A new venue and garden jewellery

 On Thursday, after much chat with Benno, I finally decided to renew my C&DAA membership for 2024/25. With many external factors coming into play, we needed a venue where we could go Eel fishing without the hassle of two hours plus driving time being involved. So Stonar Lake will be where we will be focusing our attention until Pike season comes into the equation. Don't get me wrong, Stonar is a completely new venue for me and, although there are rumours of big Eels, we have never seen any evidence to suggest that it will be easy to target these enigmatic fish. However, before I get onto my first visit to the fishery, on Thursday afternoon I did manage to grab a split cane, an ABU Cardinal 44X and a loaf of wholemeal bread and head down to Minster for a very short, ninety minute, session after the Carp. I landed five fish, missing many, many more, in the time available, the best being a very fiesty Mirror of 13 lbs 9 oz. I would love to share a photo but a schoolboy error meant that I didn't have the autofocus switched on and my self-takes were a blurred mess as a result. Lesson learned and a good job that it wasn't a fish of more merit?

No need for a barrow or any moaning about stresses on my
arthritic joints. Parking is ridiculously close for every swim on
this venue.

So onto Friday's efforts and my first visit to Stonar Lake, as an angler - I used to visit regularly during my time birding, and I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised by set-up of this fishery. Access is first class, yet swims are very secluded and allow scope for the occupants to do their own thing without impacting on those in adjacent positions. For Benno and I it is a completely blank canvas and we are looking forward to the challenge of getting the pieces of the puzzle to fit into place. We fished from 18.00 - 23.00 hrs, last night, and didn't manage to tempt anything with our offerings, although I did land a small Bream on a raw prawn thus avoiding the dreaded blank?

Benno sat in our swim, the view looking south towards Sandwich 

The view, from my position, looking north towards The Discovery Park

As the sun goes down

The moth trap has obviously been central to my enjoyment of the local wildlife encounters so far this year, yet the feeding stations, be they for avian or nocturnal mammalian visitors, also provide plenty for me to get excited about.  The one aspect of offering food has to be the importance of also having a supply of water available to the various garden visitors.and today provided further evidence of this with the appearance of a Pied Flycatcher at the bird bath.

Thankfully the bird hung around for an hour, or so, allowing me to grab a few images which are worthy of sharing.