The Hornet's Nest

Variety is the spice of life | Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:38:00 +0000

A late summer recce of the upper Leam which I carried out last August revealed a small river, no more than a stream in parts, with plenty of physical challenges to overcome (barbed wire, steep banks etc) and just a few fishable swims between the weed. Since I was still very much in commercial carp mode, I filed it under 'hmmm, maybe another time' and thought no more about it.

For whatever reason, by the time I returned to fish it on a bright, warm, breezy day three weeks ago, my attitude had transformed. A few more swims had opened up, the obstacles seemed smaller than before and all-in-all it looked absolutely perfect. I couldn't wait to get started.

Having identified about half a dozen likely looking swims I started at the farthest from the car - a deep pool on a 90 degree bend. With so little flow it was obvious that the lightest tip would be fine, so out went a couple of maggots with just a tiny drilled bullet holding it to the deck.

Perfect, except that the breeze had now turned into a gale. I was definitely getting taps, presumably from small stuff, but it was hard to spot with the rod tip bouncing all over the place. The next swim was even more exposed, so it was an hour or more before I found the shelter I needed to get a still rod and a good idea what was happening beneath the water.

The minnow - a long lost friend of mine

Feeding a steady trickle of maggots just upstream of a fallen tree soon got those taps coming back on the rod tip, but this time I was able to see and hit them - or at least I was when the fish were actually bigger than the maggots I was using as bait! I'd forgotten the joys of minnows, once such a staple of my childhood fishing. I was certainly reaquainted with them on this trip. In between a steady stream of the little blighters came a few tiny chublets, and then over went the rod tip and I was into the fish I'd come for - a chub of over a pound. Well, briefly I was into it anyway. I'd accomplished 90% of the mission - I'd found it, hooked it and sighted it - and then I lost it. The whole process was over in seconds, and I was gutted, particularly since that was my last bite of the afternoon.

Now just try telling me there aren't
chub in there...

I was back the following week. It was colder, just as sunny, but stiller. I only had two hours, but I figured that the deep pool offered a decent chance of some action. Again I caught some tiddlers, but in case you're expecting a happy ending I should hasten to the bit where I lost another decent chub in the reeds under my feet.

I'm starting to think that blogging about my fishing is bringing me bad luck. For my next post I might just review 2011, recalling a time when a) I wasn't blogging about fishing and b) I was actually catching some decent fish. Ahhh, happy days.

Variety is the spice | Part one

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:10:00 +0000

One of the great joys of rivers, at least when set against the majority of commercial stillwater fisheries, is that no two swims are ever exactly the same.

Not, I should hasten to add, that I've got anything at all against commercials. In fact they've been largely responsible for my reintroduction to angling, and I fished little else for the whole of my first year back.

But having vowed to abandon those commercials during the winter in favour of learning more about river fishing, I'm now relishing the variety, the texture, the sheer unpredictability of flowing water.

Take the River Leam by way of an example. I've pretty much hammered the Welches Meadow and Leam Valley nature reserve stretches over the last few months, but genuinely feel like I'm only just starting to get a feel for one or two swims - an understanding of where the currents run, where the shelves and the deeper pools lie, where the snags and the weeds are and, of course, where the fish are most likely to be. It takes hours of bank time to get this feel for just a single swim (well it does for me) - and yet the neighbouring swim, which may be just yards away, is almost certainly completely different. And a few days of rain or a change in temperature of just a few degrees can mean that even the swims you know best feel completely alien again.

So even on the stretches of the Leam I know best there are dozens of unexplored (by me) swims, and if you move significantly up or down stream then the changes are even more dramatic, with the river undergoing almost total transformations of character.

Clearly one winter will be nowhere near enough to get to know even this one short and relatively minor river. So last weekend I realised that I faced a choice - continue exploring the stretches I had already been fishing, or make a start on tackling one of the other areas.

Whether it'll make me a better angler I don't know, but I chose the latter and headed to Offchurch in search of the upper Leam...

Some early-year bird notes

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:34:00 +0000

One of the real joys of January is what feels like the almost overnight re-emergence of the birds.

It occurs to me pretty much every year that the birds seem to see the end of our Christmas celebrations as their cue for bursting into song - lifting our spirits and announcing the idea of spring many weeks before it will actually arive.

They bring me moments of joy throughout these dark weeks.

As I leave the house for work I am greeted most mornings by the rapping of great spotted woodpeckers looking for partners and territory.

I stopped last week to watch and listen to the blue tits, great tits, chaffinches, blackbirds and more from a narrow footbridge over the Henley-in-Arden stream. It was already a lovely lunchtime moment, but became so much more so when a tiny, mouse-like treecreeper flew to a tree trunk just yards from me and started to spiral upwards.

Fishing trips (of which another post shortly) are accompanied by the most amazing symphonies - today it was jackdaws, fieldfare, great tits and a superb song thrush.

And when you go out of your way to find the birds, as we did last weekend with a family trip to Brandon, they are there in numbers - there is not better time than a sunny January day for watching our brilliant wildfowl for example, from the exquisite teal to the whistling wigeon to the beautiful but faintly absurd shoveller.

If brevity is the soul of wit...

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 08:58:00 +0000

...then these note should be good (bit pressed for time I'm afraid).

On the birding front, I've just stepped out of my back door to be greeted by a low flying, loud 'cronking' raven circling my house. A wonderful start to my day :-)

Elsewhere, all is awaking - blue tits and wrens notably singing for the first time this week.

Fishing news is equally brief - I spent 90 mins on the Leam yesterday but couldn't find the roach or chub. I should have moved swims (chap down the river had 20 or more nice roach in the morning, so they were still feeding), but couldn't raise the enthusiasm. Fortunately a lovely 14oz perch saved the morning.

One last hurrah

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 08:37:00 +0000

Managed to sneak in a couple of hours on The Leam to finish 2011, and with some success.

With virtually no flow to speak of on my favourite bend, I ignored the (not very) shallows in front of me and instead targeted the deeper water downstream with a waggler rig.

This gave me a wider water and more lines to target, which was I think the key to putting together a longer run of bites than hitherto. Either that or it was the new secret ingredient - turmeric on the maggots!

Whatever the reason, I ended up with four nice fish on the bank (a chunky 6oz roach and three chub to 7oz), a few tiddlers, a handful of missed bites and two good fish lost in play - the second of which killed the swim and effectively ended a very enjoyable little session.

Thank goodness for the birds

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 22:24:00 +0000

A combination of seasonal fun, seasonal sniffles and seasonal weather has prevented any fishing since the first week of December. While this has been frustrating, my other great love - birdwatching - has continued to deliver plenty of pleasure.

The birds have come through the usual combination of planned trips and chance encounters. As we set off for our Xmas holiday with family in Essex we were 'flapped' on our way by a large flock of lapwing over fields near Napton.

Once in Essex we were accompanied everywhere we went by huge flocks of fieldfare and redwings, and a visit to Hatfield Forest was brightened by a fly-by kingfisher.

Finally, J and I actually managed a trip to Brandon Marsh today, our first in quite some time. Despite the cold and the constant rain, we spent a very pleasant couple of hours in the hides studying the gulls, ducks and waders, with highlights including a pair of goldeneyes and some very well hidden snipe.

Bird of the season: Snipe, a wonderful little wading bird which manages on the one hand to be as distinctive and striking as you could wish, and on the other hand is as discreet and camoflagued as you could imagine possible.

It must be nearly Christmas...

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 08:22:00 +0000

... because a) this weekend featured my first garden blackcap sighting of the season, pretty much in line with previous years (excluding 2010/11), and b) I've got no time for fishing or birding coz I'm generally shopping, wrapping, writing cards or shaking off a hangover.

Apart from the almost obligatory review of 2011, this is likely to be my last update of the year - so happy Christmas one and all!

Not a blanker

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 15:50:00 +0000

When the fishing or birdwatching is a little quiet, I often find myself passing the time by composing the next blog post in my head.

After staring at a static float for the first couple of hours at Bishops Bowl this morning, I was doing just that, fairly sure today would be a good time to wax lyrical about the 'blank' (the fish-less session that everyone suffers from time to time, and a particular feature of winter fishing). I'm almost certain the phrase 'that's why it's called fishing, not catching' would have been deployed at some point.

But no. Refusing to be daunted by the cold gusty wind and the fact that no one else was catching on Walworth Lake, I gradually fined down my terminal tackle, switched from double to single maggot, reduced the quantity of feed but increased the frequency, and then, as a last throw of the dice, moved to the next swim. Bingo! A bite.

It was as bizarre a bite as I can remember, and certainly the slowest. Although just a centimetre or so of the float was showing above the water, it seemed to take an age to slide away, almost a bite in slow motion. When I struck there was a bend in the rod but absolutely no attempt at escape - inevitably the culprit was a modest (but welcome) skimmer.

But there was better to come. Barely had the float settled back in the water than it shot up a good few centimetres and I struck into something altogether more combative - a beautifully marked 3/4lb perch.

Five minutes later I had a half-pound roach on the bank, and ten minutes after that I nearly lost my rod as the world's shortest but chunkiest F1 carp managed to self-hook itself against the float and set off for the middle of the lake. I was loading a catapult at the time and was only alerted as the rod left my lap and the clutch started to tick! Any float angler who convinces themselves they don't approve of self-hooking rig is sadly delusional - this is not the first time I've had a self-hooking float take!

In between these I lost one foul hooked fish (a fairly substantial scale was all I had left of that one), and was taken into the reeds and broken by what I can only presume was a whale of some kind.

This is a perennial problem in winter on a water like Walworth. In order to get the bites I was down to a size 22 hook on a 1lb 10oz hook length, but among the roach, bream, perch and small carp I was fishing for there are some hard fighting tench to perhaps 6lb and, even more dramatically, some big carp to just short of 30lb!

On summer tackle you have a chance (although I've never got one of the big carp out), but on skinny winter kit you can forget it. The secret to successful winter fishing is, I think, to concentrate on enjoying the ones you can get.

A smile as wide as the fish was long

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:13:00 +0000

Although I'd decided last week to give the Leam a rest for a while, a last minute change of heart saw me back there again this morning.

Instead of the relative simplicity of a commercial stillwater, my heart told me it wanted at least one more crack at finding a 'proper' fish on my favourite stretch running through the nature reserve and into Newbold Comyn.

It was unseasonably warm (12.5 degrees), a fact that became uncomfortably apparent as I trekked a mile or more in full winter gear to reach the very end swim. A strong upstream wind had all but stopped or even reversed the surface flow along the entire stretch, and even here, where the river narrowed to just a few feet, there was no flow to be seen.

It seemed perverse in the circumstances to set up a stick float, so I selected a small insert waggler, set it up with a size 22 on a 1lb 10oz bottom (my lightest ever rig I think), and set it to drift just an inch or so off the bottom of a slight downstream depression.

A steady trickle of maggots soon attracted the roach bites, but nothing of any size was coming out. And then, bang, I suddenly found myself wishing for a slightly less delicate rig as something put a not-inconsiderable bend in my light match rod. Having steered it out of the nearest reed bed with a combination of power and prayer, I then became acutely aware of just how narrow this stretch of river was - to get this fish into my landing net I was going to have to draw it through a gap in the reeds no more than four foot wide.

I already suspected this was a chub rather than the stellar roach I'd initially hoped for, and it pretty much confirmed this suspicion by going straight for those reeds as I drew it into the channel. It was clearly not a giant by chub standards, but it was the best fish I'd managed to hook and hang on to over many weeks on this stretch of river and I was desperate to bring it home. One last burst of prayer was deemed necessary as I teased it from this second reedy refuge and it was in!

I swear to you that no one has ever been happier to see a 13oz chub. You should have seen my grin. It is by a margin the best river fish I've had since I returned to fishing last year (because 95% or more of that time has been spent on lakes). It is also, perhaps a little bizarrely, a PB - for some reason I just don't recall catching any chub at all as a child angler.

OK, the fact that it wasn't quite a pound was initially disappointing (it was quite a long lean creature). But since it had put up a good fight on light tackle, scared the life out of me with two mad plunges into the reeds, and nearly straightened my delicate little size 22 hook, perhaps that was just as well.

If true specimen sized fish really mattered to me then I'm sure I'd have given up on the Leam before I'd even started. But that's just not me. I'm more than happy simply to be on my favourite river, watching the birds and increasing the quality of fish I catch ounce by ounce, week by week. Mind you, I'll be even more happy if the fish that finally breaks the pound mark for me is a roach! Now that really would be worth a grin.

Gloomy news on threatened freshwater species

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 09:56:00 +0000

This story caught my eye on the BBC website this morning: EU sounds alarm for threatened freshwater species.

Not great news - 37% of all freshwater fish species are on the EU's threatened species list (not to mention 44% of molluscs, 23% of amphibians, 19% of reptiles, 15% of mammals and dragonflies and 13% of birds).

I was saying to the wife only last night: "If more people were anglers the rivers would be in a damn sight better condition than they are today. Nobody loves the water more than an angler."

Let's hope we can spread the love.

An early winter wonder

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:53:00 +0000

An early winter wonder indeed, and probably not what you are expecting... a low-flying swallow dashing past my car on the Longbridge roundabout near Warwick.

On the occasion of the first frost of winter I couldn't help but think he's cutting it a bit fine. I know some swallows have been found overwintering on the south coast in recent years, or slightly more commonly the south of Spain (as opposed to South Africa where the majority go), but I hope that this fella gets somewhere warm before his food and energy run out completely.

Slightly more in keeping with the season was the delightfully rosy male bullfinch that was flitting around my garden this morning. Time to get the feeders out.

Addendum: apart from that swallow, the frost has clearly triggered 'winter mode' in the bird world - my lunchtime walk just gave me the closest possible view of a redpoll, my first of the year.

One roach wonder

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:14:00 +0000

At last, a 'proper' autumn morning - cold, misty and damp underfoot.

One of my favourite local fisheries, Bishops Bowl, featured in Angler's Mail this week so I was tempted to spend the morning there on The Marshes or Walworth lakes. But never one to leave a job half done (well not often), I found myself back on the Leam determined to find a better stamp of fish than I'd managed so far - nothing ambitious, perhaps a half pound roach, perch or chub.

The early signs weren't great. As well as the overnight cold snap, the river was if anything slower than ever, with just a few swims showing any real flow at all. So I set up on my favourite bend, running a (very slow) stick float off the 'shallows' (only 7ft or so deep here!) and trickling maggots in just 2 or 3 at a time. And lo! The third trot through recorded a nice solid bite and I was into my best roach of the Leam campaign so far - not the half-pounder I was hoping for, but achingly close at 7oz.

After another hour with nothing else happening on the maggots, I started to go through the reserve baits. Nothing on lobworm, and despite some early twitches on the float I couldn't get any takers on bread flake or punch either.

With my feet starting to feel the cold (could I have some Muckboots for Christmas please Santa?) I had a quick dip in another swim on my way back to the car and then called it a day.

So, only one fish to show for two and a bit hours of fishing, and although bit by bit I do seem to be finding the better fish, progress has been painfully slow. Everyone I've spoken to agrees that the river desperately needs some rain, so until that arrives I may take a few week's break from the Leam.

Great white bird in sky

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:17:00 +0000

As work has got busier and busier through the autumn, so lunches have got briefer and briefer. Truncated perhaps, but not totally unrewarding...

Today's lunchtime stroll was little more than a quick turn round the block, but as I walked through a little housing estate on the edge of Henley-in-Arden, I looked up and rapidly went through the birdwatcher's silent mantra of identification: "it's a long way off, but that looks a bit different... pointy wings, perhaps a big gull... if it just flies this way... OK, long legs, possibly a heron at a weird angle... no, still got pointy wings... surely not a... it is, it's all white, it's an egret!"

So there you go, my first lunchtime egret (I presume little egret, it didn't come close enough to confirm if it wasn't (although it did look suspiciously large...)) since July 2006 when I found one at Wooten Wawen. Last seen heading towards Claverdon, so keep an eye out on waterways near you.

After that it was down to the little river for a satisfying crunch through some fallen leaves. No siskin in the alders yet, but I did see some little chublets racing for cover in the deeper leaf-filled glides. No sign of the big boys this time - hopefully I might find a few on the Leam this weekend...

Further up the Leam

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 21:50:00 +0000

In the last couple of weeks I have managed to find time for a trio of trips to the various swims I found during my walk along the Newbold Comyn stretch of the Leam.

Starting my first session on the weediest, narrowest and hardest to reach of them all, it was nice just to see a stick float trotting through at the decent lick after weeks of watching a stationery waggler just a mile downstream.

A regular tickle of maggots soon had the bites coming reasonably frequently, mainly small roach at first, but then a couple of tiny chublet. After a couple of hours of this I moved down to swim two, a wider stretch but again with a bit of pace on the bend.

Here the frequency dropped, but the quality improved - a slightly larger chub, a better roach and, finally, as I trotted a whole lobworm through to finish the session, a scrappy little perch.

The next session was just a snatched 90 minutes with only a loaf of bread at hand to tackle the same swim. Feeding mashed bread and trotting punch resulted in nothing, but switching to flake on the bomb brought a strong, unmissable bite on the tip. I missed it and went home.

This morning's session was longer and was another mixed bag, with a few modest fish punctuated by some rank bad angling (the highlight being the 15 minutes I spent rigging up a sliding float, only to lose the lot in the tree opposite first cast out). The final tally was five small roach, a couple of small perch and this 'giant' - a 6oz perch which was the fish of the day.

Fish aside, it was the most beautiful morning on the Leam, the autumnal reds and yellows resplendent in the autumn sunlight, and the occasional flash of brilliant colour as kingfishers and bullfinches darted by.

I may not have caught much, but couldn't have been happier.

Where's all the water gone?

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 20:57:00 +0000

Inspired by yesterday's 'triumph' on the Leam, I decided to walk the Leamington Angling stretches of the river upstream from Welches Meadow.

Starting at the Newbold Comyn car park I followed it up through the nature reserve, discovering a few things as follows:

1. It's still slow, low and deep, but there are a handful of places where it narrows, bends or shallows up a bit and actually finds a bit of flow - most of these look fishable and quite inviting.
2. Even if the fishing turns out to be poor, it's worth it at this time of year for the scenery and the wildlife - this one hour walk turned up kingfishers, bullfinches, green and great spotted woodpecker and a pair of noisy nuthatch.
3. We're seriously in need of some water - the picture shows the sight that greeted me from the hide at the far end of the reserve. In case it's not obvious, that's supposed to be a shallow pool of water, a 'scrape', with an island in the middle.

Further upstream and into the Offchurch Bury estate, the river takes on a different character - narrower, shallower and faster. It screams 'chub' at every bend - although the ones I saw were of course holding station in a private / no-fishing stretch of course. Still, if they're here and they're downstream at the Princes Drive weir, then they'll be elsewhere along the river.

And the answer is...

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:52:00 +0000

... a single bronze maggot on a size 20 and ultra fine hook length. Pretty much what the answer always was really.

Sorry, I've run ahead of myself a bit there. That answer relates of course to the question that's been driving me mad for the best part of a month - how the hell do I catch anything in the Leam?

Well, I was half way through my third attempt at Welches Meadow when it dawned on me. In fact Inspiration came from an unlikely source - a large branch that I'd snagged and dragged out. It was alive with tiny worms / larvae, which kind of made me realise (durr) that my array of bread, corn, soft pellets and pastes might not be the normal menu on this under fished and 100% natural waterway. Too much of my fishing since I started again last year has been spent on commercials - hence the heavy lines, biggish hooks and man made baits.

So, with the inspiration that naturals might be the way forward here, I fined everything down, dug out the maggots I had leftover from Wednesday on the Avon and lo! we had fish.

I swear no one in the history of fishing has ever been more pleased to see a 3oz roach. It was beautiful, as was the 5oz roach that followed it, a similarly sized perch and the stream of tiny chublet that rallied to the cause. Not much to show for three long mornings on the Leam perhaps, but the 'duck' was broken. The bigger fish are surely now there for the taking.

Warwick's 'hidden' river

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 22:15:00 +0000

The River Avon hardly comes as a surprise if you live near Warwick and Stratford-upon-Avon. For the latter, the clue is in the name. For the former, this big ol' river runs through the main park, through the heart of the main tourist attraction, and off into the countryside. Effectively both towns are built on this one mighty waterway.

And yet...

It turns out there is a large chunk of the thing that is decidedly hidden, at least to me and I suspect many of the others who drive over it every day as they pass between Leamington and Warwick. For all of my years of walking, cycling, birdwatching and photographing around Leamington and Warwick, I had never discovered the point where the Avon is joined by the Leam and then runs, if not in secret then certainly pretty discreetly, for more than a mile until it emerges into the wide open spaces of St Nicholas Park.

What do I mean by discreetly? Well, from what I have always called the Potterton's road bridge it runs roughly parallel with Emscote Road for a while, down behind small estates of houses, past electricity stations and sub-stations, underneath a couple of bridges and the Grand Union aqueduct (the picture is the view from that elevated viewpoint). The path is muddy, narrow and overgrown in places, but the swims and fishing platforms are well kept and the river itself looks full of promise. So with one day's annual leave left in the year, I decided to tackle it.

Armed with a day ticket from Bailey's of Warwick, a pint of bronze and various back-up baits, I settled down at the road bridge end of the stretch in the certain knowledge that I hadn't fished a river quite like this for what seemed like a hundred years (probably nearer 30 years, but who's counting?).

The first hour was spent reacquainting myself with the challenges of a fast moving stick float - mending the line, messing about with different lines and lengths of run, running through at different depths and so on. Once I'd got all that out of my system and settled into a rhythm (feeding just a dozen or maggots to the head of the run, pausing before the cast then letting the float run my hook bait into the now primed fish), it didn't take long to start catching - first a small roach, then a chublet (my first chub since returning to fishing last year), and then pretty much alternating roach and chub with every cast. Nothing bigger than my hand, nothing to put a bend in the rod, but that wasn't ever the point - I was just pleased to be fishing this way.

After an hour or so of this I decided to move on, keen to try the other end of the stretch - slower, wider and perhaps home to the bigger chub? Well, that's what I'd heard, so I settled down near the railway bridge with my gear suitably beefed up and my expectations heightened. Hardly caught a thing of course - a couple of nicer perch on the maggot feeder (heading towards half a pound or so), but nothing else as I ran maggot, bread, meat and pellets through what looked like the perfect swim.

So lesson #2 for the day. Having spent the morning reacquainting myself with stick float fishing, I'd now spent the afternoon reacquainting myself with just how hard seemingly perfect rivers can fish.

'My' River Leam

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:49:00 +0000

The River Leam has been part of my life for 20 years or so. I've lived near it (hard not to in Leamington of course), I've walked its length from Leamington to Offchurch on many many occasions, I've birdwatched around it, and all in all I've grown rather fond of it.

The only thing I hadn't done with the river was fished it, something I resolved a couple of months ago to put right.

The first step was a couple of early morning sessions before work in August, trotting bread punch or maggot down a slow moving stretch up near the Grand Union Canal. These two sessions were very enjoyable indeed - the bread produced pristine hand-sized roach, and the maggot generally some scrappy little perch. But I suspected that autumn might be the the time to really tackle the Leam, so I put it to one side until October.

My view while lying on the
bank of the River Leam - a
completely inanimate tip rod.

A bit of rain, I thought. A bit of flow. Perfect for fishing the sections that I know best, down through Newbold Comyn and Welches Meadow. Hmmm.

So, early October has arrived, it's nice and warm and there's been no rain at all. The Leam through Welches Meadow, far from being in 'full flow' (it never exactly races by) is completely static. In fact, thanks to a slight westerly breeze, the float was actually running slowly upstream for most of the morning.

This was my second of two consecutive Sunday's on the river, similar in terms of weather and conditions, identical in terms of results - zip, zilch, nothing at all. A nice opportunity to practice with a slider float (not something I've used seriously before), a pleasant place to sit (or even lie down) and birdwatch (several kingfisher fly-bys, grey wagtails, and today my first fieldfares of the year), but just one twitchy un-hittable bite on the tip to show for nearly 10 hours fishing.

There are plenty of reports of decent bream, roach, tench, eels and even carp in this stretch of river, plus the predators. And I will find them - eventually.

'Shall we call it a draw then?'

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:53:00 +0000

Do you know, despite suffering a convincing fishing 'defeat' at the hands of my father, enduring the world's worst bacon roll, and receiving the news that England were being stuffed by the French at the Rugby World Cup, I really enjoyed by morning at Stanborough Lakes.

My family has a lot of history with this mid-sized water near Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire. Back in the late 70s and early 80s my dad was something of a carp pioneer there, experimenting with new fangled baits like 'boilies' (did they ever catch on by the way?) and ever more inventive / desperate rigs (my favourite was the ice cube loops - I must get the details off him some time).

And the winner is... dad,
with this 16lb 4oz mirror carp

It was inevitable, then, that my brother and I would fish here a bit when we were young, along with the rivers and canals around Watford which made up our learning grounds. My dad and brother continued to fish Stanborough fairly regularly over the years, scoring a lot of good fish along the way as the carp and bream grew steadily. While a double was a good fish 'back in the day', there are plenty of doubles and twenties to be had these days, along with some low thirties (I think the record is just under 35lbs).

So, would my dad's experience and expertise pay off, or could I show him a thing or two having had much more recent bank time? Well, sadly it was to be age over enthusiasm. An hour or so into the morning one of dad's vintage reels screamed into life, accompanied by a not-so-vintage bite alarm. After a decent struggle the fish finally came to the surface and we instantly agreed - 'a good mid-double'. Not a bad guess at all - it was 16lb 4oz on the bank.

I tried everything to catch up - pva bags, method feeder, cage feeder, boilies, pellets, meat, even an hour ledgering flake on the little river that ran behind our peg. Total result - one rather feeble skimmer for which I was woefully over-gunned on the method feeder.

So, take your pick. Either dad won with 16lb 4oz to 4oz, or it was a 1-1 draw. I say draw ;-)

Harbingers of winter

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 19:30:00 +0000

I heard them as soon as I got out of the car in Henley-in-Arden this morning - the high seep, seep of redwings.

Sure enough, there they were: two of them struggling south / south-west against a blustery wind.

Always a joy to see, of course, but a sobering reminder that the best of the year is very definitely behind us now (Indian Summer not withstanding). I'm fishing a big exposed lake in Hertfordshire tomorrow morning (Stanborough), so time to dig the thermals out I think.

OK, it's official - this is no longer just a birding blog

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:31:00 +0000

The time has come to finally admit to myself that I can't sustain a purely birdwatching blog any longer. There, I've said it.

The truth is that I've been doing less and less 'proper' birdwatching for a couple of years now, and that has been increasingly reflected in these pages. More and more often I have found myself referring to bird sightings in and among more general notes about the natural history around me - often birds I've seen while doing something else, whether it be cycling, walking or fishing.

Not that my love of birds has diminished in any way. I still get as much pleasure as ever from them, whether the sparrows in my garden or the black-necked grebe at Napton.

It's just that my time is spread fairly thinly these days, and I have to admit that fishing is taking more and more of it. And that is why The Hornet's Nest is about to be reborn as a fishing + birding blog (plus all other natural history that fascinates me along the way).

I don't know of anyone will still be interested, but at least the change will mean more regular postings!

The unexpected lifer

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:52:00 +0000

In the dying hour of a glorious late September day I rushed to Napton Reservoir to see if I could finally set eyes on the long-staying black-necked grebe.

The good news is that I did, the finding made considerably easier for the fact that it was a) less than 10 yards from the shore, and b) enjoying the admiring attention of three birders from Nuneaton.

The grebe was beautiful despite its winter plumage, the red eyes being its most striking feature. Sadly a quick stroll around the water turned up nothing else remarkable, the best being half a dozen pochard, a few skylarks and yellowhammers here and there, and even a little flock of linnets which I don't see nearly often enough.

Napton Hill was all but silent, so I returned home to attend to the blog... only to discover that the black-necked grebe was my first lifer in more than than a year, something I had completely failed to realise. And what is more, it was one which I predicted back in 2006 might turn up at Napton - see here for My Secret Patch Wishlist.

Don't you just love it when a plan comes together, albeit somewhat belatedly and unintentionally!

The hallmarks of autumn

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:15:00 +0000

One by one the hallmarks of autumn have been falling into place.

The first sign of the season was very punctual indeed. On September 1st I drew open the curtains at the back of my house to catch sight of the season's first early morning mist.

As if alerted by this starting gun, little pockets of swallows and house martins started to gather here, there and everywhere - small fast-feeding families low over river, lake or meadow, preparing for the long journey ahead.

As I gathered the apple harvest in my garden just a few days later I was joined by a handful of juvenile chiffchaffs. These are a regular find in my garden at this time of year, but almost never at any other.

Elsewhere t'internet is full of news of exotic migrant waders and seabirds at hotspots like the nearby Draycote Reservoir (including several manx shearwaters, which I would greatly have liked to have seen). Even litle Napton Reservoir has played host to a black necked grebe for the last couple of weeks.

As the weather has slowly worsened, the temperature of the the water has also dropped notably. This makes the fishing unreliable at best, and without a warming sun it becomes almost impossible to spot the chub in the litte streams I stroll along most lunchtimes.

And of course the darkness, the only bit of winter I truly dislike, draws inexorably nearer - sunset is 7.15pm at the moment and retreating at a rate of knots.

Hot. Damn Hot.

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:53:00 +0000

It's early August and Warwickshire is hot. Hot and desert dry.

Although the weather of the last few months seems to have involved a lot of rain, it clearly hasn't been enough to counteract the effects of the record-breaking dry spring we had.

The soil is dry and cracked. Lush green grass has been replaced with impressionist smears of yellow, brown, khaki, ochre and every imaginable variation thereof. With the birds lying low after breeding, the fields around me are eerily quiet, with a silence broken only by the occasional tweet, the flap-flap of a wood pigeon taking to the air and the low, persistent hum of a million grass-bound insects. Often the only sign of movement on my lunchtime strolls comes from the few butterflies and bees that are willing to brave the midday sun.

Unsurprisingly, the waterways are low, slow and gin clear. The narrrow, shallow brooks which criss-cross the countryside are currently a great deal more narrow and shallow than normal. I lingered by one today, finding a pool which was just a touch deeper than elsewhere along that stretch. Sure enough, there were the fish - a dozen chub lazily holding position against a soporific current, the largest of them perhaps 10 inches in length. Resisting the urge to rush back to the car for my ever-handy travel rod, I instead stood stock-still and simply watched them.

They were entrancing and calming, and in the bright midday sun they were as clearly visible as wild fish ever become to us land-dwellers. Of course that in turn made me equally visible to them - and with one slight turn of my head I sent them dashing upstream, downstream, hither and thither in search of cover.

However low it might be, water is the key to nature watching at this time of year. While the fields might be empty, sites such as Brandon Marsh and Draycote Reservoir (and dozens of smaller, less well-known waterways) will be home to big numbers of dragonflies, butterflies (and moths), a wide array of birds including migrant waders and raptors, and (of course) those fish.

So water is always worth seeking out in high summer - just don't forget to glance into the water as well as looking all around it!

Bird of the week: Red kite (Milvus milvus), the most graceful bird of prey we have (in my ever-so-humble). Not that I got round to mentioning it in this post, but one flew low over an Oxfordshire campsite at the weekend and give us our own personal display, not long after a Spitfire fighter plane had very generously done very much the same thing.

Devonian delights

noreply@blogger.com (Hornet) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 17:40:00 +0000

A family holiday in Devon gave me the chance for just a little birding with, in particular, a trip to Yarner Wood.

This ancient oak forest is an absolute delight, with wooded valleys, heathland, rivers and waterfalls running red with copper mineral, and an absolute abundance of the woodland birds that are under so much pressure in this increasingly tree-less land of ours.

First up were the singing wood warblers, followed by a striking male redstart. Moving out on to the heath we found a tree pipit singing and parachuting between two trees; moving back into the woods there were good views of a pair of spotted flycatchers.

My son had a great time with the challenge trail that English Nature had laid out for half term - and I learned some interesting insect facts along the way. A wonderful and real hands-on experience of nature for any child - recommended.

Of course I was disappointed not to have connected with any of the 50 pairs of pied flycatchers in the wood - and equally thrilled when a male landed on a branch right in front of my car as I rolled out of the car park! Bingo - the 'holy trinity' of oak wood birds achieved (redstart, wood warbler, pied fly).

What a happy boy.

Bird of the day: Pied Flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca), a fantastic little bird which is all but impossible to see unless you head west or north. This was only my second or third, and my first in England (the others having been in Wales).