Passing it back!

Had a nice session at Ryton last week, just a float rod and a sleeper some bread, sweetcorn and a few borrowed, two week old, maggots. We were on the road bank, what used to be pegs one and two and fishing a rod length out, I was still setting up when Barry pulled in his first Perch and he had another two before I put a bait in the water. It didn't take too long to catch up and we were level pegging for a while, Barry had a good take on his sleeper which he said felt like a Tench but it shook the hook, not too long after I had a nice Tench on my sleeper followed by another one on the float which put me ahead, it's been a while since my float rod bent into a nice Tench.

 

Classic Ryton Tench

We kept experiencing quiet spells which was due to a Grebe swimming in close and scaring off the fish, he kept coming back, disturbing the swim and sending up plumes of bubbles making it look like a mass of Tench were feeding in front of us, at one point I had a lovely slide away take and struck into what I thought was a good fish but the Grebe had caught my line. Visions of being stabbed to death went through my mind as I wound the bird in but it broke free.

 

We both carried on catching and I had a couple of nice surprises, a skimmer Bream which I'd heard of a few coming out but I'd never seen myself, Bream at Ryton are a bit of a rarity. Then I had a lovely slow take on the float that left me puzzled, I didn't know what it was then a lovely Perch broke the surface, it was only around a pound but my favourite fish of the session.

Nice Perch.

Just as we started to pack up, Barry was joking whilst putting a jumper on over his head, "I'll just pull in this twenty pounder" he said at which point his reel went into melt down, It was quite funny seeing him pick up the rod with a jumper half on and scratching around looking for his glasses. It was a good Carp and it broke surface several times as it tore around in front of us, Barry still had his reels clutch locked up from a previous session so the fish pulled the rod into an alarming curve, I felt victory slip away until he shouted "it's off".

 

The duck is now on it's second camping holiday in north Wales, this time, with Barry! (Lucky Duck!!)