Brown and Rainbow Trite (trout)

The spring of 2016 continued to blow hot and cold, mainly cold and wet. The tench fishing followed the similar cycle of the weather. I haven’t seen such indifferent weather for late spring for many years. The perch fishing was still going well and some good fish coming out. All to soon enough after the Tench Fishers fish-in I was jetting off to Portugal for two weeks in the sun.

We normally travel at this time of year as it’s Mrs. P’s birthday in May.

Memories of the holiday are of fun laughter and far too much wine and beer. We met some fantastic people who shared our experience and made our holiday so enjoyable, there were Welsh, German, North Ireland, Belgium and Dutch people having fun in our group.

I’m not one for laying on the sun beds preferring to join in the activities, boules, shooting, and anything else that is going on. Highlight of the two weeks was making the final of the shooting 4 times and winning once. It was such good fun!

Managed a few trips to Lisbon and Seville in Spain.

Oh memories!

Anyway back home on the fishing expeditions I have still been blazing away on the decorating front (but practically finished) and few trips were made. A few days after tench on one of the local lakes. I’m still tench less for the season. However so is Andy (you should have been here yesterday) Cowley, so I don’t feel too bad. The lake is one where if you do catch then it’s a special fish.

Having said this there are some good friends and fantastic company who fish there. Again people like John, Bob,Mark, Gerry and Hugh help pass the day and the tales and stories are wonderful to hear.Happy days!

I had a couple of trips out to the river for the normal barbel count. The first trip ended in nil points for barbel. However I need to bag a couple of trout for my sister. She is a leader of a local scout group and BBQ’s some trout each year funded by yours truly. So with the Mayfly buzzing around in the hot weather the trout were feeding. Rather than dry fly I decided on a no.4 rod and a small nymph upstream fished. In a couple of hours I caught 8 trout, 6 were returned and a couple taken for the scouts BBQ.

Most were rainbow trout.

The stretch I fish is wonderful and I’ve been a member since 1982. 7 miles of river and beautiful surroundings. Alas the big barbel have almost gone together with the big roach, however I live in eternal hope of the return of them.

The second time of visiting the river I spied a few more good size barbel spawning and a couple of solitary barbel on the shallows. So lets hope things do get much better. The trout fishing though is still fabulous and again I had a few more on the nymph and this time it was mostly brown trout.

They do keep the grass cut short it’s even great to walk around in slippers

I didn’t gut these trout as my sister says that the scouts love to do this. So at the end of the day I just dropped the 4 trout, two frozen ones from the previous week around her house for the BBQ the next day.

My biggest project this year has been the development of our meadow. Trees planted and wild flower seeds sown it’s been hard work. However it’s been well worth the effort. The grass has continued to grow and is 4 feet tall now. I’m surprised at the different verities of grasses and I can remember Sir Geoff ( ex heardsman) telling me that a good field has 7 different verities.

I have cut some paths around the circumference and some through the meadow. It looks stunning.

The sun house we are having built is taking sometime to come to fruition however it’s coming along with the decking first then the structure to follow.