I'd left it late to collect a few worms for my fishing session, so I wanted a quick solution. My usual panic method involves digging up whatever spare piece of land is available in my vegetable plots. During the main growing season this is impossible because all spare land is quickly planted with more crops.
Now, I did have a small free plot available on this occasion, but I tried something different. I'm an avid bird feeder and during the year the birds get clumsy and drop lots of seed from the feeders. This accumulates over time and begins to germinate, creating unwanted growth in my borders. When I've cleaned it out in the past I found lots of small worms.
The first shock was just how thick the growth was. From absolutely nothing, there was a thick, lush covering about 3 to 4 inches deep. A Hebe had been totally swallowed up! I pulled out a section of the green mass and amongst it were stacks of clean, immaculate worms of all sizes, including some big old lobworms. A positive worm bounty!
I pulled up a few clods and filled my tub with wrigglers, then patted it all back into place. Very easy, very clean and the most amazing quantity of worms in such a short space. I don't know if it will last, but for now I'll suffer a slightly scruffy section of border for this great cause. I'll monitor it over winter and see how it goes in the colder weather.
I guess it makes a bit of sense because we associate worms with lawns and between me and the bird life we've effectively created a small section of new lawn. The difference is that I can't dig up my main lawn in the name of fishing, but this little worm haven can be ploughed up whenever I need to.
On to this week's fishing and I headed off to the Avon for a short afternoon session. After my previous hopeless pike session I left the predator gear at home and concentrated on bream. The river was carrying a small amount of extra water, but had a nice touch of colour for a change.
I boshed out a few balls of bait and attacked it with red maggots to start with. I went with a braid mainline to help with hitting the bites. Initially they were easy to come by from small dace and chub.
A switch to worm brought a bream of around 1.5lbs straight away and I thought I was in for a few of them. A couple of perch to about half a pound followed but then a more spirited fight turned up something I wasn't after on this occasion - a pike. I very nearly landed it but the hook pulled clear as I went to net it.
From that point on the fishing seemed to change. Bites were harder to come by and I was plagued with leaves and debris fouling my hooklength. A few roach started to show eventually though and a surprise eel showed up at last knockings.
Not quite the session I'd hoped for, but with half a dozen species banked (and nearly seven!) it was a pleasant enough encounter.
Lots of wind and some rain due this week, but still no sign of any real cold weather setting in.
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