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.