Bread And Cheese

The sun had put in an early appearance as I drive towards the river past the heavily frosted fields. Thankfully it was still low enough to be behind the trees and hedges and not straight in eyes. I don't know how cold it had been but the normally soggy muddy path had frozen solid making walking a lot easier. Judging by the lack of cars it appeared I was the first one there.The first swim I selected was one the deeper ones, around 11'-12'. Like last week I alternated between flake and cheese paste on a feeder rig with liquidised bread. The set up is simple enough. 8lb mainline with a ledger bead for the feeder. A 3-4" twizzled boom at the end. A size 8 hook on a 5lb hook length around 18" attached to the mainline loop to loop. Quite quickly I had a chublet around 8oz or so on cheese paste. After which I sat for another couple of hours for one more bite.

The next swim was around half the depth of the previous one and again I had a fish quite quickly on cheese paste, a chub around the pound mark. I then got a series of rattles on the tip that eventually resulted in an 8oz roach. Like before there was then an hour and a half's quiet. Quite from the fish but the military seemed to be happy making a noise with their jets. Not really sure why there was so much activity. Unless they think the Russians are going to invade the priory. The final swim was the same one as last week and again this produced a chublet early on to cheese paste. and a reasonable dace on flake.

There was quite a bit of bird song but I'm really not very good at identifying birds from their song. I did see three cormorants flying overhead, and a buzzard getting harassed by a couple of gulls.

All the bites, apart from the dace, came on cheese paste today. Last week I didn't get anything on cheese paste. I retired before it got dark as the sunshine and rising temperatures had defrosted the top of the mud and it was now very greasy under foot. I really didn't fancy making my way through the woods in the dark as the path through there is bad enough in daylight. Bit of a hard day. Another angler after chub blanked. Not sure if the pike angler caught either.