Piscatorial Quagswagging

...the diary of a specialist angler in around the Warwickshire Avon and its tributaries.

Saturday 14 November 2015

Warwickshire Avon – Ham Bush, Pt.2

Pork 70%, Water, Salt, Modified Starch, Stabilisers: Diphosphates, Triphosphates, Polyphosphates, Processed Eucheuma Seaweed, Dried Garlic, Allspice, Bay Leaf, White Pepper 0.05%, Preservative: Sodium Nitrite…. ….garlic spam alternative Gulasz by Pamapol certainly did the trick a month ago on an inaugural session at a new swim on the Warwickshire Avon.


Its list of ingredients are very spam’ish however upon opening the can it’s a completely different texture, it’s hard to describe in detail but it’s very fatty and clumpy indeed. Even more so than the Hormel variety which after being introduced in 1937 and because of the shelf life properties was used extensively on the front line during the Second World War. Hormel used quality pork shoulder to make their product, rather than the lips, tongues, and snouts of the alternative manufacturers at the time. Shelf life you see. I even remember having spam fritters as a kid, but then I loved tripe and onions, times were hard I tell thee...tasty mind.


Now Jackson had his acorns
And Grant his precious rye
Teddy had his poisoned beef
Worse you couldn’t buy
The doughboy had his hardtack
Without the navy’s jam
But armies on their stomachs move
And this one moves on Spam

Anonymous World War II poem

Apparently the Eight-billionth can of the ‘proper’ Hormel Spam® was produced in 2012…, just think of that for a second……, the ten billionth can cannot be that far off. This Pamapol though, it literally looks like blended pig, hoofs and all like there was a power cut mid-production such are the size of the 'bits', it doesn’t look particularly appetising.   Give it a go though, some recipes here…, I'll let you be the guinea pigs.

  http://sprytniwkuchni.pl/

It’s soft, with more or less the texture of dog food and the fish seem to love it. A chub PB and a near double figure Barbel was certainly most welcome and a couple more tins were duly purchased. To toughen up this Polish delicacy a nadger, for this second trip, I gave it a dose of electromagnetic radiation, (btw it bleeding stinks so make sure the Wife is out, sorry Dear). I didn’t want to alter the texture that much but it was often guess work whether the bait was still attached to the hair so nuking it for 30 seconds seemed just about right to improve the hair-ability but not to the detriment of its consistency as I still wanted the bait to create a scent trail.  
   

On the other side of the buzz bars I had a similar running set-up but I swapped the Barbel hooklink for a woven wire and I swapped the meat for a dead roach. Was there Zander here?. Before I start fishing the tried and tested local areas in anger I’m planning some double bubbling. There was a nice slack here you see with plenty of cover and the mature trees gave the swim a notable dark area, you never know a half decent Pike might be lurking if a Zander wasn't.


Before I left I checked the weather and it said the odd spot of rain, and yet this session it peed down for the majority of it, I didn't have an umbrella so not exactly a pleasant. Within 20 minutes I had a 3lb 13oz chub and then ten minutes later a jack to a liking to the meat too. Taking of pike this swim is quite elevated and I could see dace feeding up in the water a tiny pike no more than 6"s long was doing the same, a lovely sight indeed.

The session went bad to worse, the wind was getting stronger, the rain heavier and the bank was getting slippy. What surprised me was that river is back to clear again, maybe pike was the better option. Two small chub later and with me getting wetter I cut short the session. I've a couple of perch trips planned and also a canal zander trip hopefully next weekend, doesn't time fly.

A chunky Warwickshire Avon Chub....

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