Tumbling Branches

I arrived at the gravel pit to find it iced over. Protected from the prevailing wind by a copse, it is rather prone to this. I therefore headed to the estate lake, where some trees have been felled in order to help mitigate this problem.  As I wandered round a couple of branches tumbled down in front of me. Big enough to have hurt, through my woolly hat, if they'd landed on my head. I assume they'd been broken by the wet and windy weather on Monday and Tuesday, as looking round there were a few broken branches stuck up trees and lots on the ground.

I pitched up between the trees in a swim with plenty of features. I noticed a long, but thin branch loose in among the branches of a tree near me and tried to poke it down, but it was just too high for me to reach. I reasoned that I was too far from the tree and with the brolly up, as it had started to drizzle, I'd be safe. This turned out to be nearly true, as it did come down. It hit the ground first before landing on the brolly, the branches curve nearly matching that of the brolly. It seemed the slightest breath of wind would bring them down.

Tactics for the day were to be float fished sprat under the over hanging trees left and right, along with a herring tail in the old stream bed in front of me. A few sprat and the herring head were chopped up and flung about he general area. As I'd had nothing by lunch time the herring was changed to a section of lamprey and the sprat swapped to a smelt The old baits chopped up and flung around the swim again. I sat under the brolly in the constant rain for the rest of the afternoon. I'd give the baits a twitch, change their position, etc. in between drinking cups of tea. I continued on until I could no longer see the floats, but didn't so much as get a tooth mark on the baits.

To save faffing about in the rain and dark I just slung everything in the back of the car. Not a good idea, as the reel handles got tangled in the landing net mesh. The hooks got stuck in the upholstery. The braid managed to snag itself around anything it could. Took me ages to empty the car.