There's a Hole in My Bucket, and My Wader

A look at the river gauge showed the river had dropped since Wednesday, but there was still about eighteen inches of extra water in the river and it wasn't dropping particularly quick. Due to prior commitments I wasn't able to fish Thursday morning, but there should be extra water in come afternoon evening. Sure enough when I got there the river was still at least a foot up. There wasn't much colour in it though.  A natter with an angle on his way home wasn't very encouraging though. He'd fished since early morning, further down, and hadn't had a thing. The next ill omen came as I was descending the bank for the second time. My wader snagged on a branch, that wasn't there earlier, causing me to drop my bait bucket. The result was a large hole in the wader and a cracked bucket. Quite how the bucket hadn't ended up in the river I don't know.

The intention was to fish the inside gully. Blockend feeder filled with heavily dosed pellets to leave a scent trail and a few pellets chucked in every now and then. The first visitor was a goose, the first one I've seen down here. A little bit later the duck family made their way up the river, presumably picking the snails off the overhanging vegetation. The merganser family was next to head upstream, or at least eight of the nine. A while later a noisy duckling came frantically paddling upstream at quite a speed considering the speed of the current. All this time the rod tips stayed motionless. Not even any debris hit the line.

The first indication was on the upstream rod when the tip sprung back. I struck into nothing. Retrieving the hook showed half a foul hooked minnow. I'm assuming the minnow was foul hooked then attacked by a pike which dislodged the feeder giving the drop-back bite.

 

Things remained quiet until I retrieved the down stream feeder. At least two pike had a lunge at it as it splashed along the surface. One bow wave from downstream and one coming at it from the side both at the same time. Both heading towards doubles by the look of them. That was it until just before dark when I retrieved the upstream rod. As the feeder got to the surface it was grabbed by a pike which bit straight through taking the feeder and hook length with it. I persisted on just into dark with the one rod, but to no avail.

 

Not sure why the barbel didn't want to play, but I'm not on my own apparently. The waders were seventeen years old, so have done rather well. There are several cracks on them as the rubber has started to perish so it was really time they were replaced.