Monday 13th July

To be honest this is a bit of a non-report, in that for a change, none of the things I was hoping for came about.

Last Wednesday I tried fishing Dissington Pond, but this time legering sweetcorn and worm feeder in the hope of bream or tench.  Conditions weren't wonderful as temperatures had dropped and the wind was from the East.  So I wasn't surprised not to catch but it did seem strange that I never got the merest touch of a bite, not even a liner.

However not much else was taken and towards the end another guy helpfully commented that the venue is 'hard work' on the feeder.  One factor I did notice was that the water is remearkably clear considering there is a farmer's field next to it. You'd have thought there might be a bit of algae around.

It went little better on Saturday when I again cycled to Stocksfield looking for white letter hairstreaks and the best I saw was another fine red admiral.  Again it really was not warm enough or sunny enough to expect much success.  I did at least take a look round the trees at Stocksfield Hall Enterprise Park and found there were a lot more elms there, some of which weren't to my inexperienced eye wych elms. So at least another area to search.

Yesterday I decided to check out Little Waters and Killingworth Lake as possible fishing venues.  Little Waters has clearly been neglected over the years and only two swims looked vaguely fishable.  The Lake is an obvious venue.  It has the reputation of being hard to fish and the most-used swims are a fair hike from the car park, inspiring me to order a tackle trolley.  I'd be interested to see how hair-rigged prawn would work as a possible novelty item, perhaps while trying for tiddlers on the short pole.

Small Tortoiseshell

No fish were taken while I was there but I did see a nice small tortoiseshell, a species that is clearly back in numbers, and managed a detour to my sister's where she showed me her impressive garden.

In my own garden there has been little new. Red admiral and green-veined white have been sighted.  A couple of visitors have become increasingly bold, namely a woodpecker, which I now think to be a juvenile, and the grey squirrel (pretty sure it's the same one) that shows increasingly little fear when I see him attacking the bird nuts. I managed to capture one such attack on the camera.  What I didn't notice at the time was the unperturbed blue tit feeding off the fatballs right nearby.