One of my regular early morning tasks after seeing to livestock is to sit down at this infernal machine and deal with emails.  Now I don't know how it is for you, but for me this always involves wading through a tidal wave of junk mail mostly generated from the mail account which deals with our holiday apartment correspondence and which is posted on our website.  I get all sorts of not to be missed opportunities which seem to come in themes and I suspect tell us a great deal about the Land of the Free where most of it originates.  It would appear that currently Dubya's citizens are obsessed with the size of their wedding tackle, fake designer watches, weight loss and sustaining an erection.  I'm no psychologist, but I really do have serious doubts about whether a nation with such fixations are really fit to run the free world.  The image in my mind is one of gangs of obese Texans with very small flaccid willys weaning junk Rolex watches roaming the world bringing peace and prosperity to all.  No wonder the world is currently going to hell in a hand cart.

What's this got to do with fishing you ask.  Nothing.  I just thought that I would get it off my chest and give you something to worry about on this grey, dank and rather chilly summer morning.

We had a lot of rain here again yesterday which petered out during the night, but at about 9.30 last night I stood by New Inn bridge and watched a very swollen river churning through both arches of the bridge.  It's dropping back and clearing a bit now so unless we get more rain this morning (which is forecast) the river should be fishable this afternoon.

There is some circumstantial evidence that the ejection from the nest of swallow chicks by adults that was shown on Springwatch is relatively common.  I had a call yesterday from one of the regular Thursday fishers to tell me that he had found three dead young chicks in the boat.  These had presumably been ejected from one of the nests above the boathouse door.  This is strange as we seem to have a real upswing in swallow numbers this season probably due to the dry weather during April and May which encouraged an abundance of flies for them to feed on.  Perhaps the recent wet and stormy weather has suppressed the availability of food so encouraging adults to thin out their broods to numbers which they can satisfactorily feed.  Another one to ponder.

Ian