Tuesday 25th August

Not so much going on this week...

I did get out fishing last Wednesday to Wydon Water, an attractive venue at Hexham that took me a while to find.

Apparently it has been fishing well but on the day in question was distinctly 'off'.  Two anglers in the end swims did OK in an easterly breeze but everyone else was scratching around.  Slightly further along, my swim basically livened up for an hour around lunchtime when I caught five small roach and a small male tench on more or less in succession but that was about it for the day.  I gambled for more tench in the margins on sweetcorn but didn't get a touch and could see the bait lying untouched when I packed up in drizzle a bit after 5.00 p.m.  The roach were on double maggot and the tench on maggot and caster.  It seemed to me the roach were taking from midwater but nothing happened when I reduced the depth from 6.5' to 4'.

Tench

My initial impression is that Wydon is a small fish water.  Everyone seems to measure success in terms of weight and even the tench I got was nowhere near 1lb.  Still it was the first I've had since the two seven pounders I got at Kelhead Quarry, predating this blog.  And as far as I gathered there were only two caught on the day, so still worthy of minor celebration.  Quite pretty too.

A bike ride followed on Wednesday, when I rested at Ebchester watching several swallows hunting in the fields below.  It struck me how few I've seen this year.  Also it sort of had the feeling they were getting ready to migrate.  I didn't notice much more as I was feeling slightly unwell and headed for home a bit earlier than planned.  Still there were a few peacocks, small tortoiseshells and small whites around.

Small tortoiseshells were in the garden this week too but I haven't seen peacocks for a few days.  Large whites have been around a fair bit, mainly males.  In fact it struck me that I wasn't sure if I was misidentifying the females.  I noticed one in particular and saw it was a bit different to the small whites.  A little research showed it was indeed a female.

Female Large White

One rare gardening side note is that I seem to have rescued  the rhodedendron I was given two years ago.  It was struggling when planted out and getting heavily bitten.  The solution has been to repot it in compost dowsed in vinegar to remove the alkaline content.

I'm afraid though that I'm going to have to give up feeding the birds for a while.  The titbits they leave behind are attracting rats too frequently and I think they must be breeding nearby.