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.