The plan was to meet someone in Beccles around midday but I’d be dropping the girls at school around 8:30 and there seemed little point in hanging around the house with the sun shining; I slung my drysuit in the boot and grabbed a couple of rods. Maybe the pike would be hungry?
The river was dirty, a take looked unlikely but with a few hours to kill it’d be a pleasant paddle all the same. I unstrapped my Scupper and pulled my gear on, launching off the pontoon and drifting downstream with a couple of Rapalas out, wriggling along hopefully close enough to a lurking predator with an empty stomach.
The water, being high, allowed me to travel without hooking up any weed but nothing was happening and I soon passed under the first bridge.
I saw a splash on the lefthand bank, it looked wrong and then, on the right I saw the angler sit down again. He’d cast right across the river because there’s never any fish anywhere else, is there. There were a bunch of them on the bank so I decided to turn and head back upstream rather than dick about playing slalom and setting off bite alarms as I trolled past.
Turning I realised quite how fast the flow was and had to dig a bit. The rods were twitching like crazy now, the acceleration of water in that direction really getting them to dance. Approaching the bridge the flow was even worse, it narrows here and the channelled flow was a good three knots, maybe more but it eased a bit once the river widened. Hell, my arse was getting cold though.
The thing is, I’d not stuck my undersuit on as I wasn’t intending to be a Michelin Man all day. I should have known, I’ve done winter paddles in jeans and drysuit before. There’s little worse! Back upstream I went, back past the launch point and then it occurred to me that I really couldn’t be bothered. I reeled in and went off to McDonalds instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment