Silver Bream - Tomorrow...

'Till tomorrow' was how we left off after my last silver bream tale, and tomorrow comes around, inevitably. Would the silvers put in an appearance? Would they show? Would they fall to my rod once again, after an absence of almost an entire year, or pass me by as they have so often this spring, even though I know full well they are there, and have been for a month or more?

First cast, came the answer...

Yes they would! I knew it was a silver in the instant I saw the brilliant flash of its flank as it turned against the hook in the murky brown water ten yards distant. The red fins, the bright scales, the plump body, the splashy fight, it just had to be, and it was. And not a small fish either...

A full one-pound two-ounces of silver bream slid over the rim of my waiting net. Was briefly admired, and dispatched to the keep-net, where I hoped another would soon join it for the brace. I didn't have to wait long. The next bite connected with another just a smidgeon under a pound, and my day was already made up.

Reunited with my favourite fish. A brace of Spring silvers for the album

Would I get another still?

No. I wouldn't. They come and they go. One minute it seems you can't go wrong, next you are floundering. Small bream, large bream, a fish that took me all over the place (and remarkably, was only a bream) and a perch well above a pound all came by, but the silvers vanished. As they do...

You may guess I'd changed baits from bread to maggot!

Then the boat trouble really kicked off.

I asked a passing boater to retrieve a float hung up in the tree from a session two days ago, but he missed it, however another was coming in the opposite direction, so he went for it, and got it in one, but not before he'd slung the motor into full reverse, then into full drive, churned the epicenter of the successful silver bream swim to swirling froth, and turned it the colour of an ashtray full of fag butts.

I should never have asked. I thanked the guy for his service, of course, and got my £1.50 float back, but now it was over, put paid to, already!

This is what silver bream really look like. Deep, plump, bright and beautiful. 

Who cares? It's a five minute walk from home. The silvers are back and now they are there, the brace from this short snatched session of just an hour or so on a Saturday morning, won't be the last. There's a month, no more, in which to catch them by daylight, though. Marks my words. If you want to catch a silver from the canals, you'd better get out there now. Don't wait. They will be gone before you know it, and you'll not see fin nor scale of them again till next May. Unless, that is, I can figure out another part of the conundrum.

I have the seed of an idea. It may not bear fruit...

I'll plant it anyhow.

Again. Till tomorrow...