Warwickshire Avon – Wazzocks and Wagpasties

With the flag of Scotland in a prominent position on the back of this knackered old white van, the particulates belching out the back of this jalopy was boarding on the dangerous, engine clearly on its last legs.

So recirc on, damage limitation….

Luckily an overtaking opportunity is a hundred years away because the roads goes from one to two lanes as the gradient is quite considerable.

Now his offside mirror, well that’s knackered too, no glass, mechanism on show, so got to tread carefully, so in to sports mode, indicator on, throttle fully pressed, anything to reduce the time exposed to danger.

I’m alongside now, yeap, you guessed it, the wazzock also decides to pull out to overtake a car too and is headed my way, horn pressed, brakes hard on, I’ve not choice but to tuck back behind.

His window wound down, middle finger raised, the van struggling to pick up speed, black smoke a car stopper, like something out of Whacky Racers.

I can only assume he was a white cider drinker peed off with the recent Scottish parliament changes with the van laden with countless cases of three-litre bottles such was his dawdlement.

Every minute counted for this session you see because I left work a little earlier to set-up prior to dusk, to set the station out for a couple of hours.

You see I was back at an area of the Warwickshire Avon that I can fish in to dark, it’s an option that is few and far between on the area I fish, and to be honest I don’t make the most of it.

I visited it a month ago and managed a near 4lb Chub and the same tactics were to be employed for this session albeit a couple of swims down in a large flat swim. So two rods dead, lamprey and roach, one rod a big smelly glugged boilie plus a pva bag of tiny elips pellets and broken matching boilies.

Despite this being an area utterly dominated by Pike, The rogue fish, the Zander I’m sure are here, they must be, I’ve had them above and below, so no reason why they are not. The thinking was maybe here there are some lurkers to be had as smaller ones are never caught and the bigger ones don’t reveal themselves that easily.

It’s quite shallow here you see and unless it’s a weir, I rarely do any good when it’s shallow on running water, ok canals are in its makeup shallow but the water is turbid in the main, at the moment, you could be looking in a to a bottle of Tanqueray.

Air temperatures mild, an influx of warm in to the cold, I was hoping the fish were feeding.

The sky was clear to it was a nice pleasant evening to be out, rods were set for 4.40pm, half a roach to the left by a overhang, the lamprey over to the far left of the swim, the boilie straight ahead.

Dusk past then Chub appeared in the swim, a tentative pull on the boilie, a pluck on the lamprey, then the lamprey rod properly goes off and a fish is taking line, sadly I struck in to thin air.

Weird isn't it after the first hour after dusk as past, bites dry up and that's exactly what happened, time to call it a day, tail between legs.