Return to Where I Left Off

After a brief interlude, due the car problems, it was back where we left off. The last trip to the Rye saw a very coloured and rising river. This time it was falling, slowly, the colour had dropped out, but it was still tanking through and bit high than I would have liked. The intention was to christen the new 15' Greys rod, so trotting with a pin was the order of the day. Everybody knows Murphy's Law - If it can go wrong it will go wrong. There's another related law, among many, that states - given a binary choice, 90% of the time you'll pick the wrong one. This is often seen when people look the wrong way up a one-way street. I have to TFG pins, today I picked the one with heavy mono on instead of the one with light mono.  With the way the Rye was flowing, though, it didn't make much difference as I would be using a 3.5g loafer. The next cock up was the action cam missing from it's case, which is no surprising as it was still plugged into the computer charging up. and I'd forgot to put it back in the case.

As I drove down the farm track to the top of the stretch the fog seemed to get thicker. Despite the lack of sun it wasn't necessary for the big coat. Trotting red maggots down the first swim produced  a couple of bites that resulted in a chewed maggot. Eventually after several missed bites a tiny little dace was hooked. As that was all that appeared to be in the swim I moved on and on and on. The next few swims produced nothing. The first trot in one of the slower deeper swims had the float heading back towards me. As I stared at it trying to work out what was going on it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to strike. This met with solid resistance which stayed deep as I wound it back upstream, but turned to acrobatic fun as I attempted to net it. A rather nice 11' trout which had put a good bend into the new rod, the soft tip of which dealt with the acrobatics very well.

With the new rod christened I head on downstream, but didn't get another bite until I got near the bridge. where a reasonable sized dace was grabbed by a pike just as I got it to the surface. I didn't even feel the pike it went straight through the line. I took the hint and packed up. The fog had now lifted and the temperature was dropping as well. I'd have liked to christen the rod with a grayling rather than a tiny dace, but the trout put a good bend in the rod so not so bad. The new car also got a good splattering of mud so now looks more like a proper fischenwagon. Tomorrow I think I'll have to go somewhere with a bit more form on the grayling front.

Before I left I had a wander over the bridge and noticed what looked like an attempt to reinstate the original ford. It was, however, something to do with the remedial works that are been carried out on the bridge. It appears they picked the wrong summer to attempt this as the river has been in flood more often than not.