Lake looked fine at seven. Flat as a plate. I set two rods off the shallow spit opposite the pines. Method on one, simple inline on the other. 12ft 3.25s, 0.35 mono, fluoro links because this water is usually too clean for my liking. Washed-out yellow wafters, cage stuffed tight with crushed maize and pellet. No heroics. The same old setup that still works if you tie it tidy.
One early draw on the method. Not a tear-off. Just that slow yes. Came off. Hook point had kissed a stone and rolled. My thumb told me before my pride would. Swapped to a fresh size 6, quick grinner to the fluoro, blobbed the tag. Miguel said “otro” and poured more coffee like the lake owed us another and would pay on Fridays.
Around eleven the colour started. That’s the tell. Not wind. Not birds. The water goes tired. Clear turns tea in little tongues and the top foot gets bits in it, like old leaf dust. Smell shifts to cellar. If you’ve had one bad October you feel it coming in your teeth. I’ve had three. Mequinenza twice, García Sola the year with the green tent I hated. Today it was Orellana’s turn.
The Deeper showed bait heaping, then breaking into scraps, then sliding up off the drop. Surface temp dropped a degree in half an hour. You don’t need the gadget to know. You can see it in the way the line sits, dead, like it’s bored of you. That’s turnover. Bottom water burps up, oxygen goes funny, everything with gills walks away. The first time I saw it I thought I was cursed. Now I just swear and move.
We went left. Not far. Sixty yards, edge of the old stream bed, a bit of cleaner slick where the breeze pushed it. Two slow trips with the barrow because I’m not twenty. I lengthened the links to about ten inches so the bait would settle over the fluff. Swapped to a darker crumb in the cage. Ground hemp, black fishmeal, the daft pinch of chilli I put in when water goes flat because I swear it wakes them up. Wafter went dull. No perfume. Same 2 oz inline. Don’t invent problems.
Miguel did the opposite, because he’s wired that way and sometimes he’s right. Tiny white pop-up, German rig, short stiff link, dumpy lead. “Visible or invisible,” he said. “Nothing between.” He’ll write that on a T-shirt one day and sell three.
Forty minutes of nothing. Two cormorants fought over a stick like old blokes at the bus stop. I got two tiny ticks on the inline, thought leaf, nearly reeled in. Tip eased down half a centimetre and stayed there. That’s the bite. Lift. Heavy.
No fireworks. Just that thick, sensible weight. One slow plod toward the drowned channel, a sulk at the shelf, slack, angle, back, breathe. Rod low. Let the lead do the work. Miguel stood with the net doing his referee face. Ten minutes. One honest roll. Clean flank, deep fish, proper Orellana. Hook bang in the corner. Fresh point earning its keep. In she went. I don’t do weights on here. I did the photo for the book and let her go. Felt like a yes on a no day. That’ll do.
We’d parked away from the speaker lads so it was us and two pensioners up on the bench with a travel chess set. After the fish one of them wandered down and asked why we’d shifted left when the wind picked up. Careful Spanish. He’d clocked the accent. I said the lake flips, bad water up, good water slides sideways, follow the line you can breathe along. He said his brother only ever fishes maize. I said his brother sounds right more often than me. We shook hands like we’d fixed a gate.
Miguel had one later on the tiny pop-up, because of course. Same polite bite. We packed when the shadow hit the trees and that October chill climbed out of the water into your sleeves. I checked the permit was where it lives in the glove box. Seprona have stopped me here twice in four years; it’s boring but it beats shouting in the car park.
What matters, and I’m writing it here so I don’t lie to myself next week: watch the colour before you watch the thermometer. If your nice gin-green goes tea in streaks, you’re sitting in the burp. Slide sideways until your line looks alive again. Make the rig disappear. Sharp point or go home. Don’t sit stubborn in last week’s glory swim because pride doesn’t catch.
I rang Sue on the way back. Told her we moved sixty yards and that was the day. She said that sounds like marriage. Then she asked if I’d bought bread. I hadn’t. Turned round at the petrol station like a man who wants a quiet tea.
If the nights keep cooling I’ll dust off the zig box for afternoons. Three, four foot black foam, slow sink. Looks silly until it doesn’t. Or I’ll be wrong and we’ll be back on the feeder because I am a retired welder from Sunderland who still thinks tidy knots and a Thermos beat fashion. Either way, when the lake flips, don’t wait it out. Move. And check your hook on your thumb like your dad taught you.
