30/01/2024 - A brief window of opportunity

Good riddance to disposable vapes! Not a day goes by without me picking up at least one on my morning walk. 

Whilst acknowledging the risk to children's health, there is a massive environmental cost to them as well. The figures are staggering - according to Greenpeace roughly 8 vapes a second are binned in the UK. The way they are manufactured make it difficult and expensive to recycle them, so in 2022 in the UK alone 40 tonnes of lithium was thrown out with disposable vapes - enough to make batteries for 5000 electric cars! You only have to feel the weight of one to realise how much non-recyclable resource is packed into them, ultimately just to be chucked in the bin, or worse still in the gutter, on the verge or in the ditch. Anyway, as well as discarded vapes, I've seen some nice sunrises on my morning jaunts recently. 

In contrast, today it was grey and gloomy and didn't look very promising at all, but by mid-day I could see some patches of blue sky from my office window and within another couple of hours it was clear and sunny. Not wanting to waste an opportunity and with a few maggots still remaining in the fridge I wrapped up what I was doing by three o'clock and was out the door asap. Was at the river and pulling into an empty car park within 15 minutes. Felt pretty warm as I got out of the car and there was a cloud of midgey looking things dancing in the afternoon sun. However, reckoned I only had about an hour and a half of usable light, so decided to split that evenly between the two swims I'd fished on my previous visit. 

Therefore quickly headed upstream, disturbing a little egret and then a kingfisher in the process, and dropped in behind the island once more. The river had fined down a little since last time, but again it was a case of targetting the steadier water away from the main flow, which was still tonking along the far bank. Waded out onto the gravel and started running the float down off the rod tip. Bumped a fish almost straight away, the hook coming back minus the double maggot, but a few trots later I had my first grayling in the net. By the time my 45 minutes were up I'd had another three and had even seen a decent fish rise on the surface, so was in two minds whether to stay or move to another spot. 

However, the sun had now gone behind the trees on the island behind me and it was difficult to keep track of the float in the ensuing gloom. I therefore upped sticks and legged it downstream to my second swim, where I added three more grayling as the light faded, although I was actually fishless for the last fifteen minutes. Was back home shortly after 5 o'clock and got the kettle on as the wife walked in from work. Whilst it's nice to have some grayling fishing on mydoorstep I just feel like I'm scratching an itch at the moment and I need to be putting in more time and travelling further afield if I want some better quality fish, but we'll have to see what the fickle weather wants to do and there's more wind on the way last time I checked!