A grey old afternoon on the drain

Hang on a minute - that beer can wasn't there yesterday. I suppose it's a bit much to rock up at lunchtime and expect no-one else to have seen the obvious signs of prey fish shoaled up in this bit of the drain, but whoever it was could at least have taken their rubbish home.

I decide to give it an afternoon in any case. A grey old afternoon, that looks like it's going to piss down when it gets round to it. I extract the rods from the quiver and hoof the first bait to the crease where water's gushing in from a side drain.

It's off before I've even got the second one out or the net made up. I pull into the fish and it comes off after a couple of head shakes. I can't get the bait back in and the others out fast enough, thinking I've dropped on them.

Two of the rods are on poppernosters - whole bloods popped up on long links, which should hopefully sit the length of the trace off the bottom. The other's got a mackerel on, float-fished over-depth so I can twitch it about and see where any takes occur.

Somehow, I manage to miss a couple more before it finally gets round to raining. Whatever they are, I begin to wonder if they're pike, after I fail to connect with a screamer and find the bait un-marked. Never mind, I say, as I convince myself to stay until dusk. At least there's something out there. Snag was, I never got to find out what it was.