Rustic Bench

After a spree of tree cutting in the garden I had a good pile of wood ready for winter. So I thought I would have a go at a rustic bench as well.  The wood was sycamore.

I started by cutting the legs and making cross pieces with them.

I split the large logs and placed them on the ground to screw the legs to the table.

The finished table:

As you can see I put the cross piece in the wrong place, but I was quite pleased with it for a first try.

Dufus or Tunnel Mole trap

I bought a new dufus trap, which has proved very effective this month. I must 
admit it appears to be lightly built but I think this means there is less 
resistance for the mole.  It will be interesting to see how long this trap lasts.

It is harder to set than a scissor trap but can catch two moles, however this is 
the trap I catch my fingers in most!

This first photo shows the trap sprung. You can see how difficult it is to see 
in the ground. So you have to mark this trap quite carefully. Though my aged 
father still managed to run over three mole traps with a tractor while cutting 
thistles. And these were marked! So possibly I will have to make large luminous flags when I trap moles for him.

The photo below shows the dufus trap lifted with its catch. 

Llyngwyn Fishing

I was Gilly for the day to Evan and Llinos when we went to Llyngwyn in Midwales
to fish.

Llyngwyn is near the town of Rhayader and is owned by Rhayader Angling
Association, tickets are available from shops in Rhayader.
The lake is a naturally spring fed water and is one of the most peaceful places
I fish. Even when the fish aren't biting you can sit back and enjoy the antics
of the Red Kites and other bird life which is in abundance there.

We took a boat out (There are three to hire) on oars or electric motors allowed. No noise to wreck to piece and quiet) moving to the bottom of the lake we
anchored half way along, tied on a green and black nomad and a orange fritz on
the other rod. No fish were showing on the surface so we started with
intermediate lines and began.

After and hour of nips and losing fish Llinos hooked into a hard fighting fish
and played it out with my Orvis Western rod. Woohoo first fish to Llinos.
An hour later Evan was in to another hard fighting fish and with a light 4
weight Snowbee Diamond he had quite a fight on his hands. We finally net a nice
pound and a half rainbow. We could not believe it wasn't a heavier fish.

 
There has to be a few perks for the Gilly apart from an excellent upper body
workout rowing. So I was allowed to have a few casts and hooked into a very nice
2 pound rainbow. Which we netted up quickly.

The beauty of Llyngwyn is you do have have to fish hard to catch. This is no
stocky bashing water. They seem to quickly adapt to feeding of the prolific
insect life. This makes buzzers a must have for fishing here.

Troll Hunting in Mid Wales

Troll hunting in mid Wales.

There is a brilliant Norwegian film called Troll Hunter.  The film about a group of teenagers who follow a suspicious looking 'Bear' hunter and find out that h is, in fact a Troll hunter.  I won't spoil it; just to say it is one of the weirdest films I have watched in years:

Below is my homage to it.

Cinnabar Caterpillars

Walking the pack this morning I came across some weird looking caterpillars 
feeding on a ragwort plant. I was surprised as ragwort is poisonous and I did 
not think anything would eat it. 

After some research I found out that the caterpillars I saw were the youngsters 
of the Cinnabar Moth. 

They not only cope with ingesting the poison from the ragwort, that poison makes 
the caterpillar poisonous as well, quite a remarkable defence mechanism.  
They are also cannibals and when thy have run out of ragwort they eat each other. 


The ground I walk is maintained (though maintained is stretching it a bit) by 
the Council, so there is an abundance of ragwort! So these boys should have no 
problem getting large enough to crawl into the ground form a pupa and hatch next 
summer.  

Mullet

Walking the dogs along the estuary this morning I noticed odd ripples on the water, ripples which moved about randomly, upon closer inspection I could see Mullet moving in shoals feeding right on the edge of the water.

I have always found mullet hard to catch.  They feed on tiny particles and are very suspicious of anything that looks remotely like a hook.

Seeing these this morning reminded me of the time my son and I went down to Radford Park lake in Plymouth.  At high tide this lake is inundated and the mullet go in but get trapped as soon as the tide starts to go down.  So over a few weeks more and more fish arrive.  As it is a favourite place to feed ducks the mullet soon learn to watch for thrown bread to feed on.

We went with light course fishing rods and very fine line.  with tiny hooks locked in bread pellets we found that we could fool the mullet into taking the bait.  It was great fun as you have seconds to strike before the hook is ejected. We returned the fish as mullet taste terrible. They also hang around sewage outlet pipes which always puts me off eating them.

Lamping with Dart

I remember how disappointed my children were when I brought Dart home, they were hoping for a cute cuddly puppy, instead they got this skinny, leggy, awkward creature.  However he grew to be a great dog.  Red Merle in colour and grey hound size, he was superb to work with a lamp.

Where I lived at the time I had access to a very large area  of  improved hill, on which an abundance of brown hares lived.  The brown hare is the perfect quarry for a large lurcher; the lurcher has the strength and endurance the Hare knows the ground and is able to out turn the lurcher.

I see people with rescue grey hounds and though I am sure this is a worthy thing to do, the grey hounds always look bored.  A lurcher at full stretch after a hare is a totally different story; he has an almost desperate sense of urgency as he seeks to close the gap between himself and the hare, but once the hare turns and fools the lurcher, they settle into a chess like game in which the lurcher seeks to close using his speed but reduces to keep pace trying to anticipate which way the hare will jink so he could get to grips, or if the hare turns the other way to quickly turn and force the hare to jink again., but the more the hare jinks the more tired the lurcher gets.

Dart would wait at my side until the lamp picked up a hare, them would only go when told, to see him running flat out on the wide open spaces of mid Wales was something else, and too watch as a hare would go under a gate and Dart fly over was amazing, my heart was in my mouth.

RNBT Clay Shoot

I am not a massive fan of clay shooting, but I was cajoled into taking part in the Royal Navy Benevolent Trust Clay shoot.  It was thought that it would be good for those who had  paid a lot of money to shoot, for a Uniformed team to be there.  Our remit was to chat, and be a good example, but we were not to win!!
The Royal Navy team had won the previous year and would again this year.  There team included an English International shot.

Well, there was no danger of us winning, as two of the team shot clays regularly and myself and another chap rough shoot and are not good with consistent clays.  However when it came to a flush, 50 clays released to four guns.  We had discussed tactics but these when out the window as adrenaline hit.  We two rough shooters had found our niche and blasted away.  The ladies loading for us had a great time reloading and spotting for us and did there job really well.

When the smoke cleared we had hit 49 clays!  Needless to say we won the flush shoot.

What is interesting is why did we rough shooters do so well at the flush but not so well at clays?  Two things occur to me; When the clays were consistent we over thought how to shoot them, instead of just reacting.  And when clays did un-natural things such as dropping down towards you we tended to miss.  The flush however was more like rough shooting with limited time to react, so we tended to follow through rather than leading with a gap.

Hunting in the zone

As a teenager with a 410, a couple of ferrets and a terrier I had a blissful up bringing. Able to shoot, trap, and ferret to my hearts content, apart from the inconvenience of school, which attempted to turn me into a useful, and compliant tool of society; happily they failed.

In my work helping those who have anxiety and stress I use a thing called mindfulness; its a technique to live in a calm and engaged way.  What has often struck me is how this happens naturally in field sports, picture the course fisherman attentive to the twitch of the line and float, aware of the movement of shadows; clouds above and carp moving through the water.

Waiting hidden in a hedge, for rabbits to creep out of their burrows, so I could get a clear shot.  I would wait hours lost in nothingness, aware of the breeze and the movement of the sun, such as it was in Wales. I would see nothing and everything, sight lost until movement triggered the synapses in the brain and my focus would zoom in the movement, discerning the shape of rabbit, hare, fox and badger materialising out of the hedgerows at dusk.

Wordsworth perhaps had a clue what was going on when he penned "What is life if full of care, we have no time to stop and stare."  It is this ability to drop in attentive meditation, which some call the Zone, this leads to a calmer, and more contented outlook on life.

Hunting being a natural pursuit, it is not surprising it feels right, calms anxiety, and gives us a break from the stress of modern life.

Bees in the wild

Reading Brother Adam's book Bees at Buckfast Abbey, he makes an interesting comment about starting bee keeping when Isle of White disease was prevalent and bee keepers were predicting the end of bee keeping in Britain.  With the new bee diseases around today I often read something similar and have even read there are no 'wild' bees left.  I am not sure what is behind this apocalyptic vision, but honey bees have survived and awful lot in their history and I am confident that they will overcome most of what is thrown at them.

As I was walking the dog, I saw this wonderful old oak, with, yes you have guessed it, honey bees flying in and out, they had come through the winter in fine fettle and are now working oil seed rape with gusto.

I look forward to watching them progress through the summer.

Sub Zero Fishing

Evan and I called in for a half term fish at Exe Fishery.  The car thermometer showed 2C but when we got to the lake the wind was cutting across from the East driving the temperature well below freezing. And the fish to the bottom of the lake.

We started in the bottom corner with a light #4 rod but the wind was so strong we switched to #8 which is so heavy it copes with windy days really well.  We tried orange tadpoles,  black and green tadpoles, White Minkies, but the only thing we had were a few follows.

However it was the cold which made the fishing difficult.

In these conditions it is difficult to keep warm, while a full set of warm wind proof over clothes are good, it is difficult to keep to fingers warm, as the line is continually moving back and forth through them.

I finally caught the only fish we had that day a two and half pound rainbow which took an olive green nymph fished quickly on an intermediate line.

Ferreting and Devon Ditches

An invite from work saw the Botwood clan winding our way up to the edge of Exmoor on a sunny cold Saturday to try the ferrets out on a small holding.  The hedges were really difficult. We only had purse nets with us and, to be frank, this was useless.  Rabbits holes went through the banks and popped up inside six foot wide hedges.

We netted as many as we could get to and tried out Llinos' ferret.  This is a small polecat ferret, which is incredibly biddable, Llinos having spent so much time taming her down. You can see from the photo we also had barb to contend with.

 We worked our way round the hedges but never once made contact with a rabbit, so either someone else has been hunting here or disease has taken hold.

We used hemp nets which are far superior to the nylon nets often bought.  The nylon nets seem to be attracted to every brier and thorn in the hedge.  Every time we used one it came away in a tangled mess.

At least we got to work all the ferrets and had a good walk on a lovely day.

Winter Fishing

Is spring in the air? I felt the need to go fishing which usually  occurs in spring, perhaps the fact that I had been unable to hunt during the Christmas period had something to do with it.  On a cold blustery morning I threw the fishing tackle in the back of the car and wound my way up to Exe fishery.  I  have found this small fishery rather hit and miss, many like it because it is fairly easy to catch but that can be a draw back if fish will take at everything that lands on the water.  Today there were very few fishing, the weather having taken its toll, but I quite like these challenging conditions.

I started in the bottom corner  of the main large lake where the wind was driving all the flotsam,  I have found these areas to be good places to start as fish tend to pick at the edges and always seem to take well.  I was using a 4 weight rod and floating line as I like the fight with this light rod and nowhere on the lake is too deep so no need for any other lines.  I attached an orange nymph and cast in retrieving with sort jerks, nothing happened.  Often in cold and murky water I think the fish will wait for something slow moving and so having slowed my retrieve right down I had my first take, but as I got the net ready I let the line go slack and the fish came off.

I changed to an orange bodied goldhead and tried again.  After a few casts I hooked into a nice 3lb fish which fought very well on the light rod finally diving for the back to get rid of the hook, thankfully I was able to get the net under quickly.

After catching in one place I like to move on,  I always think it takes time for a patch of water to settle after a good fighting fish, and I like to work a large area search for fish rather than chuck and hope which so many seem to indulge in.  I fished quickly round the top of the lake which was quite shallow so I did not give it hat much attention and half way down the far  side.  Having not had a bite. I cast out and reeled in to move on, but of course this proved irresistible to a small rainbow who took the nymph with a real thump, having exhausted himself with the chase he came quickly to net.

I finished where I started and a nice 2lb rainbow took the slowly retrieved nymph and it was time for a pint in the local and home.