Week 76

Week 76

Thirty-degree temperatures for much of the week, and fishing is hard to say he least. The weed has grown out of the water and is maintaining the level of a fast falling river. Several fish who have been resident on the bottom bends for some years are proving to be real timewasters, with only the finest tackle and perfectly presented fly inducing a take or a play and miss. Sedge numbers are building in the evening and surprisingly the Grayling have remained on the fin and feeding for much of the day. The fringe bordering the river is bursting with colour, purple spikes of Loostrife mix with swathes of forget me nots, yellow monkey flower and balsam.
There are good numbers of Butterflies in the meadows, although I couldn’t name half of them, and funny moths adorn our house wall in the morning. A Nightingale has been singing for much of the week and the Swallows and House Martins that bothered to turn up have all had broods, many of which have fledged.

This year we have once again been warned about the falling number of Bees across the country, for much of this week the perennial Geraniums and other garden dainties around here have been alive with Bees, I have not seen as many for a long time although I have not come across any nests yet, or seen any swarms hanging from trees.

The water temperature in the pond and the river is climbing slowly, algae has bloomed in the pond and it has been necessary to bash the water around with the pump to freshen it all up and add a little oxygen.

The July weed cut is imminent and it will be a heavy one and a tricky one, leave enough weed to hold the water up and cut enough to make areas hold fish. Cut too much and the water is lost and the weed replaced with blanket weed, cut too little and the river becomes impossible to fish. The reduction in flow over the past few weeks has been quite alarming; the Mill Stream is now a pond with all spare water pushed down the river. Fishing over the coming weeks promises to be difficult, but that is often the way with High Summer fishing, and is more often than not followed by a bumper September.

All of the Chickens have now been tagged and ASBOed after numerous incidents of anti social or over social behaviour, and reside in an enclosure with Gun Turrets on an island in the river. An Avian Alcatraz, it can only be a matter of time before one of the resourceful fowl starts chipping away at the walls with a tea spoon and swims across the bay to resume what it considers to be its rightful position on our neighbour’s antique dining table; a sentiment no doubt echoed by our elderly neighbour who would, I’m sure, insist on a dress code of Sage and Onion.