Crack

Saturday 30^th November. River Weaver.

River looked ace during the morning dog walk and with a hard frost the night before, a trip to the canal didn’t particularly inspire me. Whatever, I rocked up at 1330, sorted myself out, screwed on the landing net to the handle (last used in April when I landed a tench) and ’cccrrrrunch’. I’d cracked the end of the handle near the thread last time out, wrapped it with gorilla tape thinking it would be sound, anyway, it wasn’t. Screwing the net in made the crack worse, and the thread was just a tad wobbly. 

I persevered trotting swim one, nada after 15 runs through. Swim two, after a dozen runs I hooked an average chub a long way down, got it to the net, lifted it out, bog standard 2lb8oz, however the net was now even more wobbly, the thread was ready to pop out. Gahhh.

Home is only 5 mins away, so I made THE call, and, thanks to the fortunate one, within 20 minutes a spare landing net pole and handle were at my disposal. Although, strictly speaking, given the time of day, good weather, driving conditions and lack of traffic, it should have been with me within 10 minutes, so clearly some improvement needed on her behalf, but I’ll let it slide… this time.

Back to another swim, I had several runs down, lost a few hooklinks to new underwater snags that have arrived since the recent floods, and basically just couldn’t get a rhythm or pattern going. Fed the line well, varied the depth and shotting, but couldn’t hook anything on striking those odd times when the float did dip. Then another hooklength loss just on dark saw me off, I simply couldn't be arsed to tie another for the sake of a few minutes more fishing.

I’d have loved to have stayed on watching a tip for an hour as the frost and mist descended, but taking 2 rods when roving never feels right, suffice to say today was one of them days. Maybe next time.