Warwickshire Avon - Culiciforms and Cumberworlds

A hot day indeed, 37 Degrees in-fact which to be honest, is far too hot for me. Early to mid twenties is fine, I'm happy with that. I remember a trip to Australia where the wife and I drove from Melbourne to Sydney over a couple of days. Melbourne a huge urban sprawl I was glad to get out of it to be honest, on the coast road up to Sydney was more my thing, Tilba Tilba, Eden, and Philip Island amongst others, beaches, and national parks, me and the wife, a couple of kangaroos and wombats and that was it.

But then when we got to Sydney to meet up with some friends who'd move out there, the first day it was un-seasonally hot weather, so much so a visit to Manly Beach was like a where's Wally poster. I have never seen so many people crammed on to one beach. It was horrendous, literally the whole entire population of the small city, and again urban sprawl must have decided, yeap, hey here's an idea, why don't we go to the beach !!!!

So for this short session, I knew most would have their feet dangling in the kids paddling pool, or sat in the beer garden, so why not go and have a look if you can spot some carp. Now my Warwickshire Avon carp PB stands at 20lb caught in March a few years ago now but I don't target them specifically, maybe I should, because there are quite a few milling around if you spend as much time as me on the river.

Pedestrian pace, lily pads, some depth, yeap, there will likely be carp there. With the sun still up I wanted to try and see if they were sunning themselves like the mad Aussies. One reliable stretch the lilies are ridiculously thick. There are carp in and amongst them though and usually a trickle of floaters down eventually brings them out on the surface. If they are there that is.

Morning seems the best time to be fair, they are easier to see under the surface at this time of day as well. After an hour though with nothing showing I decided to move to an entirely different stretch altogether.

There is carp here as well but oddly I'd not seen any myself. I'd heard from people who had caught them and also was bankside when a friend banked one, so they are here, but to be honest I rarely fish for carp so that's not really an issue.

After a good hour or so, wondering if I should have stayed at home, I spotted my first carp. Not a huge fish, maybe not even a double, but it was a carp, and that was my target to try and add some species points to the blogger challenge tally.

I watched it for a while and then is disappeared below the surface. I needed to act quick, a chunk from my new favorite bread, a piece of extra thick Hovis.

It staying on the hook rather well and also for big pieces I use for Chub, ideal. Very doughy indeed. So all prepared, the first chuck out of the bread, a fish comes up almost instantly and takes it off the surface. I nailed the fish straight away, it wasn't messing around when it took it. But then after the initial fight, I was questioning if the fish I was playing was the carp I saw. It certainly wasn't fighting like a double figure carp.

Yeap, a Chub, Arhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!!

Not a bad one mind you, 4lb 12oz on the scales, but not the target species. After the fish was returned there was nothing doing at all. A tickle of floating bread remained unhindered and the carp had disappeared.  A bend in the rod though, so at least not a blank and a year ago a 4lb 12oz would have been a PB. The river was a little lifeless if I'm honest, lets hope we get some much needed rain, otherwise Chub will likely feature till that happens.

A pleasant evening on the whole, I watched a kingfisher feeding and bankside with the volume of water felt less oppressive.  The mosquitos a different matter, bitten and bitten again.