CHINLESS WONDERS

     Funny old fish the Rudd. Some would say beautiful, in a glamorous way. Brash, like gold taps in a council house would be my take on it. Basically they are Roach without the class and refinement. A bit like comparing a hooker with a courtesan I suppose, but sometimes the former looks just fine through the beer goggles of a string of blanks.

     There aren't that many in the waters that I fish but there are canals over Nottingham way that have plenty of them. Canals like the Erewash, which sees little boat traffic, are clear and weedy and the Grantham, disused and full of reeds; both perfectly suited to the Rudd. I confess that when I do get to fish with Sharkey, I'd choose the Trent for Roach every time but the Trent is a funny river. If you live close and can pick your days, it's great but thanks to its North-Easterly flow, prevailing South-Westerlies can mean upstream winds are rare and colder than we would like, making float fishing just too uncomfortable at times.

      So it was for this trip; with a swollen river and flooded fields, the Courtesan was unavailable and the hooker was touting for business. It would have been arrogant to refuse so liquidised bread laced with ground hemp seemed likely to be effective to me, and indeed it was, right from the off. It is an undeniable fact of my angling life that any occasional, initial success fades quickly. The first bite came in seconds and produced a nice fish; the second came in minutes and produced another and after that it was just small fish further apart. True, one or two better ones were scattered among them but the main plus point was bites; they've been so few and far between lately that I've been getting the urge, deep down, to hunt silvers on a commercial. In the meantime a pleasant morning after the Rudd has had to serve as a cold shower, at least until I can find some Roach again.