A nice night for a pleasure chuck

Yes dear sluicers (and sluicing watchers - of whom there appear to be many these days), the cabin fever was descending on me when I decided enough was definitely enough and I had to go fishing. The old pork pneumonia is now a fading memory (thankfully), so I restocked the old bait boxes and headed for the sluice.

The tractor-mounted mowers had been down again this morning and I played 'flat peg lottery' - eventually stopping when I found one. It was peg nine I settled on, although this - like a lot of others has fallen foul of the curse of thoughtless anglers. The dim-wits seem to think its a great idea to tread down the bank in front of the paving slabs almost to the water line, which means you've got no chance of getting your footplate legs down to the remaining turf. Simple common sense would tell these imbociles that the bank should be left intact for everyone, but - like trampling out 'half-pegs' between the ones already there to put more rods out - they don't give a rats arse for rules or other anglers. Sorry if that stirs-up a hornets nest, but it's there for all to see and I'll be damned if I'm ignoring it.

Anyway - back to the fishing. It was really bright (for a change) so I didn't see the point in making this a practice session. I mucked about for a couple of hours with some Colmic Jolly floats I'd had in a drawer for a few months. I made up about a dozen rigs and spent quite a good while with each, making sure they were sitting right. I even caught a few fish on them, which is always a good sign.

I eventually settled on one and concentrated on trying to get the fish feeding. The pike at the foot of my keepnet weren't helping matters - I managed to keep the hooked fish out of their way, but it was a close call on a couple of occasions. It was all roach for an hour and a half until a hybrid around half a pound joined the gathered masses in the ol' Polyrub. this was followed by around half a dozen more, as well as a few small skimmers; nothing of any size was apparent for the whole session really.

I packed up as the dew started to form - with between 8- 9lb of silvers. Nowt showstoppingly good, but a very pleasant way to spend the evening.

Back inside to the Caffreys and chicken fu-yung.