Empty Handed

Hmm, OK, so I’m what, 46 days late posting this, but I had HUGE problems with my PC over Xmas and the new year, and by the time I’d got them fixed and had ready access to my blog again, I’d forgotten about blogging all together…

What can I remember about this..?

Well, it was the first fish on the first day of the year during my usual trip to Forrest Hills on New Years Morning prior to going up to the Not-In-Laws for lunch.

The weather was a big contrast to the experience of last year’s trip, it was very still and clear, but I didn’t see any fish AT ALL, ALL DAY, which is rather unusual, you usually see some topping.

I had a rather late start this year, too, being absolutely wasted and up very late the night before might have had something to do with that - oh, yeah, that’s right - also it was pissing down early on, which wouldn’t usually have been a problem, but combined with the banging head and blurry vision, I decided to leave it a bit.

Early on, some guy turned up in a Porsche and we chatted for a few minutes - he asked what I was fishing, and was surprised when I responded “buzzer”, but didn’t have a bung on. We chatted about the fact that few, at least on the waters I fish regularly, fish any floating line methods which don’t involve the bung. He seemed like a decent chap, and off he went to fish his intermediate and cat’s whisker. Oh, and he told me that the water had been stocked just before xmas with 250lb of fish - somehow, he’d seen the invoice or delivery note or something - so we fancied our chances, I guess.

Did the usual for a bit, then I switched to a yellow apps on the point, with a black spider on the dropper, and moved around to the back of the island. Chucked this combo out a few times (still no bung) and just used a static retrieve, when on something like the 3rd or 4th cast I thought I’d hooked the bottom, and the line was sinking toward the snag as I drew the line in. Luck was with me for a change, as the snag started moving around - fish on! Anyway, long story short, the fight was the weirdest ever, as the fish barely seemed to be alive, but I couldn’t do a damn thing with it, every time it got near, it just swam off, dead slowly, but really hard to stop. Then, as I got it ready, the net broke - one of the screws attaching the head fell off and it collapsed. It was then that I realised why the fish was hard to handle - it was pretty big, was why. The first pass I made with the broken net saw the apps bloodworm catch in the net (the fish was on the dropper) and the line broke at the dropper! Shit! But the fish was still on! I somehow, eventually, scooped it into the broken net and staggered up the bank with it, barely believing my luck.

The fish weighed in at “exactly” 5lbs (as exact as you get with a spring balance), and was, I think, blind in one eye. I don’t know for sure, but the eye was covered in the same mottled skin that surrounded it. At first I thought it had no eye, but I could see the eye beneath the skin. Very odd. The other eye was perfectly normal. There’s a close up of the affected eye on my Flickr stream, if you’re interested.

So, I got very lucky with that one I think. Not only did I catch a fish in my fairly short session, thus continuing the “first day of the year, first fish” thing for another year when the lake looked just as dead as you like (and I don’t think the other guy even had a pull), but it was a decent size, didn’t get away when the knot failed at the dropper, didn’t get away because of the broken net, and I caught it on the spider on the dropper, which made me happier than if it had taken the big flashy bauble on the point. I even found the screw from the net in the gravel and mud, and fixed that up, too.

It was the only fish of the day, but who cares!

Result!

Toby loves films, so I’ve been thinking about taking him to the cinema for a while. I’ve been biding my time waiting for the right film at the right time; I was concious that he’s still a little young for the pictures (he’s just turned 4), and so I wanted a film that wasn’t too long, and also that hadn’t been slated (i.e. wasn’t crap), and that might hold some interest for me, too. I also wanted to take him during a week day, when it would be quieter at the cinema.

So, today, I took him to the 12.25 showing of the 90 minute long Bee Movie at the Apollo in Morecambe.

I’d explained to him that the cinema showed films, and that he’d have to watch it as it was shown - he wouldn’t be able to pause it or rewind (kids today, spoiled by PVRs) as he was used to at home. As we were in the foyer paying, he asked “Daddy, where’s the television?” He was pretty excited. He sat nicely all the way through, watching attentively, glancing at me occasionally and smiling, or leaning over to sip from our shared medium-lemonade, lodged in the cup holder between us, through his bendy straw. He only spoke once or twice - “Bees can’t talk!” - the film dialogue - “Yes, they can!” - Toby.

He was disappointed when it ended so soon.

We had a good time together.

What was the first film you saw at the cinema, or took your kids to?

Whilst I can still remember something about it, a few notes on my trip to Wych Elm last Sunday… It’s amazing how quickly the details fade from your mind after only a few days.

It was pretty chilly last weekend, but nice and dry and with little breeze to speak of, and Veronica and the boys wanted to go to her mum’s in the afternoon (or something), so I sneaked-off around lunch time for a bit of fishing. If it hadn’t been weekend I might have tried a few hours at Borwick, but it gets pretty busy at the weekend, which cuts down on the opportunities for wandering the banks so freely seeking fish, so I thought Wych Elm would be a good alternative. It’s quite a small water, so I phoned ahead to book, since it’s quite a trek to get there only to find out they’re fully occupied, as has happened a few times to me in the past at weekends in the winter. No problems today, though, so off we go, fully long-johned and layered-up against the cold. Three pairs of thick socks meant that I could barely get my boots on, but cold feet suck hard, so I left it - I do wonder, though, whether it might be better to trade fewer layers for better circulation.

I digress. I’d been reading on Carlson’s Fishing Report about the recent fishing at WE…

Some very special fishing here at the moment - use slim leaders in this glass clear pond for some top action. Yellow seems to be the in colour - try beaded nymph, yellow stalking bug or small yellow buzzer. They are also taking small black dries - spiders, gnats, etc….need to be size 18 though. I went down on Tuesday morning and sneaked seven onto the bank..the guys with heavier leaders seemed to be having a harder time of it. Be brave put a 3lb leader on.

…and, sure enough, one of the guys who was there early on when I was had been catching on a yellow bloodworm I was told (Yellow Apps?), and he also logged that he’d caught on a stalking bug - probably been reading (or writing!) Carlson’s fishing report. I wonder sometimes if these reports and catch return books cause a self-perpetuating force-feedback loop - it’s a pattern I’ve noticed here and at Bank House, both places having fairly well-kept returns books. One or two flies seem to start catching, and gradually more and more of the returns are using the same fly. I’m sure I’m not the first to have noticed this phenomena - Have you?

So, anyway, sorry, bit of a stream of conciousness thing, here. As I arrived and was setting up in the car park near the gate, there was a guy fishing right in front of me, and he was into a fish. So I watched for a bit, he landed it, chapped it, and then he and his young son packed up and came past me back to there car. Usual conversation ensued - which is how I found out about the yellow bloodworm thing - and he asked me if I had any egg flies. Well, yes, I do. Well, they’re going mad for them - I’ve had a dozen on, but lost every single one. I just remembered this bit, and it’s only really interesting because a) the guy was almost certainly exaggerating his numbers, and b) I’d been talking to a guy at Bank House recently who mentioned that egg flies always seem to have this problem, and we were specualting as to why this may be. Well, he was - I have no idea. It’s probably something to do with hook gape or shank length or some shit, I have literally no idea. Anyway, I just said to the guy, like I was some sort of guru, oh, yes, egg flies, notorious for it, you lose at least 70% of the fish you hook. Anyway, he ate this up. Today was the first time he’d fished with egg flies, so he had no idea (like me, then). And then he went home, and I went fishing.

So, I kicked off with, ooh, I can’t remember exactly, but I do know it was 2 flies on 3lb fluoro, probably some skinny buzzer on the point and some sort of spider or diawl on the dropper. Nada. Cold feet. Saw the odd fish move at the surface and contemplated a shipmans. So I put a shipmans on the dropper and used it as an indicator. Nada.

I’d started off near the gate, where the egg fly guy had been, and now I moved around to the island. Now, it had been pretty chilly where I’d started, but it was sheltered from what little breeze there was. Over here on the island, I had not that shelter and did I feel the wind chill? Yes I did. Blimey, my hands were painfully cold now. Aha! Now to try my new neoprene, foldy back fingers, fishing gloves. Well, that’s another 15 quid down the tubes, they’re shit. Couldn’t feel the rod, struggled to cast, struggked to control the line, even with the fingers and thumbs velcroed back. Cack.

OK. Off the island, tramp round to the lodge to warm up, check the log book (the only other two anglers on the water had just cleared off) and have a coffee. Back on the sheltered bank, things were much nicer, and I took ten minutes out to eat a mars bar and have a coffee and enjoy the weak-winter sunshine, the solitude (not often you’ll find yourself at Wych Elm on a Sunday afternoon alone) and think about what to do next. So I sat on the bench next to the cabin and warmed my hands on a mug of hot coffee and watched the various water-birds and occasional train and fish for a bit. Really nice way to spend ten minutes.

On with a yellow apps and a bung! I’m not proud!

Managed to get a bite after some time! Even touched the fish, but it didn’t stick.

Getting late (relatively, nearly the shortest day!), and I was getting bored with this method, which anyway wasn’t working. I’d noticed a few more fish moving at the surface and they looked to be nymphing. I also saw a few bow-waving, apparently pursuing some lively morsal. OK, so I put a Greenwell nymph on the point and started working that in areas near moving fish. Bingo! After really only, maybe, half a dozen casts, fish on! And what a fight, a cracking rainbow, not big but in great condition, beautifully hooked right at the point of it’s upper jaw, right in the front - the hook fell away easily in the net, and the fish shot away on release.

To cut a long story short, I’d really cracked the method here - I moved around to fish the end section, still from the cabin side, and my next fish was a superbly fit Blue, which bow-waved up to take the fly and then spent the fight leaping clear of the water and cart-wheeling across the surface every few seconds. I had a total of 5 in the net on this method, most of them from targeting specific fish and twitching the nymph away very close to the surface, with the occasional pause. This was exciting and rewarding fishing.

Curiously, after the first few had been landed without hitch, I started losing a few, and this got worse toward the end (bad light stopped play around 4:20). I couldn’t really understand this, since I’d been using the hook sharpener after every fish. I reckon I hooked and played before losing 3 more fish, and got maybe half a dozen other hits which didn’t stay connected for more than a few seconds. They were loving it. Sadly, frustratingly, the last hit I got took the fly; when I checked, the tippet had parted from the leader - the leader looked like it had been cut cleanly. This is particularly frustrating because I’ve fairly recently stopped using those seamless steel rings to connect the tippet to the tapered leader since I’d found the ring cutting the tippet a couple of times, and this tippet had been connected to the leader using a nail-knot splice (an idea I got from this post at Tamanawis), and it seems it was this which failed. Or maybe there was a wind-knot, or a trout with scissors, or something…
Anyway, apart from that, a very interesting and rewarding afternoon’s fishing all for 7 quid. An absolute steal.

One last thing as a note to self; the nymph I was using that afternoon was a size 16, and fish were coming to it from several feet away in poor light. Putting bigger flies on isn’t always the answer to the question: why am I not catching?

Check out the joke on Alistair’s great fishing blog - bringing together all the best things in life!

Reality and a joke..
Beer, Fishing, Sex and Golf

A man was walking down the street when he was accosted by a particularly dirty and shabby-looking homeless man who asked him for a couple of dollars for dinner.

Read the rest…

A lorry crashed into a bridge at the Crook ‘o’ Lune, quite near my home.

You can read the “STORY IN PICTURES!!“, courtesy of the BBC.

Well, this seems like a funny time to start blogging again, particularly since I’ve done a fair bit (for me) of fly fishing for coarse fish over the summer, all of which was much more interesting, fun and blog worthy than the pretty miserable session I had at Bank House on Monday.

I’ve finally got a week off work, and so I arranged a trip to Bank House with Stuart for Monday, and I’d been really looking forward to it. Thye weather was good, calm, mild and overcast, and when we got there at around 12 noon thewre were a few fish moving, so prospects looked good. When we got going though, it seemed like there were no fish in the place, as far as I was concerned anyway, fishing nymphs and buzzers and emergers. Not a touch for an hour. At that point I switched to the only wet method which seems to work with any consistency here - The Bung. Just to get a fish on, I chucked a yellow apps bloodworm 2 foot under a bung and, sure enough, within about 5 minutes the thing slid away and I was into a nice ‘bow of around 4 pounds (pictured).

Switched back to nymphs etc (discarding the bung) after that, and 3 hours later hadn’t had a touch. Even tried a lure at one point - nada.

For the last 30 minutes, back on the bung/yellow-apps for another rainbow. Stuart, having fished bung plus lure/egg-fly most of the day finished with 3 on the bank, several lost and many missed bites. I had 2 bites all day and finished with 2 rainbows.

Toward the end, Stuart came a cropper stepping onto one of the wooden jetties, which are treacherous when wet and muddy. He landed pretty heavily and lost his landing net in about 4 foot of murky, muddy water next to ther bank, and was lucky not to break a leg, or worse, a rod! I thought I was going to have to call an ambulance. He cheered up when he landed his final fish a few minutes later - a very pretty blue.

Looking at the returns book, it seems that most fish are being caught on egg flies and ‘buzzers’ (I’m always suspicious that people don’t really know what a buzzer is after speaking to some guy last year who thought he was buzzer fishing because he had a bung on - the fly he was using was a blob) at Bank House at the moment. My suspicion, having watched people fishing, is that nearly every fish is caught from under a bung. Every body I see there seems to be fishing this method (although I did see one guy on a sinker for a bit on Monday), and it really seems like the fish don’t respond to other methods. Why is this? I can’t get a touch on any other (wet) method, but chucking almost anything bright and big under a float yields bites within minutes. I don’t have the same problem at other small trout waters I fish. Sure, the bung works at other places, but I also catch fish without it.

I have a Sansa e280 MP3 player, and very good it is too. Yesterday, however, it crashed. I can’t remember exactly what I was doing, arsing around with the MicroSD expansion card, or something. Anyway, usually a hard-reset does the trick, and it restarts no problem. This time though it didn’t and it just kept restarting itself and trying to refresh the database, but then restarting again, all the while the screen looking very corrupt and messy, as though the screen had been physically damaged. Running the battery right down and recharging made no difference, and plugging it in to the PC made no difference either.

Thanks to the internet, I found how to fix it. Took a while to find though. Didn’t find it last night (error occurred yesterday) and earlier today I’d more or less resigned myself to dumping it, but I found this tonight…

Recovery mode on the Sansa e200 series

…and that did the trick. Also, the linked page here is very useful.

I’m going to cut ‘n’ paste some of the advice here, just as a mirror. If the author (Alfmeister) wants me to remove it, no problems, let me know.

I repaired my player in this order:
1. Turn off the player buy holding down the menu button for about 10 seconds or however long it takes to turn the screen black.
2. Set the hold switch to on (shows red.} Hold down the record button on the left side of the player while pressing the menu button.
3. The player will run in a similar manner to using safe mode on a computer. That is it works just enough for you to connect it to your computer to make the necessary repairs.
It will prompt you to connect the player to the computer and then it will display that it is connected in basic text.
4. Now you need to download new firmware.
The latest I could find that I trusted (from the SanDisk site) was version 1.02.12.
5. Now run the firmware you just downloaded (the .exe file.) It will ask you if you want to reformat the player which will erase all of your stored data. Say no if you think you know when the problem first occurred so that you can correct it. After the player installs the fresh firmware it prompt you to safely disconnect the player which you do by clicking on the small drive button in the system tray which reads ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ and selecting the Sansa drive letter. Now click Finish.
6. Your player will restart and this time (fingers crossed) it will reload the database and will function normally. The database refresh will take longer than normal because it’s reading the entire database. Now your player will ‘come back to life’ and you will swear never to install any files that you haven’t checked (until you do it again!)
7. Reconnect the player. If you have the Sansa Updater already installed it will prompt you with the message that new firmware is available. At this writing that will be 1.02.15.

Also, in a bid to help out anyone else trying to search through the millions of pages mentioning Sansa and crash~, some key words:

• sansa
• corrupt
• hard-reset
• crash cycle
• trashed

That’s bound to help.

A lightning quick post to show willing and to try and get back on with the blogging - I haven’t even been able to keep up by only putting up short entries of fishing trips for personal logging reasons (place, date, weather, catch), let alone longer posts. I’ve been stupidly busy with work over the past few months, and I’ve barely managed to fish, let alone also having the time to blog about it.

Anyway, as it’s the longest day today, and I always try and be outside doing something on the evening of the longest day, I managed an hour or so at Borwick Water last light for a bit of a crack at the carp and other coarse fish on the fly. This afternoon it could have gone either golf or fishing, and would probably have been golf actually, had it not been for my Dad - and usual golf partner - being poorly. The poor sod’s been hit by the impetigo that my kids are suffering at the moment; he must have picked it up last Sunday when he came round, before we knew what they had and how contagious it was! I didn’t manage to get out of the house until 9, but this gets me to the venue by about quarter past, and so I was probably wetting a line by about 20 past or so.

I started off in the north end of Dewhirst Deeps (see here, NW corner), trying to get into the carp that were moving about there. It was too overcast and windy to be able to see clearly into the water, and too dull to wear the poloroids, so I mostly had to go on the occasional bow-wave and splashy rises I could see nearby. Spent maybe half an hour with a deer-hair emerger on the point and a ptn and other nymphs, like the diawl bach, being tried on the dropper. This ‘washing-line’ style usually works pretty well with these carp at this time of year as they cruise around feeding near the surface, but it really helps when you can see them, and I couldn’t tonight. Nothing doing here, so a short walk over to Burn, usually pretty dependable for catching something, just to say you have. It was Burn that I fished the first time I came to Borwick in July last year, and I caught around 20 fish comprising no less than 5 different species, 6 if you count Golden Orfe and Ide as separate species, in the space of about an hour and a half. That’s 20 landed; I lost count of the number of missed pulls and lost fish. It was tremendous fun. So, it’s something of a nice fallback. Tonight I managed 2 nice Ide in the last half-hour before Jimmy came to collect my money and kick me out (gate closes at dusk).

All in all, excellent fun and an excellent way to spend the last hour of light on the longest day.

Oh, and the Ide both took a size 14 Green Witch on the point. The first grabbed it as I was roll-casting, which confused the hell out of me, as I thought I’d (’scuse the pun) snagged the bank near my feet or something. I always, always roll-cast on this water and similar where there are plentiful, ready-biting, small fish, ever since the first time I fished here last year when I overhead cast a 2oz Rudd into the undergrowth behind me! You’ll be pleased to know the poor little thing was none the worse for its foray into the realm of the birds, and (once I’d found it by following my line) swam off nearly as fast as its cousins were biting…

Back to Farletonview to try and finally christen that new rod. The first hour was spent stalking fish in the margins along the West bank, but they simply weren’t interested, got a few follows but nothing more. At 4pm, as forecast, the wind really picked up and the rain started. I switched to a buzzer on the point and an olive snatcher on a dropper and started to fish along the North shore, working into the wind coming out of the East, and heading for the more comfortable wind-at-your-back and sheltered Eastern shore. Had a couple of slashy rises at the snatcher as it skittered through the wave, but no fish.

At last on the Eastern shore, finally got a fish on to a black and green buzzer fished ultra-slow back up wind, and a chance to see how my new 5# outfit handles herself. Superb, and I think this was a decent blue, but after a fairly lengthy fight, the fish making several looong runs (giving me a chance to test the drag on the G-Lite reel), and just as I was getting its head up, the fish came off. Hey ho. I didn’t get a good look at the fish, so I really don’t know if it was a big one, a strong one or just a ‘normal’ one which seemed bigger/stronger because I’m not used to the 5 weight.

No more takes to buzzer for a while and no takes on the various surface flies I tried (emergers, mainly) so I switched to the wonder fly and started getting hits immediately, first and second cast, 3, 4, 5 - but I just couldn’t hook up. Checked the fly and sharpened the hook and carried on - managed another couple of hits with the same result and then they just stopped. Word had got around - leave caddis off the menu, boys, they fight back.

Coming up to the end of my 3 hour ticket now, so a last cast I think - when CRACK! the rod snapped. Just snapped as I completed a forward stroke and fell in the water.

Wtf?

So, there’s a very clean break in the 3rd section above the butt. Jesus, what a horrible sound, what an awful feeling!

Lucky I was just about to wrap it up anyway. Lucky it didn’t break when I was playing that fish. I’ve been trying to think if it got a knock at anytime, but I can’t think that it has.

So, not having much luck with this new rod, on the whole…

Now to try out the Grey’s Repairs and Warrenty Scheme, see how that goes.

Saturday 5th May 2007 - Farletonview.

So, this is rapidly becoming a bank-holiday only blog, by the look of things. Anyway, this has been the first chance I’ve had to get out and christen my new Grey’s Missionary 5wt, and I decided to take it up to Farletonview for a bash, hoping for a bit of surface action.

The rod came with one of the Missionary kits - so I got a 9′ 5wt in 7 pieces, no less, plus the smallest of the now-defunct G-Lite reels - they’ve obviously still got some stock of these, I believe they’ve now been replaced by the G-Tec for 1997 - and a #5 WFF Platinum fly line in Heron Grey (off-white). The rod is pretty fast and tippy compared to my Platinum XD’s, and even the Grey’s website intimates that it’s not an easy rod to use, saying “The seven-piece has a slightly faster action of the two, whilst the five-piece is a little easier to use.”, so I was a little dubious about it when I ordered it, particularly when you throw into the mix that it’s also lighter than my usual set up, I usually use 6wt. Would I be able to cast it at all? Would I be able to cast it a useful distance, after all I’m not a great distance caster anyway!? Well, it turns out not to be too bad - the timing is waaay different to my XD’s, and I found myself hitting tailing loops a few times, but when I got the timing right, it was just fine. It’ll take me a while to get used to, but I like the lighter set-up, it’s noticably quieter on and in the water, and I think I’ll like it a lot when I get used to it. The Grey’s line is nice too, good colour for visibility and very supple with barely any line memory even on the first outing. My only criticism is that it doesn’t float as high as I’d like at the tip, and fishing static for any length of time saw the front few yards pretty much submerged. I can probably fix this with some mucilin, I guess.

Assembling the rod is no chore either, really. I loved the idea of a travel rod for convenience of storage and transport, obviously, but thought it might end up being a right pain in the arse to assemble. It realy isn’t a problem, and there are dots on the blank to help line up the rings, something which I don’t know why we don’t have on all multi-section rods, really; I’d find it useful on my 3 piece rods as well as this 7 piece.

None of my new fancy tackle helped much, though, and, as you can probably guess from the title, I wasn’t able to test the rod fully. Ho hum. I missed a lovely take to a shipman’s within a few casts of starting, and had a few other follows later on, but, other than that I didn’t trouble the trout one bit.

I’m sure Stuart’s real name is Jonah - I only ever struggle when he comes. He blanked, too, btw.