Down the creek

      A most pleasant summer evening and there's hardly a ripple on the creek, a small river that's three hundred yards away over the field in front of the house. I'm meeting a good friend who lives opposite and right to next to the creek and we intend to fish, shoot the breeze and above all relax.
      The creek holds pike, zander  perch, roach, rudd, bream, tench, carp, ruffe and eels but the target for tonight are the roach and rudd. A good mixed fishery that we tend to ignore because it's too close.

      I'm using stewed wheat and hemp as loose feed, a good combination at this time of year, and until the light began to fade at eight o'clock the fish were biting steadily but as the light began to recede the stewed wheat lost its attraction. A visibility problem?
      None of the fish landed, seven roach, four rudd and two bream were large but they were good fun for three hours. I must have missed over forty bites particularly when I changed to bread as the dusk drew in.
      This may well be a reasonable indicator of my all-round angling incompetence and receding skill-set rather than the difficulty of catching the native fish. It comes to us all.

      However a relaxing evening in good company in lovely surroundings, farmers I know driving past in their monster tractors and pick-up trucks giving a cheery wave, well it was all very, very mellow.
      None of the fish caught were massive but they put a bend in the rod. My friend Ian had a beautiful rudd of a pound or more so all was well with the world. Another indicator was that large perch were chasing fry and the odd pike was hunting too, now that does sharpen the focus a little.