Indiana Isaac and the waterless marsh

After a week where the temperatures reached almost 20 degrees here in the east, typically they plummeted when the weekend arrived, Sods law. However Sunday dawned bright and sunny and once I’d dragged him out of bed Isaac was keen for a couple of hours down by the water.

We were fishing by about 0900, I set up a whip with a light rig baited with maggots and Isaac was soon catching Rudd and Roach, almost a bite a chuck. A couple of these were put to one side and soon mounted on a paternoster rig which Isaac managed to hurl out a few yards with a crash and a splash. No harm done, would he christen his Pike rod today? I had planned to set up a rod of my own, fishing a boilie but where would I cast it? The swim was roomy enough but the areas I fancied would clash with where Isaac was fishing so in the end I didn’t bother.

After a while Isaac went for a wander so I took over with the whip, catching a fish after fish. All were Rudd or Roach and each seemed a little bigger than the last. I wondered why the fishing didn’t hold Isaac’s attention as much as it did my own at a similar age? When I was nine I’d probably spent five years or even more exploring hedgerows, hills, trees and bushes. To be out in the countryside on a spring day was totally normal to me at that age. Sadly my generation are more paranoid than our own parents and it’s only fairly recently that Isaac has started to spend more time away from the house and away from his parents. I’m sure the world we live in today is no more or less safe than the one I grew up in but attitudes have certainly changed. If my children were roaming the fields and streets at a young age, as I was, some busy-body would have called social services.

The morning stayed bright and warm, the cloud the forecast had threatened never materialised and the temperature climbed despite the northerly wind. Many bushes are in blossom and a few trees have signs of buds beginning. The birds were audible; the cackle of a green woodpecker stood out. I also heard a high pitched mewing which sounded like a stray buzzard but I didn’t see the culprit.

Isaac returned grinning and grubby, he’d been Indiana Jones in the jungle apparently. After bothering the silver fish a while longer he decided he’d had enough and sat behind his Pike rod for a while, willing the float to dive under. Unfortunately it didn’t, not today. After a couple of hours we’d had enough so tidied the gear then went for a stroll around the lake. Isaac became “Indi” again as we explored the woods and reed beds. I pointed out a Treecreeper climbing a mossy trunk but I’m not sure if Indi/Isi saw it. The winter drought has taken its toll as the water’s edge which is now about ten metres away from where it was twelve months ago. The “marsh” doesn’t earn that nickname any more. It feels like it’s never going to rain again.