It All Adds Up

 With the local trout streams up and coloured, again, I was pondering what to do when I was informed one of the local canals had woken up. At least a couple of sections had anyway. An acquaintance and his mate had had a steady day stream of small perch and jack pike on a little fished section. Unfortunately they'd caught on a dull overcast day and today was glorious sunshine. Still the canal had coloured up a lot so they may still feed.

Things were looking good when in the second swim I had a take. Sadly I couldn't get a good hook set as the rod was up against a hawthorn so as I could get the right angle for bring the lure along the edge of the freshly emerging reeds. As the fish turned the lure came adrift. A jack about 2lb swirled on the surface and disappeared. Something was feeding though. A bit later I spotted another jack of similar size sunning itself but managed to spook it as I stumbled down the bank. Should look where I'm going really. I then spotted another next to the reed mace on the far bank. I managed to land the lure about 18" in front of the fish and about a foot above it right into the reed mace.It needed more than a gentle tweak to release the lure which spooked the pike. I then met one half of the duo that had had the good session previously. All he'd managed was a foul hooked roach. Between us we'd tried a good selection of lures and couldn't really muster up any thing that would break the deadlock.

As I headed back to the car for lunch, and some inspiration, I spotted something writhing about on the bank of a drainage ditch. A closer look showed it to be some Adders seemingly trying to get comfortable. Given their darker brownish colour I believe they were all females. I sat and watched them for quite some time. The largest appeared to be around two foot long, but the others were somewhat smaller. I've no real idea how many there were, possibly half a dozen.

I endeavoured to take pictures of them with my phone, but struggled to get it to focus properly in telephoto mode. After a bit of faffing about, switching things off and on, clearing the cache, etc. I managed to get things a tad better. The focus in telephoto mode seems to be somewhat random so there's only the odd photo truly in focus. But still it was nice to watch them. I did consider fording the ditch but a poke about with a long stick showed it to be six inches of water and a foot or more of sticking smelly muck. Besides the bank was very steep and I wasn't sure if I could get back up and the far bank had a good thick cover of brambles.

After lunch I tried a spot of dropshotting along the edges of the reed beds but only managed a few sticks and lots of dead weeds. Still the sight of the adders made up for the lack of fish. I did look for them after lunch but a tree was now casting a shadow on the area I'd seen them. I did keep an eye on the far bank of the ditch but didn't see any more.