FATAL ATTRACTION?Wasp grubs are reputedly irresistible to trout.
Sting operation
Country Sights and Sounds
John Shelley
I met up with James for the first time in a good while and together we surveyed the light trickle of water where a river used to be, and pointed out one small fish after another, not one of them more than seven or eight inches.
‘Where are all the bigger ones?’ I wondered aloud. I knew they had been there before, for more than one had escaped from the end of my line over the past few weeks.
James beckoned eagerly. ‘I’ll show you where they are - but you won’t catch them, not until it rains a good bit.’
I followed him down the river, past shallow stickles and shrunken pools where algae coated the stones, to a long, slow bend where the water lay still. It was obviously deep.
‘Ever since I was a boy the trout have gathered here when the water’s low. This is the deepest bit that I know of. It goes on for ages. Some say the fish don’t feed at all in this heavy weather but I reckon I could get a few. What we need is a wasp’s nest.’
I had heard of using wasp grubs as bait for trout but had never tried them. ‘We have a nest of wasps in the roof of the house,’ I offered. ‘If you can get at it you shall have all the bait you want.’
A bright and eager look appeared on James’s face. ‘What are you waiting for? Lets go!’
Half an hour later the two of us stood beneath the eaves, watching a steady stream of wasps going in and out of a small gap in the timber cladding, just beneath the slates. One brought a caterpillar almost as long as its own body. Other offerings were smaller and impossible to identify from even the few feet between us and them. A contented hum emanated from deep within the nest.
‘There’s tons of ’em,’ said James with excitement. ‘And it’s a piece of cake to get them out. We need a damp sponge, a fire and a pair of bellows. If we fill the nest with smoke we can dig it out altogether.’
He was forgetting a couple of things. One, I didn’t think it would be such a good idea to light a fire, even a small one, next to the bit of my house that was made of timber. Two, digging the nest out would entail removing parts of the roof, and while the prospect of obtaining a most effective trout bait was tempting, I had a feeling that the end, in this case, might not justify the means.
James somehow knew what I was thinking. ‘It’s only a couple of tiles, and they’d go back alright. Just think of all those trout holed up in that one place. You might never get a chance like that again.’
‘If I started pulling the roof off I might as well be holed up with them. Do you know what my wife would say?’
‘Sure, by the time you got back with a big bag of trout she’d be calmed down. The wasps would be gone and the roof would be as good as new.’ He gave me a knowing stare. ‘You have to get rid of them or there‘ll be trouble. How else are you going to get them out?’
It was true that the wasps would have to go. I could imagine them in my roof space, chewing into the timbers to make paper for their nest. And while there was enough food for them at present, in a couple of weeks they would be making a nuisance of themselves, coming into the house to annoy us. But no, the slates must stay where they were. As soon as we were bothered by the wasps I would simply block the entrance to their home under cover of darkness and they would die where they were.
The decision was made. We dug worms and went to try for the holed up trout and caught nothing at all, much to the chagrin of James, who talked endlessly about the stream of fish that wasp grubs would have caught, ‘So many that the river would have gone down by another foot’.
When the wind blew from the north our swan family came back into their home bay. Only one cygnet remains alive. He looks lonely and his parents have a dejected air about them, as if they are conscious of their loss. Either that or they like this thundery weather even less than I do.
