On the Rocks.

In the grip of the ice...
I wish I could go after grayling tomorrow, I bet they'd oblige wouldn't they?

You see, I just can't be arsed with pike right now, even though they'd probably take a well presented free lunch, indeed my long standing personal best pike of fifteen-twelve was banked when I was fifteen on a sprat bought from Romford Market, and caught in conditions very similar to those we experience right now, at South Weald Upper Lake, Essex - the only difference being that when I caught that particular pike the Pistols were grinding out their curiously submarine anti-hit 'Submission' on the personal tape player that I'd brought to the the lake side.

I am, that old...

Fishy Frozen Fingers

What with one thing and another conspiring to halt my attempts at jotting down my fishy tales over the past weeks I have failed to report upon what has been a quite intense period of short sessions leading up and into the icy blast that has fairly killed sport stone dead. The canal is now solid ice and thickening up nicely due a run of subzero nights and daytime temperatures hovering around or even below nought degrees, so we may be able to get our skates on soon and slide all the way to the pub

Cold snap on the Way

The weatherman is being his usual cagey self saying that temperatures are going to fall steadily over the next week or so, and that it might get a bit chilly here and there, but just about everyone I meet on the towpath today, mostly boat people (a type that is particularly weather sensitive) are predicting a proper cold snap soon, with frost and ice overnight.

I don't know who to believe...

A Very Popular Peg

Walking the dog along the canal is a daily chore that cannot be avoided, and because springers are the fittest and most fanatical of dogs this means walks of at least a mile or two twice a day and twice a week they require long strolls of anything up to six miles. If they don't get this much of a work out then their natural propensity for hard graft turns in upon itself and they will start to eat the house and its contents.

OMG

Look what arrived this morning!

Anyone for Darts?

My Saturday fishing session was spent on the Saxon Mill stretch of the Avon once again - I could have fished the Stratford town waters for the roach and bream as Judy was making a Christmas shopping trip there, but her timing was too late, I would have had only a few hours of daylight to fish in and that is not nearly enough this time of the year.

Astounding Stats...

Keith came over to the cut last night to have another crack at the roach and Zander but a local diesel spill, the second in a week, had put all fishing for about half a mile (a very little diesel goes a avery long way!) quite out of the question - not that the fish would be affected directly but I reckoned that anything passing through the layer of floating fuel would coat in diesel

A Small Matter of Scale

I was having trouble sleeping because a problem that had been niggling away for days had finally reached it's boiling point, the point where a resolution was required, and now.

On Roach: Canal Roach and Ruminations on Shoal Behavior

I have never fished for any other fish so capricious, so fickle and contrary than large roach and no other fish that requires more artfulness on the part of the angler if he is to be successful in the catching of them.