Afloat Again.

 

 Back on the Rudd again with Brian on Saturday just gone. A trip that appeared to hang in the balance owing to the typical British weather, with heavy rain and thunderstorms forecast we wondered whether sat in a boat with carbon fishing rods in the middle of the fens was a good idea. One thing we have learned over the years is that A: neither of us are sensible when it comes to decisions made regarding angling, B: the weather forecasts are rarely accurate. 

 With such "Fentastic" angling on offer we decided that we were going to go anyway! 3am the alarm went off, 0320 I was showered and car loaded, 0330 I was leaving my house for Brian's in S.London and by 0545 we were at our launch site, serenaded by birds still going through their morning rigours.

 The really early start was in anticipation that we may have our visit curtailed, which we would do if things got too close for comfort, straight away we hunted down fish among the eel grass where we would see fish darting in and out of, the bigger looking to seek cover under the miles of reed and pads systems which they use so effectively to remain concealed, but when one gives its position away we would try to get their confidence up by feeding copious amounts of crust and aim for fish we perceived as being "decent".

Mint 1.8

 It was a slow start with some nice fish being caught but nothing big which was slightly frustrating but we know very well how quickly that all changes, but they are very pretty fish and size almost doesn't matter!  

A nice one of 1.10

 The cloud started to build around 11am and thought that the system was closing in on us and that we were going to have think about heading for the launch site, some 3miles from where we were fishing at the time, coupled with boisterous swans we had parts of the system isolated from us which was quite frustrating but angry cobs in an inflatable rib is no match.

 Thankfully I did find a bigger fish which settled on 2lb 1oz which we hoped would be the start of a good run of better fish. 

That's better :) 

 We pressed on with our hunt as the clouds slowly gathered weight and streaks could be seen getting closer and then....

 It trashed it down! Mercifully, not for long and lighter clouds could be seen beyond the system that was currently dumping on us, with that we decided to ride it out and see if we could get some more better fish as the smaller fish were really feeding hard and the larger fish seemed to be hiding away from us.

 I slowly edged my way to the total of 18 Rudd, amazingly less than half were over a pound, with only the one over two-pounds, a big fish day it was not, however its always great fun powering around the fens with Brian and just generally fecking around talking nonsense all day!  

Lush!

 Also for the ornathologists out there here's a video of a Bittern flying past us in the boat.

Bittern in flight