I was trying to find silver bream, but they seem to have evaporated so I decided that they could wait for now and that I should return to Parkers Pool to see what I could find there ~
I had a spot of rain in the late afternoon but sport with the rudd was steady and the fish were of a very good stamp, far larger on the whole than any that I had caught there in Spring, so I didn't care if i got a bit damp ~
It wasn't till I came to take pics of the catch that I realised that not all that glisters is gold - no, many of the fish and most of the largest were actually roach x rudd hybrids but not a single pure roach was caught despite the pond being full of them ~
They fought hard enough, these fish, but I did hook and lose two much larger and stronger, one who pinged and one who snapped me up when it found the sanctuary of the weeds. They could have been larger versions of what I had already caught, I'd like to think, or perhaps they were crucian carp? Stronger line is what I needed but I had left the spare spools at home and so I just had to work on with three pound main line and 2.5 bottoms.
Yesterday afternoon I got out again, but this time vowing to steer clear of rudd and give the crucians a good seeing too. To that end I packed meat thinking that rudd and hybrids would avoid it but I couldn't have been more wrong - though the bites were far fewer than with corn, if anything the meat had the effect of increasing the average stamp of the specimens by an ounce or two! No sign of crucians though.
A cloud passed by that rapidly mushroomed into a storm rumbling away into the Northern sky. I thought I'd avoided rain but then the Southern sky darkened and it was obvious that another storm was coming my way...
Botheration. No brolly because Judy's son Ben borrowed it for non - fishing purposes and it's still in the back of his van...
As the rainfall intensified I knew my jacket and hat would not be nearly sufficient!
Sheeeeet!
Scooping up the valuable gear and leaving the rest behind, I scarpered toward the nearest shelter ~
A handy tunnel under the nearby railway line !
The worst of it passed by in twenty minutes, then I emerged from my hidey hole and went back to fish with wet feet but warm and dry enough where it matters ~
Then it started up again and this time that constant small rain that eventually drives you round the twist and soaks you through by stealth ~
I packed down and pulled the net around 9pm. Taking a risk with the camera which had no way of focussing upon subject matter properly with so much water in the air to confuse it, I laid the fish out on the wet grass in the rain and they just lay there as good as gold while I performed the ceremonials...!
I'd placed a bet with myself that just as soon as I departed, the rain, which by now was really crashing down around me, would stop ~
Five minutes down my road to home, and guess what?
That's a great looking haul of Rudd, Roach, Rudd/Roach there Jeff. Nice work.
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