I had arranged a day fishing The River Exe which runs through Exeter courtesy of my friend Simon. I had intended to fish a weir pool standing on the weir, but after the previous days rain, there was no chance of doing this as the river was up and very coloured, so I mover further downstream.
I had taken some lobworms (can you believe my local tackle shop had sold out of dendrabenas) and decided to leger with these.
After an hour so I struck into my target fish, bream, landing a fish of 3.75lb. This was followed by a small perch. I then lost a better bream with the hook pulling out. Sport was a bit slow, as I followed this with another small perch and then a decent eel of over 1lb before I caught my main quarry, a decent river bream of 7lb 10oz. this fish was in great condition and probably had never seen a boillie in its life as this is largely a game river.
The weather was gorgeous and I got sunburn, probably from dozing in the early afternoon sun, when I was startled to see my rod whip around and .... I missed it. I set up again and a few minutes later the rod did the same thing and .... I missed it again, or so I thought until I noticed the hook had been cleanly sliced off. This must have been a pike.
That was the end of my lobworms, and though I tried bread, corn, spam and pellet I just couldn't get another bite. However, with masses of butterflies around and a wide selection of birds ranging from swallows and martins to jays and woodpeckers, gulls and cormorants, it was just great to be alive and outdoors.