Circumspection...

I caught up with a couple of mates on Warwick Saturday night so fresh air was in order to cure a slightly fuzzy head. The Avon ‘brook’ is a great roving venue so that was my port of call. The river at the moment is stupidly clear and the lowest I’ve seen it in a long time so it was no surprise I had the stretch to myself. Simple tactics were in order a running set-up with a large lobworm as bait. At 9.00am it was t-shirt weather, you would believe it was the end of September, very mild indeed.

There is one particular swim that they seem to reside which is a slack haven away from the main flow of the river so I headed there first. There are some decent sized Perch here from time to time as I’ve had them over 2lb. I say time to time because if the first fish you catch is a ickle’un then the rest will be too. A soon as I dropped my lobworm in the swim, something was on it, probably taken on the drop because the tip didn’t settle and the line was tightening. Yeap, a small one, damn.

I tried a few swims and there was a distinct lack of anything big, each and every swim produced fish but only dace or small Perch. I greedy jack Pike took a liking to the worm too but made light work of my 4lb line.

When I arrived at one of the deeper swims not only could I see the bottom but about 6 or 7 moving dark shadows. These were big Chub, two looked potential PB beaters. I could see them so they could see me, so I moved behind some nettle cover, cast the wiggly worm upstream and nursed it in to position within the margins. Now if they weren’t spooked then I shouldn’t take that long for the tip to go round but 15 minutes later a small perch got in the way. Upon rising I could see the Chub had vanished to the thick far bank cover, and that’s where they stayed.

A tree made a good vantage point and with my cocoons what a sight, not only big Chub but a couple of Barbel and also some decent Perch. They were having none of it, circumspect beyond belief. An enjoyable morning though, even if the fish were not playing ball.