Warwickshire Avon – The Green-eyed Globster

Out of the blue the owner of the local farmshop we used for years announced he was closing having apparently received a ridiculous bid for their archaic but well served premises, and it was an offer quite frankly he couldn’t refuse.

The shoulder of pork we used to buy was utterly fantastic and unlike the water injected rubbish you get at the local supermarkets you could never cook it wrong.

Even the Wife, made a good job of it, such was the quality….

The meat was tasty, moist, and succulent and those overcooked outer bits used to melt in your mouth, so much so, come resting and carving time there was a queue in the Newey household.

Let’s not talk about the great crackling….please, don’t….

The shin of beef they supplied too which I used for casseroles and curry’s was also worth a mention as the meat was a always a proper colour, you know, dark red not like the bright red stuff they sell in huge quantities for the rank and file that if there were a blind taste taste, you’d be hard pushed to guess the planet it came from, let alone the animal it came from.

For the regulars they could bag any of it up and sell it without a problem, a blind bargain if you will. You didn’t have to worry about the change in quality, it was either excellent or superb and cheap too on the most part. Remember It was a common trick in days gone of substituting a cat for a sucking-pig, and trying to palm it off to the unsuspecting.

Not so this place….no cats out of bags to be seen there.

So the first bit of pork from an apparently reputable local butcher was such a disappointment I’m on a mission to find where they have relocated.

My taste buds demand it, as does my wallet….

So why for God sake didn’t I open the bag of deadbait I’d bought at a tackle shop I’d not been in before. I can only assume it had been stuck at the bottom of the freezer waiting for a mug like me to come knocking, sadly being convenient at the time was its ultimate downfall.

you see….

I’d been sold some manky looking lamprey rather than the Roach I was after. A tinge of green in places and they had almost fused together like a couple of Cadbury’s chocolate fingers clutched by a distracted child sat in a hot car.

To the layman unrecognisable….a globster if you will.

What a great word, I heard that term recently when Sam my youngest was watching some Sea Monsters program on TV and it is used to describe unidentified organic mass that washes up on the shoreline or other body of water. A globster is distinguished from a normal beached carcass by being hard to identify, at least by initial untrained observers, and by creating controversy as to its identity.

Maybe I should have become a cryptozooligist as it seems quite a bit more interesting than working on cars.

Sadly I was in a rush as I’m happy with a company online I’ve been using for a few years now, the quality of their deadbaits are pretty good, the cost reasonable, packing excellent with freezer bags and polystyrene boxes and the most importantly next day delivery where they are happy to leave it on the doorstep. The thing is I didn’t want to break in to the ‘Zander Packs’ just yet as those I’m saving for the cut which are ideal 15-20 2-3” Roach that make bite-sized Zander snackets.

I’d used lamprey before when I used to fish Hatton Locks, somewhere I’ve not fished in ages although chock full of Zander, the size not what I’m after, then again who knows with this canal Zander lark especially as this session wasn’t on the canal but on the river again.I was back  river to try and track down the lunker of a Zander that escaped from ones clutches that has been bugging me ever since it's happened.

The conditions not ideal but hey, put a stomach filler in front of a hungry fish, they are hard pushed to refuse it surely Shirley. I was a little green-eyed with Dave's capture of a 8lb 13oz, after all if it wasn't for me he wouldn't have caught the fish, but it was great to see and considering it was the first River Zander he had caught, it certainly was a good'un and would have battered my own PB.

He gave me a pat on the back as a sign of thanks and that was good enough for me, oh and also the sight of when a big fish surfaces, as an angler, that is also a fantastic sight and it gives our hobby and pastime such an appeal and it's only us as anglers that can appreciate that.

The river was running clear, very clear indeed and I knew it would be a tough morning, if I was going to catch anything it was going to be in the first hour or so and sure enough the first bite came from a Pike within half an hour that took fancy to the manky Lamprey.

Maybe it was the fish from a trip out last Friday as it weighed more or less the same, 10lb on the nose.

Lovely markings mind you and at least it wasn't a blank.

I gave it another hour and with the sun now coming up, I decided to call it a day.