Warwickshire Avon – A veritable spam chariot

I felt invincible as a 19 years old in my Storm Grey Metro GTI, the grippy 185/55 Pirelli P600’s only highlighted the lack of power from the 1.4 ‘k’ series throwing out those straining 95 horses. The back lanes of Meriden and Balsall Common were my playground, the law often broken.

Some of the speeds travelled over those ‘B’ roads looking back were utterly ridiculous, especially as comparing the body structure to a modern car, I was driving a crisp packet that was ready to crumple at any time.

Then one evening lift of oversteer came in to the equation and I was starring down the face of the grim reaper whilst travelling sideways along a deep and dirty ditch at a considerable speed, how I gathered it up, God only knows.

No wonder the insurance for the cheapish car was £1200 TPFT that’s over 2.5k in today’s money.

So I needed to do something before I killed myself or others for that matter….

I slowed myself down by mimicking that ‘flat eric’ advert and installing one of the biggest sound systems a spam chariot had ever seen. Bespoke trimmed panels with 6X9” drivers in the rear quarters, upgraded door speakers and ‘A’ post fitted tweeters.

The biggest upgrade however was the boot mounted 12” subwoofer which I built myself out of MDF which featured a proper calculated single reflex bandpass enclosure and also provided a mounting for the accompanying amplifier that went with it.

Oxygen free gold plated cable in abundance, money no object….

Let’s just say my Mum knew when to put the tea on the table, the 50hz-150hz meant I could be heard.

Then some git nicked it, it was my pride and joy and I was gutted.

It was eventually found abandoned in a Birmingham school car park where the joy riders had managed to not only help themselves to the Alpine head unit and the majority of the ICE systems but also buggered the reverse gear and gave the engine a misfire.

Sadly only one option, it was written off, an omen? Maybe who knows but it was about the only car I missed as a youth.

Maybe a scare was good though because in future years the cars got ever more mad and powerful, TVR’s, Supercharged V8’s, trackday cars and the like.

One big difference though I learnt to respect them and what they could do, hence why I'm still here.

Now a little like the Zander I've been catching on the cut, I'm hoping wading through the smaller fish eventually a lump will turn up, they are an intriguing species and I've learned to respect them as I've not worked them out just yet, so for this session I was at an area of the Warwickshire Avon that has some Zander in residence to try and bank a lunker.

A long and lean Zander, sat in a 30" Korum Latex Barbel landing net

I was there at dawn with a lovely red sunrise and compared to the day before the weather was much nicer, the wind was still up but it's largely sheltered so rather pleasant as the air was clean and fresh.

The first fish came pretty quickly after I re-positioned the bait in-between some cover.

Not a bad start at 6lb 7oz

The next fish then came on the other rod which was cast 30 or 40 yards further upstream, a much better fish at 8lb 4oz which after checking when I got back home bettered my PB by 1oz :)

The everything went quiet....

I decided to up-sticks to a swim further upstream but after an hour and a half being battered by the wind I decided to head back to where I started more or less.

A small Pike came literally within minutes of casting out and then soon after a Zander of 5lb 15oz's decided he wanted the Roach section. It was quite distinctive, if I catch it again, as it had a rather large open wound so 3 Zander, a PB and a scrappy hard fighting Pike, not a bad morning.