Warwickshire Avon – Tip-offs and Tumultuary

Sometimes you have to act on impulse and after I bumped in to some fellow club members checking the pegs and preparing for a match, a chance conversation got me abandoning my plans and changing the targeted species altogether.

So the gudgeon session with Sam as previously planned turned in to gudgeon AND Chub and the intended dedicated chub session was now carp….

You see the chance confabulation and exchange of pleasantries put light on an area I’d walked past before but never considered fishing, and I’m not sure why either as what was revealed to me made absolute sense, it really did.

A stunning misty sunrise over Warwickshire

So with a specific peg mentioned and Carp up to terramorphous proportions, I was off on another mission impossible.

The story was that the owners of the substantial house that backed on the river had a couple of offspring of the mud sucking persuasion who used to cast to this thick area of nymphaeaceae that extended over a decent length.

Now having witnessed a group of carp clambering over each others backs to get at the dog biscuits I’d deposited at another thick area of pads on a stretch a few miles downstream. I was eager to see if there were any carp in this area too.

The problem was, not a millions of miles away I’d also bait a nice layer of boilies, pellets, corn and hemp down at another swim at a recent barbel blanking session.

So…

The plan (because I always have one, as you know)

Was to add a little bait to the X marks the spot peg at session commencement, fish the initially prebaited swim for an hour where I’d dump my gear off, and if biteless move up to the cloak-and-dagger and fish the remaining of the session.

Now, for a bit of double dipping, I’d also have a Zander set-up that would be deployed after using the deeper to find any feature that might provide a hide-out. The deeper would also give me an opportunity to see if it would pick any bigger fish out by surveying the area that was new to me.

To be honest, I’ve spent £200 notes, got to get some use out of it….

I didn't think Carp of great size lived in the Warwickshire Avon but having caught them now to 20lb after only really a handful of sessions they are they to be had. A fellow but now retired blogger also sometime ago sent me a video of a huge carp milling about in a swim I fished for Barbel, certainly an eye opener as I'd never seen one having fished the swim quite a few times.

Obviously location and patrol routes are the key and I was hoping this sharing of information was the hot spot I was after.

This was the first of many a few sessions, who knows....

The last apparent hotspot given to me by a DEFRA backed cormorant cull'er resulted in a couple of blank sessions, well for the carp, not for the Zander where the deeper highlighter a trough which turned out to be a predator hideout as Pike were also caught.

So enough of the guff, did I catch anything....?

Errrr No !!!!

A big fat blank, not even a couple of liners or even a bream, in the three pegs I fished. (Last gasp deadbait in an area where I've had some decent Zander)

Weirdly even the deadbait rod remained biteless, which is very odd indeed, especially at this neck of the woods where not a stones through away I've had pike and Zander.

Conditions are not ideal that's for sure, maybe it was the depth, who know 9ft here, so 4 less than this relatively uniform stretch.

So back to square one, this time I'm headed to an area that has been good to me in the past and I know carp have been caught.

I wouldn't say desperate times but after the loss of a decent chub, I could do with a bend in the rod.