Warwickshire Avon – Fractals and Fruitcakes

I’m not a football fan, I never really have been to be fair, but I’ve been watching the odd world cup match just to see how prevalent the play acting is these days and why I don’t enjoy watching it. Now to try and watch some of the England match in peace without Sam firing his bushcraft party, crafted bow and arrow at me and to kerb his verbal diarrhoea ,I’d downloaded the BBC Sport VR app and gave him the VR headset to use.

“Dad, why is that man not getting up, he’s only been hit by a ball “ “ I get straight up when I get hit in school like that”

“Because he’s a cheat, that’s why !!”

To be fair the app ain’t that bad, as you can watch the action live and direct from the stadium in a fully immersive environment - as if you were actually watching from inside the stadium in your own hospitality box. It’s a 360 degree too, so turn around and you can see the commentary box as if you were actually there.

Like Sam, I quickly got bored mind you and the second half of the England verses Tunisia match I’d nicked the VR headset off him as he was trying to walk around the house with them on, much to the annoyance of his mother.

So the footy was ditched and I immersed myself in to some 360° VR + 180° stereoscopic 3D Fractal Animations made by Schizo for YouTube.

He is just one of many who have similar uploads that are appreciated by people like me that can properly get out of body experiences from visuals and audio, and the use of a VR headset compounds that.

A fractal landscape is a surface generated using a stochastic algorithm designed to produce fractal behaviour that mimics the appearance of natural terrain.

In other words, the result of the procedure is not a deterministic fractal surface, but rather a random surface that exhibits fractal behaviour. The visuals are just like the way my brain works, hence why I get so much out of them.

Give it a go, it works wonders for my mind and it may well do yours….

So anyway back to the fishing, I think I’ve overstretched myself again for this season, you see apart from the usual 3 club books for the Avon and bits of the Stour and now part of a small syndicate on the river Alne. I’m now also a member of another small syndicate whom now have access to bits of the river Leam but also a mile or so of a prime previously forgotten stretch of the Warwickshire Avon which also includes a mile or so of one of its tributaries. I dread to think how many miles of river that gives me access to, well I know the answer to be honest, it’s far too much.

Fishing new waters if all very exciting though so I’m looking forward to plunging ones maggots in to those new waters in the not so near future to see what I can muster up.

For now though, back to the familiar, I spent quite a bit of time down this little stretch of the Avon last season chasing that elusive 5lb chub I’ve been trying to snare for a while now. I nearly managed it as well, with a couple of fish not far off the magic number being banked well in to dusk with water temperatures near freezing. I like it down here you see, it’s off the beaten track, hidden from view and with a small membership. It also gives me not only the solitude I seek, but an option to fish well in dark if I want to and an area that could well get that monkey off my back.

Not far from here is another one of my club stretches, that for the first couple of months sees banks busy on most days so that will be largely off my radar till it quietens down a little. This small area is ideal to be honest and I’m sure there are some decent fish to be had in its varied waters. I’d only fished a couple or three swims and always managed a decent Chub or two and they were all half decent fish, not little greedy chublets.

For this session I decided to give the floating lure a go again as the bigger fish start to move at dusk here and start topping, but not only that, I’d prime a swim when I got there with some hemp and small pellets and fish a bait over the top for the last half hour or so before heading off home hopefully after landing a fish or two.

I’m a planner, I always have been for my fishing sessions, it’s just the way I like to fish, I just like it that way. I do get bored sat behind rods especially in the warmer months, so this roving and style is more me especially when fishing a different technique, it keeps my interest up. It’s not rocket science this surface lure fishing for Chub, well the way I do it anyway.

I like a swim with half decent pace and it’s just a matter of casting the lure upstream and letting it drift down under its own steam, then give the lure a flick now and then to mimic a dying insect just about to peg it. Often a rise can happen as soon at the lure hits the water but it’s usually out of the blue when the fish nails it. And nail it, it does, they give it a proper doing over so much so, the fish usually hook themselves.

Well best laid plans and all that, the evening was bright the water really clear and the big fish were not showing, plenty of fish topping mind you, maybe bleak judging by the activity and the odd silver flash. Mayfly in abundance as were the insects who were determined to bite me. Now the Duo Realis Shinmushi is such a lovely surface lure to use as it looks fantastic in the water for starters, but on a slow retrieve it's wings act like paddles and they make a disturbance on the surface.

I use a quite heavy flurocarbon leader but sadly despite landing many a Zander on the same hook link and the odd Pike up to 8 or so pound one came out of the blue and within a split second had bitten through all and sundry leaving me without a lure and £12 down. Hmmm I won't make that mistake next time. So I tried a few more swims and even heading in to dusk there were no decent Chub showing. So the last 45 minutes I was sat behind the Chub rod which was over the baited area next to an overhanging tree.

There was some interest straight away but it took the isotope to be glowing before a decent bite materialised. All tentative pulls mind you, after the 3rd unstrikeable bite I let some line out so there was less resistance from the rod top and sure enough 15 minutes past dusk and with me overstaying a proper bite developed and a fish was on.

I knew it was a half decent Chub straight away but when netted I knew it wasn't my target, then again it never is. I didn't weigh it but it was around 4lb I reckon, certainly not unwelcome, don't get me wrong because at least it wasn't a blank, but again another fish caught which was the black sheep off the family, yeap, another fish with a facial deformity.

Maybe the fishing Gods are trying to tell me something, who knows, but I'm getting a little tired with the munters I've been catching....