Bird brains...

I shouldn't complain about my recent string of stillwater blanks, because it's pointless, there's no-one to complain to, but the ducks! Actually they are little sods aren't they? Not on rivers, where they are quite entertaining, but on shallow stillwaters they certainly are...



I had just one unmissable, but missed, bite in four blank sessions in a row on the canal, and I think it was the duck that did it, the duck that was upending in the far bank margins near my bait. I didn't connect the two things at first, but I think there is a strong possibility. I also had three blanks in a row on a new stillwater that I'm exploring. This lake is lovely, for the locality, a balancing lake beside the Coventry Canal at Bedworth surrounded by broad stands of common reed, and looks just like a little slice of the Norfolk broads. However, the lake is shallow and the coots never stop feeding on whatever they feed on. Just so long as they do not pick up my bait, I don't mind, but having had a run in with a coot whilst carp fishing once back yonder, I get very nervous when they go anywhere near, which is about every ten minutes.

The lake also has a pair of great crested grebes, who never bother anyone, are an aesthetic asset to any lake with their handsome good looks and have the added advantage of being a bird on whom bored angler can lay bets - on the point where they'll surface after a dive. Mute swans too, but I can't tolerate them. They cause me endless trouble and strife, never know when to go away, are more arrogant than any other living creature, including us, and are just too impossibly elegant for their own good. On the other hand, the tundra/trumpeter swan (can't tell which, didn't make a sound!) that stayed in my swim for two hours up in Ribchester on the Ribble a few weeks back, was a model of good behaviour, just staying at a respectable distance, not climbing up the bank and hissing as the mute has a nasty habit of doing, and just imploring me, like a puppy, to feed it bread, which I did, and it still behaved itself.



The lake has fish in it, big ones too - I've seen the unmistakable signs, but I have absolutely no idea what, or how many. Probably the usual coarse fish I'd guess, but they have not revealed themselves as yet and reports from other people I've talked to are not encouraging. It seems that the lake is free fishing, not controlled or monitored and of course it is rumoured that this lake, and others nearby, and probably the canal too, have all been netted for stock by unscrupulous local commercial fishery owners. I wouldn't be at all surprised...

I see this as a good thing. The stocks will therefore be low, they won't bother netting again with diminishing returns, the small head of fish will have all the available food to themselves, will grow fast and become large specimens, will spawn and establish a good balance of mature fish and youngsters with well fed predators to cull them to manageable proportions, and then someone like me and some fishing friends will take control of it, tend it lovingly, shoot poachers, and secure its future. Anyone interested in such a project? Let me know...