Waking up..............

A change from the norm today, as I am struggling to catch anything after dark I thought I would get up early this morning and watch the day wake up.

Usually I fish in the evenings and during the lighter months it is a pleasure to watch the sun go down and with it all the birds and insects, I love to watch the bats when they come out and if I am lucky enough I love to watch for the owls and the occasional deer will put in an appearance. With the onset of autumn I miss all of that as when I walk on the riverbank it is generally dark or getting dark and getting cold. This morning I was on the river just after six thirty, I had missed the dawn chorus but the world was slowly waking up.

I could hear the early motorist driving along the main road about a mile or so away, it was a feint noise in the background but it was there, the birds where busy about their business and the insect where waiting for the sun to warm the air.  I spotted two deer grazing in the middle of the meadow as I drove down the road towards the car park; they saw me and carried on grazing.

I headed for an area I have not fished in a while, nor has anyone else for that matter and I set up my rods and gently lowered my baits into the river, it was not long before a very large clump of weed wiped both rods out and I started again and again and again! It was hopeless; I needed to find an area out of the main flow so I moved.

Hawthorn berries

Settled into a new area I began to watch what was happening around me, Long Tailed Tits where active in the Hawthorn tree to my left as where Great tits and Blue Tits, a noisy flock of green Parakeets flew over, making sure that everyone knew there where coming. I noticed a large Buzzard high in the sky, there are a good number of them in the skies above the river, some days you will see the pair of Kites that fly low over the meadows by the river but not today. Yesterday when I was wandering around the river with a small lure rod, I did not have any fish but I did see a small Kestrel sitting on a low branch not more that twenty feet from me.

The swans, such lovely birds but they are as thick as your average whale omelette, decided they where going to preen themselves in the water just in front of me, no matter how much I tried to shoo them away they carried on as if I was not there. The Canada geese not wanting to be out done by the swans decided to have a preening session of their own, I have never seen them submerge themselves before but they did today. I saw several different types of Dragonfly when the sun did come out, I am pretty sure that the large ones where Four Spotted Chasers and the electric blue coloured ones where Stalk-winged Damselflies, but I could be wrong.

Lots of weed!

The fishing today was an after thought today, it was lovely to sit there with the sun coming up and warming the day rather than the other way round.