Warwickshire Avon – Colder of Fortune

I could see its silhouette crawling along the dimly lit wood floor, it looked huge, easily the biggest spider I’ve seen this year, and it was headed towards me.

I’d caught and released countless ‘daddy longlegs’ up to now, but this brute needed to be tackled in a different manner.

Luckily the Wife was upstairs because she has an irrational fear of anything eight legged and this really would have kicked in her arachnophobia, big time.

She would have jumped out of her skin and woken up the kids in the process.

Now I don’t particularly like handling spider and I was in no mood to chase it round the living room so, quickly over to the lights, and with the space now illuminated it’s stuck in its tracks.

Rick Stein’s Mediterranean Escapes book comes to hand and with a swift underarm throw, its spider bound.

This thing is ginormous, I see its fear, but not for long…..

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnngggggggggggggggggg !!!!!!!!!!!

This air-breathing arthropod is no more, it’s deaded, I’m already feeling the quilt.

The resulting splat got me thinking, maybe it’s worth trying an all out deadbait assault for these large Warwickshire Avon Zander, I’d had a run last time you see but didn’t connect but then I’d fished the last half hour without a bleeding bait on for Gods sake, that won’t help now will it.

6lb 2oz being the biggest from this stretch up till now…..

Anyone else noticed how quickly dusk is creeping up on us, gone are the evenings where I could finish work, see the kids, eat ones dinner and then still have reasonable bankside time to catch a fish. My twice weekly fishing fix is headed towards one session only, and I’m not looking forward to it. I’ve a night session planned on a guest ticket soon mind you so depending on how I do, I may well in the future anyway broaden my horizons and fish another area of the Avon.

I seem to be fishing more than ever, maybe because up to now my results have been very mediocre and I need to bank something half decent.

For this stupidly quick session of an hour and a half I didn’t have time to mess about, the rods were set-up with matching running set-ups, the deadbaits defrosted, so it was out with the baits and wait for any interest.

I’d noticed when fishing the local cut that Zander feeder much better when it’s cold, there was a notable difference in catch rate, not only that but the bigger fish seem to be more interested too.

So with the Autumnal temperatures gradually kicking in would a larger Zander be biting?

What an odd session, it was surprisingly mild compared to the start of the week, so maybe the session was a little premature. The first fish came within half an hour or so and at first I thought it might be a half decent Zander as it was giving a good pull on the string but when it surfaced it was a greedy Chub that took a liking to the headless Roach. I'd caught one on deadbait before but considering the amount of time I've used deadbait it was still a rare occurrence.

It had a distinctive tail, so should be able to recognise it if I catch it again. Still plenty of filling out to do but it still weighed 4lb 8oz's.

The next fish came on the other rod and it was a small Zander complete with someones end tackle. I removed it the best I could but the little fella had properly swallowed the rig and taken the bait right down. It gave a reasonable scrap so hopefully it will survive the ordeal.

After putting out a bait after catching the Chub I noticed the odd little tap on the rod tip, but not enough to sound the Delkim, I didn't think much of it but when retrieving the rods at dusk I thought initially on the last rod I'd snagged up some weed but on closer inspection a crayfish was hanging on to the bait like its (short) life depended on it.

That could explain the end tackle found, maybe a suspended bait is needed.