I am on call this weekend so as a rule, except in summer when I can fish the club water at Pendreich and can leave any time, I don’t fish. The risk of the pager going off just after I have bought a permit and set up my gear is too high. However this weekend I was encouraged to take a chance and go out, by my wife. It’s a bit of a story this but I will try and keep it relatively short, we have a 4 year old Boxer dog called Chester and he has been drinking a lot of water this last week or so, so was taken down the vet, one thing led to another , and in short, it turns out he has Lymphoma (Cancer). He was started on Chemotherapy a day later and after a day or two feeling sorry for himself (understandably) is doing OK for now. But my wife mentioned to the vet that he gets a lot of trout and the vet said to keep doing that as its excellent for dog’s generally but especially in his condition. The freezer is down to the last 4 bits of trout ( I have not been doing well this winter on the ‘bows) so a foraging session was required!
“Go get some Trout for the Chesa-man” was the order and I duly complied….
“Go get some Trout for the Chesa-man” was the order and I duly complied….
I decided to head over again to Swanswater as if I did get called out I was pretty sure Alastair would see me OK for time, if I had to leave and plus it wasn’t far from home if I had to dash home to logon for work.
Sunrise on a cold winters morning at Swanswater
Its been the first truly “proper” winter’s morning I think today and really it was a joy to be out before sunrise.
It did not make the fishing any easier though, I was warned the change in air pressure had been keeping the fish down and so it was to be. I had a couple of what seemed to be enthusiastic tugs early on in my session on the east bank and thought I would be able to get something but never touched another fish. Like last week I went through a bucket load of flies, methods,locations and lines and still nothing. There was one guy out on a boat and he managed two Tigers on a white “Rabbit” then he picked up a couple of Rainbows right off the bottom nearer the south end of the main pond. But that was it, all the fish seemed to be well out and very deep and were not coming out to play. I saw one other fish caught , using a fast sinking line and a lure on the bottom near the island and that was it.
Frozen rod rings and frosty flies at Swanswater
So over to the pond for the last hour or so, and again all the fish were clearly in one place and there were people fishing over them , but even then only a couple were caught. I think the Mill pond was fishing a little better and a few Tigers were recovered from there.
So another Sunday another blank! But exceptionally kindly, Alastair ( the owner of Swanswater) asked me if I wanted a fish, as he had a near double figure specimen that while in perfect condition had some sort of swimbladder problem and he was not going to put it in the pond, it would need to be despatched. Better if there was a use for it. So I left with a massive rainbow of 9lb 8ozs! A fully finned leviathan of a fish and it was a real shame it wasn’t going to have its day “in the arena” so to speak. But the story does not end there. Oh no- now it gets freaky!
F@$k me if it felt like it moved! No surely not?
I gutted the fish and took the head off then the tail and then went to slice it into steaks for the freezer. F@$k me if it felt like it moved! No surely not?
I took the knife to it again and the fish jumped through 90 degrees on the cutting board, from under my hand and started wriggling its fins! This was too freaky! I called my son to witness this. Everytime I got near the spine of the fish it started wriggling! I am not talking a little wiggle either- mor elike electric shock flexing. I was struggling to do this it was like slicing up someone live! Fortunately for reasons I won’t go into here, I was drawn away to the phone and by the time I got back ( about an hour) to finish slicing the trout the “poltergeist” activity seemed to have stopped!
