Clodhopper

Stop teasing yourself, you have more chance of catching a 4lb Bream than shooting a pigeon on that field.

Update: My wife has now learnt of Friday nights exploits and has now banned me from going out with men I have met on the internet.

Pest control at its best, no doubt those corvids would soon be helping themselves to the laid Barley, along with the pigeons too. I am a little disappointed you did not cut down all of those trees behind you before you shot as that may have deterred the birds without the need for lethal methods. But I suppose you live and learn.

In all honesty when I heard mumblings about fitting a rubber I moved another 50 yards away and left the old man to it. I can confirm that I was using 2 float rubbers to set the depth of my bait. God only knows what was happening in the rushes to my left, he had a smile on his face when we reconvened at the end of the day.

Although there are Tench further downstream I have only seen one once and never caught any in 30 years of fishing here.

For the last few weeks I have been walking my local river looking for shoals of Bream. Having found a suitable area and quite a few Bream I was a little excited for the opening of the season. Unfortunately the rain came and the river became a bit of a mess. However the rain has missed us for the last few days and the levels have dropped nicely. The chosen area was raked and fed on Wednesday evening with a view to fish on Friday. I invited JDog to join me as I know he likes to Dangle. We met at 5.45pm and made our way down across the fields to the chosen spot. On route we saw numerous young Lapwings which was quite amazing as the area has been inundated with crows. The plan was to float fish maggots and sweet corn. As we set up my companion had significant difficult getting the rubber positioned correctly, at his age I thought he would know better. I was not willing to help. 30 minutes later we were set up and awaiting the bites. It was a beautiful sunny evening and a joy to be out in the countryside which was a good thing as the bites were few and far between. I think the flood has moved the fish to other areas. JDog managed a whopper of a Roach, around 3oz. I fared a little better with 2 similar fish, a hybrid of around half a pound and a lovely Rudd of a similar size. On the last cast as it was nearly too dark to see, my float bobbed twice and sunk below the surface. I struck and felt a heavy resistance. After a brief struggle a lovely bronze Bream rolled on the surface then dived down for more frantic action. I was just thinking I was winning when it rolled again on the surface snapping my hook length. We plan to return after a little more feeding and hopefully a little more settled Weather. Meanwhile JDog is practicing his rubber application.

Clover is generally grown as a feed for livestock both for fattening and milk production. Also used to fix nitrogen in the soil. Pigeons love it and obviously a lot of them can deplete the crop, hence crop protection.

Nice report. Good to see you getting out for a bit of much needed crop protection.👍

I think JDogs pigeon scaring skills are now that good he can scare birds away just by his mere presence.

Your experience and observations paid dividends in the end. Long day but worth it in the end. Nice report.

Thanks for posting, nice report. I am as beginning to think the pigeons had deserted Norfolk.

This morning I saw the first bit of laid Barley this year. Not in my permission, I checked mine but it was still upright.

In my early 20’s when I worked on a mixed arable/ livestock farm I would spend days in the early summer walking the field margins pulling out Ragwort. Day after day I would see bee and wasp nests dug out along with numerous Hedgehogs turned inside out. It is no wonder these species are struggling. I agree with Packham that nature would find a balance, all that is needed is for humans to wiped off face of the earth. Maybe he could volunteer to go first.🤔

Well I have had a change of job which leaves me with much less free time than I had before so there was no way I was going to miss an opportunity to be out. Not sure JDog was so keen to be out but luckily the weather did break and his old bones weren’t chilled too much.

Good God no!