to a tangling up when I changed back to a bunch of maggots – and had a 2oz’ish perch – and earlier I had wondered where the perch had gone – answer seems to be ‘still around’ :)
1430 time to pack up and head home .. but the gods have other plans to disrupt the journey…
Just as we pass the other angler, the tackle barrow’s nose takes a big dip to earth! Yes, the wheels had literally fallen off on our trip out…
… so now we have to collect up the bags and transport them and the ‘salvage’ back to the car manually – thankfully was almost halfway back from our pegs when the collapse happened anyway and Liz had her ‘trolley’ so we managed to complete the mission in just two trips between us…
Probably, needless to say but I’ll say it anyway (ha, ha, slipped in a bit of Loudon Wainwright III there too!) the trip home was accompanied by the rendition of …
“No wheels on my wagon
So I’m not rolling along
The Cherokees captured me
They look mad
Things look bad
But I’m singing a happy song”
[The New Christie Minstrels performed – lyrics by Bob Hilliard and music by Burt Bacharach – so says Google! LOL]
TBH the barrow was in need of replacing – given excellent service for a good few years and on last trip ‘something’ didn’t feel right – I thought it felt and looked whilst pushing the barrow that a side piece welding had gone but when inspected at home I couldn’t see a fault – possibly I’d been looking at the wrong thing?
Eventually got home to shower and change … then off to the ‘local’ where I find that Fowne’s (a local brewery that used to operate from the backyard of the local but outgrew its home and moved, albeit not far away, to new premises in Brierley Hill) ‘King Korvaks Saga’ is on offer, one of the great ales and so the decision of which of the 10 ales on offer to purchase is immediately made redundant!
One other task performed at the local – on the ‘net to eBay – new barrow on order and should arrive in the next few days. Also the new barrow will come with a double wheel option which be more stable – comes with a short spindle so that you can use a single wheel centrally (as pictured) and a longer one so that two wheels can each be located outside of the two downrights :)
One plan for the evening was dropped – I had a ticket to a gig at the Robin 2 in Bilston to see ‘Mostly Autumn’ perform but after a 5am get-out-of-bed, fishing and the beer I was far too tired and actually spent most of the evening putting things on TV and falling asleep within 5 minutes of them starting only to wake up long enough to select the next programme, … repeated ….
PLANS:
Probably not go out again this week due to the trolley problem although I had possible plans to, so looking at next Monday now in reality. Back to same pool again…
I need to sort out tackle too ready for the new river season… with plans to visit the Warks Avon around Pershore and a couple of small ‘local’ rivers…
stevetheangler 
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