Sitting By A Pond

As the rivers were out of sorts and I'd had reports the local gravel pit was fish well for pike I thought I'd give it a go. Arriving just as the light started to appear another angler was already there setting up in one corner. I opted for a corner diagonally opposite. Float ledgered smelt was dropped at the bottom of the shelf to the right and a roach to the left and there they sat. The only movement was when I twitched them a couple of feet towards me every half hour or so. As it got light I thought I saw some bats flittering about around a tree down the bank. As they got closer I realised it was a flock of small birds and could now here their twittering. As they were silhouetted against a grey sky I couldn't really see and colours to identify them. Apart from the occasional squawk  from a crow or pheasant this was about all the wildlife I saw or heard.

Making a cuppa or my lunch seemed to switch the pike on. A carp crashed a couple of times in the afternoon just to prove there were fish in the pond. The other angler gave up mid-afternoon, fishless. I stayed on until dark having switched baits at various times, with lamprey, sardine and eel section all tried, but to no avail. If there had been a bit of a breeze I'd have tried drifting a roach about but when I tried it it just remained suspended in one place. which didn't work.

Clearly the pike were having a rest before the weekend.