WHEN NOTHING HAPPENS

      My God, I've had a lot of blanks lately but until today, there were good reasons. First we had a lot of rain putting the rivers out of sorts and even turning the canals a filthy shade of brown. Then eventually the rain subsided, the waters cleared and sure enough everything froze. Every angler I know was struggling during these periods which made me feel a bit better about my own lack of success.

     Today though was absolutely perfect, mild and dry with a very light southerly breeze and following on from two successful canal trips, I made my way to Rowington to fish another area. Pete and I have fished here a lot this year. We've had plenty of pound plus perch, one or two nice bream and lots of small fish. With Pete unable to make it today, I fancied walking a couple of hundred yards further on to a wide, reed lined bend which I had earmarked as a likely stretch for bream.

     It wasn't, at least not today. For a start I left all my groundbait at home so my plan to fish bread was stillborn. Fortunately I had some maggots and worms in the bag but never mind, we've caught plenty of nice fish here on both, in fact they are usually our favourite baits on this stretch.

    I had a recently finished, rather lovely, Sealey Floatcaster to put through its paces and it worked quite nicely. Apart, that is, from the two loose ferrules which I thought I had checked thoroughly before restoration. Both had been tight then so I can only assumed that I had loosened the glue bond when I had to re-shape both of them as they were a tad oval having apparently been trodden on. Obviously my checks were not as thorough as was necessary, but still that's the whole point of a first deployment, snagging.

     There was a bigger snag however. I could not buy a flicker of interest in four hours fishing. In the end I just had to give it up as a bad job. I've absolutely no idea why beyond the very obvious one. There were no fish there, not feeding ones anyway. Eventually I just gave up and left to go and get some dinner. In a final display of incompetence, I kicked my maggots over and left. Some days are just like that, no matter what you do, everything goes wrong and nothing happens