Eds first fishing trip

The blog resumes...
More or less a year since the last post... There was of course already a baby en-route even then, So the summer passed in a haze of DIY and staying close by as the little un's due date came and went. Eventually the little chap turned up and life will never be the same again. Eight months old as the season commenced I reckoned he was ready for his first fishing trip, so as the first friday of the season came around the camper van was loaded up with a few items not usually on my overnight manifest... car seat... travel cot...baby bottles... and of course, the most precious cargo, little Ed himself.


its a thumbs up to this fishing lark

  It was well into the evening as I splashed through the rutted gulleys of the road to The Pads. The first days of the season had been relatively productive, it had been quite well fished & with a handful of carp out so i was pretty excited, though I would not go so far as to say optimistic, this stretch has still never graced me with a carp.... I was suprised how quiet the stretch was, Dale was the only other angler, just settling in as I arrived he was yet to see any action. This years new addition - a decking jetty had created a fishable peg out of a derelict one, and was fortunately free... so I pulled up baited with a few handfuls of pellets and boilies and got two rods out.. all while Eds remained asleep in the back. That was it for the active fishing though, as feeding and changing ate up the next hour or so and it was nearing sundown before i could once more give the river my attention, this time with my new fishing buddy helping me watch the rods.

The river had  been fining down for a week or more, and the water was relatively clear, I could see a large shoal of bleak in midriver, dimpling the surface as they supped wave after wave of hatching insects. But the sun would set over silent alarms, and the unexpectedly chilly night under clear skies showed I had been woefully complacent in my selection of bedding & warm clothes. At first light I was up to get a brew on, and enjoy the solstice sunrise over the wooded hill with a conforting cup of tea in hand. I had considered waking the babe so he could see his first sunrise, but when it came to it I just didnt have the heart! He slept blissfully on until about 8am.

The morning passed without incident, and after we had both breakfasted I gave Ed's his first fishing lesson. Other club members began drifting in from about 9am... and with my peg in demand I was packed and away well before midday - a good solid blank, typical start tot a season.