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...


All I know is this ~ it started out warm enough, but by dusk, it was a bit nippy.


Getting nippy...


I go out to the cut at one o' clockish and throw out some lobworms, one on a leger and one on a float. Nothing at all happens in the first choice peg so I move along to the next. Now this peg has produced two roach for me lately so I'm not that hopeful for more and so I sit there fulfilling self-fulfilling prophesies, one by one. And then...

Just when I've convinced myself that because all the ducks are floating around with their heads on their backs half asleep and not squawking argumentatively with their neighbours as is the usual run of affairs with ducks and that this necessarily means that mother nature herself is a'kip and therefore all of her fishes will be sleeping likewise, the quivertip lunges around, and I'm suddenly connected to a fish.

A roach of course, and over a pound, of course.

One pound three ounces to be exact and weighed to perfection on my spanking new brass dedicated roach (and dace) scales.


What a beauty...


There's no comparison...!

I expect nothing more after this because one, and no more, is all I ever seem to catch on worms, but just to spoil the normal run of things I get a bite on the lead about half an hour later that fails to hook up and then when the light has faded away to the point where the float is invisible and I've no choice but pack it all away in readiness for home, I returned to the quiver rod only to find the line slack from tip to lead. Hmmm..

Bite or no bite, you decide...

I strike, out of curiosity, and find that I have a self-hooked fish on the end.

A roach of course, and over a pound, of...



Hang on, you little blighter! how dare you spoil my average...!