I had about half a pint of maggots left over from my trip to the Offord mill stream and decided to go to Houghton for a few hours to use them up. I went to a spot I had fished once before where one of the main channels feeds the head of the trout stream.

At this spot the fast overflow creates a deeper channel on the far side of the trout stream while the remainder of the stream is quite shallow. I was casting a simple 2xSSG link leger into this deeper area.

I got taps on the rod top almost immediately but nothing really hittable. Then the fun started with the dogs. First a border terrier came across to me and walked under the rod, dragging the line and then trying to eat the maggots. Having got over that episode and sorted out my line, another dog nearly entangled itself in much the same way. Quite a start to the session!

Eventually I hooked a small dace that came off. This was followed by a small perch that, unusually, had very feint stripe markings. The dace 'taps' continued and another even smaller perch was eventually hooked.

I then had a relatively successful period of hooking and landing a few small dace. People and dogs continued to pass by, necessitating quite a few 'good mornings' and shouts from the dog owners for their pets to behave themselves, which fortunately most did.

The next dog 'episode' was in fact quite charming. A woman and, I assume, her daughter arrived with a small 'rescue' dog that was clearly quite nervous; particularly of men it seemed, no doubt because of some past trauma. I tried unsuccessfully to befriend it but it just kept barking at me. The woman was quite amusing in how she spoke to the dog - 'we don't need protecting' - and the event was altogether quite lighthearted.

As for the fishing, the small dace prevailed and a walk onto the bridge to peer into the water revealed a large shoal of the fish, all of about the same size, which wasn't that big. For the last hour or so I tried casting further downstream, not easy in what was an area under low trees. But this again offered up similar rapid taps on the rod top. I did hook a small perch that grabbed the maggots on the retrieve.

And that was it. Fish-wise hardly a great success. But it was a pleasant few hours in the countryside and, with all the passers-by, unusually social for a fishing trip, since I'm more usually on my own and see very few people.