The last of the line...
of Metcalfe ladies, my aunt Maggie passed away on the 21st October at her nursing home in Bognor Regis at the ripe old age of 94.
Leaving just Jim of the 14 children born to John and Clara Metcalfe, my mum's parents from the Edgware Road West London.
Always the fun at a family party, I can still picture her dancing at her 90th birthday celebrations.
She will also be remembered by me as the "rich"Aunty.Her occasional surprise food and sweets parcels from the shop/post office she and her husband Harry owned in Epsom, were always welcome in our house when the five of us were growing up in the 50's & 60's.
Rest in Peace
Margaret Maud Lowman. 30th September 1920 - 21st October 2014
Chichester
As we were attending the service for Maggie, we decided to have a couple of nights in Chichester, just down the road from the crematorium. So Sussex got another visit from us, neither of us having visited the town before.
So we stayed at The Vestry in the town centre, very good rooms and breakfast, but I slipped up in my usual search for a pub with rooms with good beer. The beer was the usual fizzie stuff, mostly lag ..ergh, so we only had one drink in there, and moved around the town for some better beer service and our evening meals.
We had one meal in Carluccios, which was just about ok, but seriously let down by the way they overcooked Pauline's squid....rubber bands would have been easier to eat, but in fairness they took them back and just about improved them with the next batch, which we got knocked off the bill.
Fishing
I've started my river season with three trips to the middle Trent and one yesterday to the tiny Hertfordshire river Rib.
My first session already reported on, ended with the one chub at last knockings, the other two trips to the Trent didn't even get the knocks!
Yesterdays outing was for a guided day with Rob Lancaster, a day I bid for in a charity auction organised by Baz Fisher for the Soldiers Charity back in April.
It had taken a bit of time to organise mainly because we both wanted to chub fish later in the autumn...and it hasn't arrived yet!
So, I decided to make an afternoon of it,setting out at 9am to get to Ware by Noon and fish until dusk.
The morning traffic news nearly put pay to my outing, I heard just before 8 o'clock that there had been a five vehicle pile up at Newark and the southbound carriageway of the A1 had been closed. It wasn't clear if it was above or below the the Newark junction!
My options were to go via Sleaford on the A15 dropping down to Peterborough, or stick to the A1.
I chose the A1, the other road is so slow.
All the way down to Newark I was listening to the traffic news, which was indicating that the northbound had also been closed to allow for an air ambulance to land.
The A46 was clear all the way down, even up to Newark where the A1 slip was closed for access.
I drove onto the next roundabout and around the western outskirts of the town, hoping that the next junction down was open.
It was!
Northbound was shut and backing down south, the traffic coming south was stopped just before the Newark junction.So I had a clear road quite a way down and arrived in Ware at around time,and Rob was waitng in the car park.
I learned later that the road was close for some hours for an investigation, this I read as somebody died in the crash. In fact even later I learned it was a women with two others critically injured.
So off we go to Rob's private stretch of the river Rib, a tiny river with plenty of bankside tree growth and the occasional opening and with many shallows leading to deeper pools.
One problem was my landing net, Rob wasn't fishing,so he had no gear with him. I had fitted a Prologic quick release fitment to the pole and the net, but the pole end had become jammed, despite some attempted diy, it just wouldn't shift. This gave a fairly unstable grip to the net, which first of all dumped all the stale bread in the river when Rob tried dampening it down.
Anyway, this was overcome and the first two fish, weren't heavy enough to pull the net from the pole the third however was, but I'll come to that.
My first fish was a brown trout of a couple of pound, it took the ledgered flake straight down.
Now, I could hear Pauline saying, "why didn't you bring it home" as I snapped the line at the lips and let the trout go with my size 6, deep down inside.
The swim was somewhat disturbed by this marauder, so we moved down stream testing out other open swims, without more than a twitch before I got my second fish, a nice chub approaching, I would guestimate, at about 3lb..
As the afternoon drew on,a surprise fish turned up.Rob had never caught one, or seen one, in this little river.
It felt a very good fish at first, we were thinking a very nice chub on the end, but it turned out to be a tad over 9lb mirror carp.
Landing the fish proved difficult, as already hinted at..the net head fell off once the weight of the fish was in it. This took a bit of maneuvering by me for a while, then I handed the rod to Rob who held the rod with the fish, already under control in the bankside weed, with and me, using just the net head to land the fish from a somewhat precarious angle
That was about it, I'd caught some fish, it was getting dark,especially with Polaroid's on, my others were in the car, so we decided to take the long walk back, and off back to Ware for a pint.
I'd had my exercise for the day anyway!
The journey home took an age, with an accident at Stevenage junction seven on the A1, my re-entry point.
Oh yes, I did get the question on arriving home, and "that would have made a nice dinner"
Ah well maybe next time.
All in all a great trip to meet an ol'boy I have known for some time from the Fishing Magic days, but we had never met.
I may well be journeying down again soon to renew my acquaintance with the River Lea, but will include an overnight stay, if I can find a pub with decent beer and with rooms!
Books
I've not had enough time to put the books mentioned in my earlier blog on ebay. I've sold about 20 mostly from the Coarse Fishing top list.
Post a message if interested in any and I'll get back to you.
