Warwickshire Avon - His-Nibs and Habdabs

With the Wife out with the kids on Fathers-Day at the In the Night Garden live show in Leamington, I had most of the day to myself. I had planned to go fishing but stayed in bed for a rare lie in. THREE bacon rolls stuffed with ALL the bacon, lathering’s of HP finest and then high quality repetitive beats to make the Wife’s stabbing hand itch and loud enough to make the walls and windows vibrate.

The elderly neighbours checking their pacemakers for malfunction, the air movement from the low frequencies exhibited powerful enough to feel, dust disturbed. 

Till I knackered the subwoofer that is, you see nearly two hours in to a Mixcloud catch-up and trying to create a rave to relive my youth, things go very wrong, very wrong indeed. 

A woof Woof WOOF went to a rattle RATtle RATTLE !!! and there was more distortion from within, than ones muddled brain. A quick driver inspection as the cones are exposed and hidden at the back of the ported enclosure, BOTH speaker cones are now detached from their peripheral foam rings.

The good servant of the years sadly now confined to the care home. Proper broke, never to get awaken from its slumber ever again, kaput, knackered, thankfully the coffin dodgers a stone’s throw away expressing a sigh of relief and could back to enjoying their dunking and elevenses.

Now talking of rattles with the tackle still in the car after Sunday’s fruitless and rattle-less Barbel session I decided to have another go whilst the weather was fair and the evening free. 

So after the family duties were done and dusted, I hot footed it to an area where a bite more likely, an area where often there are numbers of fish. However one big stumbling block, I’ve lost fish here before to hook pulls due to the reeds that litter this relatively shallow area. To the left a deep trough, to the right a gap between the streamer weed.

Tackle to the minimum, an couple of hours before dusk, rods out, sit and wait !!!!

Barbel again you ask? well yes because having a sort through ones bait and tackle, you see other than Zander and small bits, I’ve realised I’m properly out of the mix in catching other species of fish. So the plan to try and fish for Bream the weekend to get some Challenge Points has meant stripping reels of their old line, re-spooling with something more suitable and buying end tackle and bait just to get a session together. 

So I rocked up two hours before dusk to find a deserted car-park, maybe others knew something I didn’t. The river had dropped considerably since Sunday and it looked a great colour as well, for Zander anyway, looked perfect. One rod with spam to my right in some slack water, and on my left rod a paste wrapped krill wafter in a shallow area with a nice flow.

Within minutes the left rod bangs and rattles and then hoops over and a fish is on. I knew it was a Barbel straight away and it carted to the right downstream. 

As it teased it upstream towards me all went solid. Yeap, it went straight in to some submerged reeds, the fish surfaced though and not a huge fish but there was only one ending to this now. After leaving it slack for a while I felt the line go tight but after some strain the hook pulled, damn…!!!! 

Soon after though my right hand rod is getting some interest and eventually a bite develops and a fish is on. A chub this time as it was trying to get under the staging. Now this was a third of a tin of spam this fish took so I was expecting something a little different than a 3lber. A welcome fish all the same though and kicked off the challenge with a score on the door. 

Then, things change. A posh kids party started just downstream which I assume was to mark exams finishing. The babycham was flowing and with the voices of Henry and Henrietta getting louder and louder, the modern music becoming more cringeworthy it was time to move. 

That was a bad mistake because headed in to dusk when usually things happen here and I remained biteless, you live and learn though. Other species will be on the agenda the weekend and Sam hopefully will have his first outing in the new season.