Very dirty spate staring to fall now but further rain forecast most of the week.

WRONG SPECIES.

It was I think at Pitsford this incident happened, somewhere I didn’t fish that often and it was a competition with another club.   It was a fine day, buzzers were hatching, fish were rising and swifts and swallows were  taking their fill on the wing. All was well with the world.

My boat partners was a decent guy, we were drifting and had a couple of fish each.  I was in the right hand side of the boat and suddenly I hooked a very decent fish.  It fought well for some time.   Eventually I got it near the surface with my rod held very high above my head as the fish was hooked on the point and the op dropper was high up the rod on a long three fly cast.

Suddenly there was a bump on the rod and looking up saw that a swallow had taken the top dropper.  My partner saw this and went mental as at this moment  the fish decided to dive and I had to give line at which point the swallow took a ducking as well but after a lot of faffing about we got the fish in the net and the swallow unhooked safely..   It was looking very wet and sorry for itself and I didn’t think it would fly in that state so put it inside my jackets to try and dry it off.    About an hour later we took another look at the bird and decided it could now probably fly so I launched it into the air.   A big mistake and it simply plopped straight back into the lake.   Again great concern from my boat partner and he insisted we took it back to the fishing lodge for the Rangers to look after it.  This we did but by than it. was pretty much the end of the match.

Another bird incident was whilst wading mid stream on a ford in the river Teme during a mayfly hatch.   Lifting off into a backcast and a bump on the rod resulted in a swallow or martin plop into the water in front of me and float off.  Worse still looking up i saw that the top four inches of my favourite can rod was at half mast never to cast again.