A Good sign

an adventure today as always on the river. I left about eleven thirty later than I would have liked to pop down to my local supermarket to replenish my supply of luncheon meat, bread and some water for the day, about half an hour later I leave the shop. So far this day is about as successful as Henry the 8ths marriages. At about 12:30 I finally arrive down at the river and find my usual swim is occupied by two anglers already, again not a brilliant start, so I decided to go back to a swim I had previously got a few fish on and an eel as well. After back tracking and finally arriving at the swim I began to set up. I decided as the was plenty of water pushing through I'd use a cage feeder with some sodden bread with blackcurrant mist mixed in as a ground bait and a 16mm halibut pellet as my hook bait on a hair rig. I cast both of these out into an area of slack water and practically left it alone for about half an hour knowing that the pellet would last for a long time. Taking my eye off the end of the rod for a second was all it took for the rod tip to swing round and the fight was on, ok I may have exaggerated that, it was only a chub after all, but a welcome site after the day I had been having. After a few more casts with the pellet and no more bites I decided to break out the luncheon meat and give that a try. I pushed the hook all the way through the meat and using the body of a blade of grass in the curve of the hook to hold the meat on I aimed for the same slack water as I had the previous evening. I didn't have to wait long until the rod tip started quivering and I felt the pull of an eel, this one was only small and had throat hooked so I had to try and carefully remove the hook and release it as quickly as I could as to not stress it out, so no photograph of that one. The one eel which you can see photographed was caught within five minutes of the last one, again casting a large chunk of meat to the same spot. This one had one considerable difference to the other two, it fought back! The two eels I had previously caught felt as if you had hooked a branch and was pulling it in the currant, this one however began to strip me of line even when I thought it was done. So a very eventful morning turned into an extremely successful afternoon and I can't wait until I can once more fish on the banks of the Severn.