Warwickshire Avon - River Carp and Tench in the Trench

It’s not going too well this river carp lark; I’ve fished 5 sessions now so about 20 hours in total. I’ve hooked and lost one, had them fighting over the dog biscuits practically jumping on each other’s backs, fluffed a couple of strikes and witnessed the biggest out of the group a ‘ghostie’ hoover up a large piece of crust that had just parted from my hook in glorious slow motion, previous to that, he had completely ignored it, you couldn’t make it up.

They ain’t stupid these mud sifters…

Conditions need to be right really so it’s taken me a few weeks and a holiday in-between to fish for them again. The problem is unless it’s clear(ish) you wouldn’t spot them, they are amongst the thick lilies and rarely venture out, and I’ve often taken a couple of hours watching through my cocoons just to spot one, there doesn’t appear to be a pattern to them making an appearance either.

They seem to prefer the smaller dog biscuit rather than crust so to try and outwit these crafty carp I swopped the bread for an ET31N enterprise imitation dog biscuit. You secure it with a long hair with a spilt shot that orientates it in such that you can keep the hook out of the water and out of view from wary carp. The biscuit has a raised area that you nip the hook through, very well thought out indeed (not cheap mind). There is a bit of foam coloured matched to the fake bait that fits through the middle of the biscuit, not only is it there for buoyancy but it also can be flavoured if you so wish. I soaked mine in scopex, btw.

I need an edge without resorting to multiple rods and buckets of bait; I was hoping this was it...

This area also looks ideal for Tench, thick with marginal lilies,decent depth with pedestrian pace. I also know one was caught upstream from here in similar surroundings. So to try and kill two birds with one stone so to speak the first half of the session (early morning) I’d float fish for Tench after feeding some chopped worm, red groundbait and a few dead maggots close to the pads within a long trench. I’d fish a red worm and a red maggot of corn on a lift float set-up for a couple of hours or so and then have a sleeper rod out with a few pieces of Rod Hutchinson’s huge corn baits on a hair amongst a carpet of freebies just to see what I could pick up. There are marginal lilypads over a decent length so a bit of the groundbait mix would be added in a few likely spots to try and spot the tell tale micro bubbles that show that the Tench were feeding.

Any one of the target species would be nice.............

So, the above is all very well, but had a bit of a nightmare for the session. The reeds had grown massive since I was there last so lots of the swim I couldn’t see, despite looking long and hard for the carp over the 5 hours session, none were spotted. An angry Swan was in one of the swims I intended to fish and no amount of landing net waving would shift it. The first cast of the float with a worm hookbait was picked up by a Jack Pike that bit and broke the like and the rest of the fish caught were small Perch and Chub, a change to a couple of grains of corn the float remained motionless as did the corn sleeper rod.

So back to the drawing board, I think a Warwick Book is on the cards. At least it was a nice day