Crafty crucians...!

Napton Reservoir has some nice crucians in it, they appear to have a slightly rounder shaped body to the strain you usually see. Whether there is any impurity in them I have no idea and to be honest I don't care.  I like the look of them and as they're reasonably local they are on my target list.  So, prompted by a forum entry I saw recently, they were in my mind throughout the working week.
When the chance came I set off  for a quick couple of hours after work with the hope of tempting one or two of these elusive Napton inhabitants.

The conditions were not great, being a hot day with very bright clear conditions. Although the water seemed to have a bit a colour in it.  I fished for about three hours up to sunset building up a swim by baiting with white crumb, caster and maggots.  Over this I float fished various hook baits on an size18 hook to 2lb hook length.   I had to wait probably 2 hours for the first bite, that when it came, I failed to react in time due to the torpid state my mind had fallen into.   I find there is a certain amount of "tuning in" you need to do when float fishing.    This is ok when you get lots of bites, as you can afford to miss a few.   If however (as it turned out for me) you are fishing for only one or two bites there can be no errors.   After the first missed bite I was determined not to make the same mistake if I got another chance. 

 Waiting for that pimple to move

By now there were bubbles appearing near the float, not pinprick small Tench bubbles as you might suspect on this water but they larger and were definitely from fish feeding on my bait.  I then saw a crucian roll a foot or so from my float.  My concentration was now honed like a cat waiting to leap on a bird and I don't even know if I was still breathing in and out !
Then the float tip vibrated, wobbled a bit and started to move to the side, I struck and felt the fish bump off the hook - arggggh !  The redworm i'd had on was gone and so was my last chance of the evening. The light soon faded and I conceded defeat - this time !

Maybe next time ...