Spring has sprung

First swallow
Spotted overhead from my garden this Tuesday 21st April.
 Judging by my Cyprus experience the martin's and the swifts will arrive in about a month, the swallows were nest building when we arrived on the 1st March well before the swifts and martins who turned up just before we left !
Two nests in the garden,a song thrush with four eggs, and the great tits are active in the nest box, relieving my lawn  sorry grass of some of it's moss.
It's noticeable that the female does all the work though, but  it's not lined yet and I've not seen them for a day or two.
.
The new lake.
I have to say sitting by my "new" lake a couple of times this week for this years campaign has made me feel good.

Looking back to the old lake

Listening to the sky larks, watching the buzzards wheeling overhead, and sparrowhawks at work
The birdlife is in full swing, I shall need to get my call recognitions sorted out though, as there is a least one bird I don't recognise.

From a distance I spotted him moving up to the trout stock pond!

It's good job really that I have plenty of distraction,because grabbing a bite from the underwater world is at the very best slow.
The lakes, being spring fed are, I think, just a bit cold.Time to get my thermometer out, just to see when and if a change takes place.





Anyway, sitting last night at the shallow end,hoping the water may be just a tad warmer, it wasn't long before I noticed, despite the very warm sun, that the wind was an easterly, and was blowing straight down the back of my neck.
I persevered, put the hood of my sweatshirt up, and stuck it out for about three hours until the sun sank below the hills.

My "groundbait" was hempseed spiced up with some aniseed, and a few grains of sweetcorn.
Bait tonight, cockles, prawns and lobworms.
Cockles for the first hour produced one "bite" probably a carp moving through my line.
A change to prawn and a good bite, which was a carp giving a pretty good show of itself until a hook pull, judging by my inability to control the fish, my guess is, it was a foul hooked in the tail!
So another piece of prawn, some nudging of the float, followed by a slow run and I struck into what immediately felt  to be something different.
It didn't take me long, judging by the fight, to know that an eel had taken the bait.

 It seemed to me to be my biggest ever eel, so I thought I would weigh it. At 2lb10ozs it was 2ozs below what I caught, also accidently, on the Thames a year or so back....my nets are in a hell of a state, currently drying out in the sun.
Another change of bait and I landed my first carp of the day of about 8lb, the bait lobworm. A few more twitches, but that was the last fish of the afternoon.
So two fish in three hours, it didn't matter a jot, in fact I shall probably go down again tonight, having fully "groundbaited" the swim with the leftover hempseed that has been fermenting in the bucket for well over a week.
3 hours of relative peace and contemplation.

No sign of swallows

Time to go

After thoughts

Apologies,thanks to those readers who responded to my roach identity request. confirming it was.

Off to Suffolk for the week soon for another holiday. This time staying in a self catering cottage in the grounds of a pub with it's own brewery! Not decided yet whether to take my travel rods and tackle

We've also booked a sea cruise for early next year going across to the Amazon and West Indies.