A nice surprise at Gazen Salts

 

Yesterday marked a momentous day for myself and my family, as it was my youngest son’s last day at Primary School. As you can imagine, it was emotional, but there is also now a sense of relief that we have made it to the end of one of the busiest terms of the year! We are definitely all ready for a break.

To keep myself and my other children occupied as we awaited the end of term school service, we went for a little wander around a local nature reserve in Sandwich, called Gazen Salts. We stopped off at the Co-op to buy some duck food and made our way along The Butts and towards “Gallows Field” (yes it does have as grizzly a history as its name suggests), and along the path into the nature reserve.

 As I think we have now established, I don’t have the same depth of knowledge of the natural world that my dad had, I’m sure he would have seen and heard more than me, but I do my best when I am out to connect with the natural world as much as possible, and this day was no exception.

 

Hungry ducks at Gazen Salts

We wandered down to the wildlife pond to feed the ducks who live there and spent some time watching the hungry birds and a friendly brown rat that kept appearing from the undergrowth! He didn’t seem that bothered by our presence, and he posed nicely for some photos.

 

Fearless!

Evelyn led the way around the nature reserve, and we stopped to listen to the birds and look at the insects that surrounded us in this beautiful environment. We did look for the resident beavers, but we couldn’t find any, however we did hear and/or see all these birds:

 

·        Green Woodpecker

·        Mistle thrush

·        Chiffchaff

·        Blackbird

·        Great tit

·        Long tailed tit

·        Bullfinch

·        Jackdaw

·        Collared- Dove

·        Wood pigeon

·        Magpie

·        Robin

·        Blackcap

As this was only a fleeting visit, we were only there for around 45 minutes, but on the way out, Evelyn took us into a wildflower meadow at the reserve, and as we walked around, we found a mat that had been put down for reptiles to hide under.

Being braver than me, Evelyn lifted the mat whilst I held the camera, only to find two large slow worms laying beneath it. That was a nice surprise and it made our day! I took a couple of photos on my phone and then we carefully replaced the mat and left them in peace, before heading home for some lunch. It was a good end to our spontaneous visit.

Slow worms at Gazen Salts

 

Tales of the Unexpected

Elephant Hawk Moth

As Summer is now in full swing, and Benno has been doing some excellent writing about his fishing adventures, I thought that it was only fair that I upheld my end of the bargain too and did some writing, so I'm going to tell you about what has happened this week with the moth trap.

When dad died, he wanted his moth books, moth trap and all that goes with it to go to Evelyn, my daughter. I found a note for her in his study on top of a pile of moth and butterfly books, and it ruined me for the whole day! 

He used to write a lot of little notes, that must be where I get it from!

We had some opportunity to use the trap earlier in the year and we caught a few moths, but nothing too spectacular, then life became pretty busy and extremely hot, and the moth trap remained in the shed for a while.

So, this week, when Evelyn asked to try again with the moth trap, I thought it was a very good idea. I had done some general reading about moths, and it seems that July is peak season for lots of them, and so on Friday evening Evelyn carefully stacked the egg boxes inside, set up the trap, turned on the bulb and went off to bed.

Sorting the moth trap before bedtime.

At 5am on Saturday morning (I know dad would do it at 3am, but he didn’t need sleep like I do!) I found myself in the garden, turning off the trap and covering it over to stop the birds from getting in and the moths from getting out. I could see that there was definitely an elephant hawk moth in there, with its beautiful pink and green markings, but I had no idea what was waiting for us!

 As Saturday evening crept around Evelyn desperately wanted to empty the trap and see what was inside, so we went to the garden, with paper and pencil in hand to see what we had caught.

It’s been a very long time since I emptied the moth trap, the last time was with dad and may have been in the mid 1990’s, so I am VERY rusty on names of different moths. I thought it was best to photograph all of them and then identify them later. 

I have done my best to identify as many as I can, but please feel free to correct me, those who are in the know! I have shared some photos of some of them, because they are just so beautiful, and I have made a list of species and rough numbers.

This is really our first attempt, but I am planning to make Evelyn a chart, adding moths as we go, so we can remember names and count and record how many of each species we find.

We are extremely lucky that our garden backs on to woodland and a wildflower meadow. It also has hedges, ponds and lots and lots of flowers and herbs that Evelyn has grown, so plenty of different foods and habitats for local moths.

A Jersey Tiger Moth, Box Tree Moth, Broad Bordered Yellow Underwing and an Early Thorn

Privet Hawk Moth, Rosy Footman, Elephant Hawk Moth and a Ruby Tiger Moth

Black Arches Moth, Small Magpie Moth, Riband Wave and a Meadow Grey?

Black Arches	1
Box Tree Moth	1
Bright-Line -Brown- Eye Moth	1
Comfrey Ermine Moth	1
Common Meadow Grey?	1
Dingy Footman Moth	20+
Dusky Sallow	1
Early Thorn Moth	1
Elephant Hawk Moth	6
Flame Shoulder Moth	1
Geometriade Moth	1
Jersey Tiger Moth	1
Large Yellow Underwing	1
Lesser Yellow Underwing	1
Magpie Moth (Small?)	3
Pale Prominent Moth	1
Powdered Quaker Moth	1
Privet Hawk Moth	1
Rosey Footman Moth	1
Ruby Tiger Moth	6
Riband Wave Moth	1
Silver Y	1
Small Fan Foot Moth	1
Straw Dot Moth	1
Twin spotted quaker	1
Yellow Tailed Swan Moth	1

 

We caught a definite 26 different species of moth in one night, there were some more, but many of them were micro moths, and I really can’t remember much about those yet. I hope we will get more efficient at identifying and recording the moths as we go on, but for now, this is what we caught and we are quite pleased with ourselves. I think that dad would be pleased that we are using his trap, Evelyn really loved it!

Hopefully we can bring you more moth trap escapades soon!

Sarah and Evelyn

Flame Shoulder Moth

A few Rudd and a Turtle Dove

Just thought I'd write a quick update on the fishing in this corner of East Kent recently. I decide to give the syndicate a rest for a while, partly to allow the huge amount of weed floating around to settle somewhere, but mostly just to have a break. The football has had me up late most weekends, so a 3:30 alarm on a Sunday morning doesn't appeal particularly. I have however been to a different venue on our CDAA ticket to try and target the big Rudd. Ive had some success with fish to 1lb 10oz, but not quite managed the 2lb target yet. A 3lb fish is a definite possibility, but a one in a million fish perhaps, so I'll start with a 2.

1lb 8oz of Gold

1lb 10oz of even Golder.

Shortly before Dad passed away, he bought himself a 600mm telephoto lens for his Eos 90D, he was already ill at this stage and never managed to take a single photo with it. I promised him that I would, so here is the beginning of that promise taking shape. I was sat in my flat minding my own business when i heard the unmistakable '"cooing" of a Turtle Dove in the old Oak at the bottom of my garden, thankfully I had the camera stuff nearby. My mum is keen to get out and take some wildlife photos as well, so hopefully we will find some more subjects to photograph.

Hopefully there will be many more chances to photograph these birds, I absolutely love them. 

The syndicate is calling me back, so It wont be long before I go back after the Tench, then the Eels, then it will be Perch time, so some more stuff to blog about!

Tight lines,

Benno.

Fathers Day

 Normally on Fathers Day, dad and I would have met up on the riverbank somewhere before sun rise and then spent the morning fishing and chatting together. Catching a fish was never important, just being there together. Obviously this year that wasn't to be, he definitely wouldn't have wanted me to sit around moping though, he would have wanted me to go and get after those tench again, so that's what I did. I made sure to spend some time reminiscing about the good times we spent together and even took a bottle of (nonalcoholic) beer to raise to the old man.

Cheers dad x

I wasn't going to mess about this time, I went armed with a trio of Greys 2lb barbel rods and Shimano reels loaded with 12lb mainline, no more messing about with perch rigs. Their time will come, it's too weedy to fish light enough for them to work efficiently at the moment. There were only two reasonable spots available to fish in my chosen swim, the same two as last time strangely enough. One in a rare clear spot and one on top of a gravel bar. 10 hours drifted by in the dappled sunlight under the trees before anything happened, a screaming run from the rod fishing the top of the gravel bar took me completely by surprise and resulted in a cracking fish of 7lb 1oz. I had absolutely no confidence in that rod, having never hooked a fish off of one of the bars in this lake. Shows you what i know!

Magic.

This place has got right under my skin

All in all a wonderful way to spend a day reminiscing about the old man and a cracking fish to finish things off as well. Take your kids fishing if you can, they will remember those times for all of their lives. I know I do. 

Tight Lines,

Benno.

Thoughts on ledgering for Perch

I am well aware that the title of this post has no relevance to the tench fishing project in which I am currently involved, it is however faintly connected. As promised, a visit to the syndicate on Sunday morning was called for, armed with my two newly refurbished glass fibre MKiv's, it took me a good couple of hours to locate a some spots on which to present a bait properly, although the whole place is like a giant egg box of gravel bars, the fish don't seem to venture to the tops of the bars, they like grubbing around in the silt and the thick weed either side of the gravel. The fish finder is invaluable in this situation as you can cast it around without causing too much disturbance to the water and roughly locate the weed-free areas before fine tuning the distances with a marker float. One absolute screamer of a take at 07:30am resulted in a very old fishing rod being bent double whilst trying to stop a fairly small tench from completely burying itself in the weed, the fish was eventually landed successfully but a lesson was well learned, theres a time and a place for vintage fishing gear, and that time and place is not in a weed choked gravel pit with the potential of hooking an 11lb tench (or a 55lb carp for that matter!)

5lb 8oz. I was lucky to get this fish in on those old elastic bands.

 As I was fishing with lobworms coupled with small pva bags of chopped worm dried out in krill ground bait, I was more than half expecting a visit from a perch or two, it took until 2pm before they found me, but find me they did. Three perfect perch bites, beautiful slow rise on the long drop swingers, all three missed. Did they feel the resistance of the rig, or perhaps the line drag or even the weight of the swingers? Were they just small perch? Could I have done anything better? This may well be a problem familiar to some. I imagine anyone who has fished a place where live baits are banned or lure fishing feels futile in the vast emptiness of a 44 acre pit will have probably missed as many perch bites as they have connected with. I am genuinely interested to hear from anyone who feels like they have come up with a method of long range ledger fishing for perch which has a better than 50/50 hook-rate without deep hooking the fish. The obvious answer otherwise is just to make the hook links two feet long, but this means that the fish can swallow the bait before you ever get so much as a bleep from the alarms. People will often say things to me like "it’s the change in resistance that puts them off, not the actual resistance", now this sounds good in theory, but in my opinion, I’m not convinced. A perch knows what a natural bait feels like when it picks it up from the bottom of a lake and is more than happy to drop anything that doesn’t feel quite right. Last season I played around with using light braided mainline with two meters of light fluorocarbon as a leader, free running rigs and a 12" hook length, the braid helped a lot because it wants to float, as opposed to mono which lays on the bottom and creates a lot more drag, this coupled with a tinfoil swinger did start to notice an increase in hook-ups, but not consistent enough to be satisfying. All of the writing on the subject seems to say the same thing, perch hate resistance and will drop a bait if it doesn’t feel right, so just use live-baits and they will smash in to them with enthusiasm... believe me, if I was allowed to, that’s exactly what I’d be doing too, but the rules are the rules and I shall enjoy the challenge of trying to solve the puzzle in front of me. 

My PB at 3:14, caught from our local river in a big flood 

 As far as I'm aware, theres never been a genuine 4lb perch caught from the syndicate, theres been rumours, but no photos or evidence. My good friend Andy Larkins has definitely caught a 3:14 and my very first fish on trying for them was 3:11, followed by a number of other 3s and big 2s, so a 4 is a realistic target, especially seeing as Andy and I are the only two people silly enough to try and target them.

The biggest I’ve managed from the syndicate so far at 3:11 

 Please leave me a comment if you have any thoughts on baits, rigs or indication for the Perch, or anything else that I might have missed for that matter. I did give prawns a go, thinking that the heavier bait would negate some of the unnatural weight of the rig, but they didn’t seem to be interested in them. I wont be targeting perch specifically until the autumn, but that doesn't stop my brain from thinking about them all of the time. 

 Tight lines, 

 Benno.

A bit of an update

Since my last blog offering, life has very much got in the way of my fishing career. Being self employed, it's important that I make hay whilst the sun shines and the sun has been shining brightly in my little plumbing world. I have managed a couple of trips down to the syndicate, unfortunately, the tench spawned early this year due to the sudden increase in water temperature caused by the tropical spell of sunshine we had in May, this coupled with the explosion of weed growth and natural food availability has made the fishing even more tricky. I did manage to land a couple of tench, the best of which being a 6lb 8oz male fish, but alas, nothing which troubled the 10lb target I’ve set myself down there. The 7lber I had caught in the first blog has been the biggest so far this season. 

6lb 8oz of syndicate tench

I've been able to drop in for some short sessions with the float rod on one of our club waters and have managed to land a couple of tench, the biggest one going just over 5lb, the size of the fish isn’t really relevant if you can catch them on a centerpin and a float rod. With that in mind, I’m heading back down the syndicate tomorrow armed with two glass fibre Bruce and Walker MKiv’s and one split cane Bruce and Walker MKiv, believe it or not, the glass fibre rods are mine and have just been resto-modded with Fuji reel seats, the split cane is of course Dads, I’ve teamed the split cane up with a JW Youngs Rolling Pin to try and at least make it look like I’m using an appropriate vintage reel, his other two split canes are so worn out in the handles that I’ve had to drop them off at the rod builders for some new cork. Don’t worry, I won’t get Fuji reel seats put on them, I’ll carry on with the old rings. 

5lb of gold on the pin

As you probably know already, photography was a huge passion of Dads, I can remember him sitting for hours by the Valerian plants outside the house trying to get shots of the hummingbird hawk moths, I’ve been doing the same recently, but with an IPhone instead of a digital camera, I’ll be honest, I’m pretty pleased with the results, just gutted that I can’t show him. 

Hopefully I’ll have something else to write about after tomorrows outing, I’m going for an all-natural bait approach, low resistance rigs and bite indication with a view to potentially hooking the perch, eels, tench, carp or anything else that likes a juicy worm… Tufties are a distinct possibility as well (as is a blank!) 

Tight lines,

Benno.

Mile 26!! I've done a marathon!

 You know when you have a really good idea, and then you have to do it? Yes… well I seem to do that a lot! My most recent idea involved me running/ walking a mile a day in May in memory of my dad and Bev, in the hopes of raising some money for Cancer Research UK and the Bowel Babe fund.

I can do that, no problem, I thought to myself as I typed my name into the “sign up here” box! I don’t know why I had so much self-confidence, I haven’t run more than about 50 meters since 1996. Anyway, I clicked the button, and for the whole of this month I have somehow managed to do this challenge.

 My legs are aching, I’ve cried more that I ever thought I would, at one point I think I hit “the wall”, but on the 26^th May I passed a very significant milestone for me. Mile 26, the Marathon mile. (Yes, I know that an actual marathon is 26.2 miles, but 26 is close enough for me.)

 

Mile 26 was always going to be significant for me because dad ran 3 marathons in his life, and one of those was when he was 46, the age that I am now. And although it has taken me 26 days, and not 4 hours and 20 minutes, I think he might still be proud of me for getting this far.

 

Marathon man in action!

I am not a natural runner, by any stretch of the imagination, but knowing that I’ve been doing this challenge in memory of my dad, and feeling like he’s been at my side a lot of the time has motivated me to keep going, along with such kind words, support and donations from so many of you, so thank you.

Like most of the UK, we are mid heatwave here in sunny Kent, and the 26^th May was like standing in an oven, so I concluded that running an entire mile, even in the evening was a bit dangerous! Instead, I thought that, in honour of my dad and his love of birding, I would do a birdwatching mile to see how many birds I could see and hear on my mile… I think dad would have approved.

So once the air was of a slightly less sizzling temperature I set off for my mile.

 

One of our resident pigeons.

Before I’d stepped out of the gate, I was greeted by two plump wood pigeons and a collared dove, as well as the parliament of rooks who live in the trees behind my house.

I had wanted to see some spectacular bird of prey, the buzzards had been circling over the garden all day, or maybe the barn owls that hunt across the fields, but I had no luck with that. However, I did see lots of swallows darting around over the fields, a pheasant, blackbirds, jackdaws, a song thrush, a robin and a few crows.

I knew that there were more birds around me that I could hear and not see, and Benno had told me about an app called Merlin, which you can put on your phone, and it records and identifies birdsong. Although we both spent years with dad wandering through wild places, our knowledge of birdsong is not a patch on his.

So, even though he would probably not have approved, I used the app to see what else was around me, and it added a wren and a dunnock to my little list. I was quite pleased that I hadn’t missed too much.

I know that these apps are not always accurate, and they are nowhere near as good as my dad’s well-trained ears, but it seemed to work for these purposes, and I am learning a lot about the different bird songs through using it.

So, as I plod on through the last few miles of this 31-mile challenge, I would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who has supported me and sent kind messages about my dad. We have raised over £1000 so far for Cancer Research UK and the Bowel Babe Fund. If you would like to add to that total, this is the link. (Click here.)

Benno and I are still trying to work out how to reply to comments on here, we are so grateful to everyone who has taken the time to write them, we read them all.

In other news:

 

Leeds Castle

Aside from running, Evelyn and I have also been busy visiting places and getting out in nature as much as we can. A recent trip to Leeds Castle was pretty spectacular. There were plenty of birds across the whole estate, and Evelyn made friends with the ducks! She also loved the falconry and has decided that’s what she wants to do for her birthday this year.

 

The Red/Black Kite who lives at Leeds Castle

Egyptian Goose on the wall at Leeds Castle

Making friends with the ducks

We also had a wander around Goodnestone Park Gardens, with lunch (and strawberry ice cream), where we found newts and tadpoles, beautiful flowers and a Green-Veined White butterfly.

 

Goodnestone Park Gardens

Green Veined White butterfly... I think.

And of course, Evelyn has been busy in the garden and at farm school, growing vegetables and hanging out with baby goats and enormous alpacas. What a life!

 

Alpacas at the farm! 

The moth trap has been on overnight, so I am about to empty it with her. I am intrigued to see what we have caught… I may be asking you all lots of moth related questions, once I’ve finished the 31 miles, that is! Thanks for reading.

 

Sarah and Evelyn.