Dufus or tunnel mole trap

The Dufus or tunnel mole trap is based on the old horse hair traps used in the Victorian era. These mole traps have the advantage of being able to catch two moles on one setting, one on each end.  The trap is laid in the run and soil lightly sprinkled on top.  The disadvantage of these traps are they are hard to find if not properly marked, all it needs is a flock of sheep to charge across the field and you will have a merry time trying to find your trap.  I suppose you could GPS mark it if stock are a problem or if it is close to a foot path and may get disturbed by passer byes.

Dufus Mole trap

Here is the trap in set

Again the art in setting these traps is in making the trigge mechanism as light as possible, so it will go off at the lightest of touches. This is difficult with this trap as the mechanism is basically wire.  If set wrong the mole will find it impossible to set the trap of and will go under and stuff the trap with soil.  This is hard to detect until yo lift the trap.

The picture above shows the trigger mechanism set hard, no mole would be able to set this off!  The art is having as little of the trigger plate wire touching the holding bar as possible.

Before use these traps, like all traps should be buried to reduce the smell on them.

Clatworthy Lake

Summer was making an attempt on Wednesday morning as Andrew and I wandered our way across the levels and up towards Exmoor.  Our fishing trip was to Clatworthy, a beautiful setting with the dam over flowing and the water high up the banks. On arrival we saw a pair of Crested Grebe but no chicks with them, I suppose most of the water fowl have suffered from the high water levels flooding their nests this year.

As my fishing buddy had a gammy leg we hired a boat, and after loading him and the tackle we set of for the northern arm which is usually shallow and usually held fish, which feed on the abundance of aquatic life there.

Andrew was into his first fish quickly and bought onboard a fish with lovely markings and a full tail fin.  I caught next on an Orange blob which was taken savagely, this was the third strike I had in an hour but the two others I had lost playing them in.  I had allowed the line to go slack and the barbless hook had been thrown.  This third fish fought well, and pulled enough for me to worry about the quality of my knots. When Andrew finally netted the fish we could see it was not a monster as assumed from the fight, but still a very respectable 3lb.  Later that morning Andrew hooked into a wonderful fish that took his line off nearly to the backing and again  it took a good while to play out until I could slip the net under. (after accidentally hitting the fish on the head first! Thank goodness he didn't get off the hook, I would have never heard the last of it.

Sorry about the quality, rain water in my phone.

We also had a top class fishing guide with us, who only needed the odd bit of bread to keep her happy.

As you can see phone had dried out by this stage.

The afternoon was difficult and we only added one other fish to our day.  But between us we caught seven wonderful rainbow trout, each one fought magnificently.  We will be going back to Clatworthy.

Flies which caught: Orange Blob, Black and Green Nymph.

Ferrets and fleas

Every year I have a terrible battle keeping my ferrets free from fleas, My hutches have been soaked with disinfectant, scorched with a blow torch, and sprayed with flea killer but they keep coming back.  They play havoc with the ferrets condition. particularly when they are coming into season.

I have found that a combination of regular bedding change, regular treatment with spot on.  I have found blow torching the hutch also helps to keep the critters down.

Small Ponds

I wonder how many small ponds have fish introduced into them?  Camping this last weekend in in Cornwall at Liggers farm they had a lovely small pond below the farm house. Weather was cold and rainy so the children and I only fished for an hour, we caught two carp on sweet corn float fished of the small island. My daughter found a tiny frog, so this pond is a healthy one.

Bats

It hit me the other day that I can no longer hear Bats.. When young I used to hear them flying around the farm house at night, and wondered at my parents inability to hear them.

I have found out that shops in city centres have high pitched noise emitters outside there shops, Old fuddy duddies like my self can happily loiter but not the younger element. how unfair.

Large Blue Butterfly

The life cycle of the Large Blue reveals a devious side to this pretty little creature.

The female lays her eggs on thyme plants. Here it is discovered by the Myrmica Sabuleti ant, which, persuaded by a heady mixture of pheromones and sugars, adopts the caterpillar and takes it back to the nest.When the egg hatches the caterpillar feeds on the thyme for two weeks before falling to the ground.

The caterpillar then sets up camp in a quiet corner of the ants' nest where it spends the next ten months enjoying 'all you can eat' from a buffet of ant eggs and larvae. Eventually surfacing as a butterfly in all its splendour, it lives for just two to five days.

My children and I were out for a short walk when we happened to walk across a ridge by Street, and saw people staring intently at a gorse bush.  We approached and found that they were looking at a rather scruffy butterfly.  This was the incredibly rare Large Blue, which the others there were ready to tell us about.

As an aside, how easy it is to engage in conversation with strangers when you are out walking in the countryside, even if it is just a cheery good morning.  It must be something about urban life that crushes the spirit and turns people into grumpy individuals who scuttle about the streets avoiding eye contact with anyone, like rats.

Learning Humility

Had my son of thirteen years staying with me this weekend and took him fishing on Sutton Bingham.  It was a near perfect day; cloudy sky but settled with enough wind to provide a ripple on the water.  We elected to fish from a boat as my son does not have that much experience with casting and I find that this aspect of fly  fishing really demoralises youngsters who are trying to learn.  If you spend half your time with your line hitting the grass banks behind or getting tangled in trees it is not much fun, neither is was your line collapse in a heap 10 yards of shore where few fish hold.


From a boat the only thing you will hit behind id the water and you do not need the greatest casting in the world.  Most fly fisherman can tell the story of dropping the leader and fly over the edge of the boat while sorting out something else in the craft to find a fish has come right by the boat and taken the fly.


We started to fish along the south side of the lake into a nice bay, my first fish came quickly to an orange blob.  Having forgot the net I had to play him out completely until I could hand him into the boat.  A few minutes later my son was into a fish and seemed to be making a meal of it, but when he finally got the fish to the surface we could see it was a good but bigger than the two pounder I had caught.


As well as being large it was also a strong fighting fish and took my son 15 minutes to bring to the side of the boat.  I had of course forgotten the net so he had to play it out; we had a few heart stopping moments when he got it to the edge of the boat and I reached down only to find the fish had considerable more energy and would take a dive for the bottom again.


As you can see from the photograph he is a very happy fisherman.  His fish weighed four and a half pounds; better than the two I caught put together.