Flying Maggots

One thing that has not been too good this summer is the amount of fish that have been caught on the trip.

I fish from the boat. But I don't catch much! It is relaxing to get a rod out and watch a float for an hour or two. But it is also frustrating when there is no interest in my bait, usually bread, corn or a worm. Maggots are not allowed since a tub of "pinkies" escaped in the fridge and a in a separate incident a bait box of gentils was spilled into the bilges at the back of the boat. The former escape was dealt with by cleaning the fridge out and collecting the little critters, the second resulted in a bluebottle infestation that took some time (days) to clear with "Raid" and a vacuum cleaner.

Yesterday I was fishing and my frustration at not getting bites may have been showing. A local fisherman stopped and sympathised advising that "white maggots are good along here". A hire boat, loaded with mature crew passed and asked "Any success?". My negative answer brought an unexpected response. "Try these!" and the illustrated maggots flew through the air and landed on my roof. I did. No fish caught but an almost immediate bite resulting in the loss of one of these gelatenous plastic imitations.

I will report on any future developments.

Gone Fishing

There are various takes on this subject that are relevant to the current cruise.

As we left our mooring one morning we saw the German crew of an Anglo Welsh hire boat fishing around the back of their boat with a boat hook. I asked "Have you lost something important?" "The bar that hold down the weed hatch" came the reply. Yes that is rather important. I reversed and came alongside, disappeared to the cupboard that holds everything and re-appeared with the sea searcher magnet. "This will pull up a motor bike" I said. He pointed the boathook at the place where he had located the strongback, I dropped int eh magnet and- hey presto! another weed hatch sinking was averted.

The second bit of fishing came just after we had moored for a morning and the Best Mate had taken the opportunity to do a bit of washing. We left the boat for a few minutes and when we returned I noticed that Pooh's Real Madrid football shirt, recently acquired in Spain was not hanging to dry on the swan hatch doors where I had left it. My turn with the boat hook. A gust of wind had whipoped it into the canal hanger and all. Fortunately it was recovered intact and just needed re-washing.

Of course, I have been trying to catch some of the real fish with rod and line. Not so successful though. Only two good fish (roach) caught.

Away from it all

Believe it or not I'm watching tele.

Not bad for someone who doesn't have tele on the boat or anywhere else for that matter. But this weekend is Birthday Weekend and myself and the First(Best) Mate are away from it all on a weekend away.

Having carefully selected a 4-star county hotel that the internet told me has fishing lakes, I arrived to the word from the receptionist "We have lakes but definitely NO fishing". Three golf courses but no-one can hold a rod and line near the water! I discussed this with the leisure manager this morning. The general opinion is that it is something to do with "health and safety". An angler is apparently a sitting target for golfers who have lost their sense of direction or have little or no basic club swinging competence.

So I went to the canal and fished there! At 4am this morning there were no boats moving. There again there were no golfers moving on the golf course either. But I was healthy and safe.

Success? One largish roach- a lively fish. One small zander (10-12") which wriggled off the hook as it came out of the water before I could kill it! The Lure Angling Society reports over 900 of these were electrofished in 2007 with weights up to 10lb. It is not too good news that these voracious predators have survived.