Week 75

Week 75

A tricky week for fishing, several days towards the back end of the weed cut completely unfishable. Everyone seems to have had a lot of weed to cut, and it took me longer than ever before to clear all of the cut weed down. Unfortunately during this time the inlet pipe to the fry stew became partially blocked and several hundred of this year’s fry perished. Further down river a keeper has lost hundreds of Brown Trout Stock fish after weed built up overnight. Fortunately we have still have enough fry for our needs, my friend downstream is desperately scouring the country for pound plus Brown Trout that seem to be in short supply. The weekend following the cessation of weed cutting saw a marked improvement in fishing with good hatches of Olives and fish taking spinners in the evening. Sedge numbers are building up and the fish feeding time is getting later and later in the day.

It is a fantastic year for Orchids, more and more push their way up in the meadows, and I put back the topping as increasing numbers appear. The Balsam Poplars are having a terrible time, several of the younger one’s have died and the more mature ones look decidedly tatty. All other trees are in the pink bar some bankside Alders that have lumps and bumps on the leaves that could be a virus.

With the warm temperatures the Flight pond has experienced another bloom of algae and is full of fry, mostly Perch, Roach and Rudd. The Tench and Bream have also been carrying out some late spawning, thrashing around in the margins of the island. My son scooped half a dozen of the Perch fry out to put in his fish tank, where they lasted five minutes, and now lie inside a Malawi Cichlid.

The Grass Snake has turned up again in the garden pond, Last time he/she was the size of a bootlace, now over a foot in length, it is wreaking havoc among the newly formed frogs.

One of our new hens that have never knowingly underlaid has been introducing herself to the inhabitants of the Parish. Not content with coming into our house through the patio doors, she has ventured further afield. My daughter opened her bedroom door at teenage dawn (about 10am) and found the errant hen pecking at the carpet on the landing. Our elderly neighbour rang the house on several occasions this week to inform us that our nosey hen was touring her kitchen or perched on the mantle above the fire. Unfortunately the wandering hen has had to be incarcerated, although our neighbour requested incinerated, after a calling card was left on her highly polished antique dining table.