Warwickshire Avon - Exophthalmos and Excutient

Out of the blue a year or so ago a friend Dave sent me a picture of a fish he'd caught down at the WBAS section of river we'd access to and wasn't quite sure what it was. Now I knew what it was straight away as I was quite familiar with the Silver Bream through Jeff Hatt's unique ramblings, and also because Warwick Racecourse Reservoir before it was redeveloped had a good head of them and I caught quite a few up to 1lb 5oz.

The forgotten fish for sure, because like Dave unless you are in the know, you would think like he did, it was a roach bream hybrid maybe, or even a skimmer bream.

Now obviously being an avid carp chaser trying to get the exact location of these silver bream he was catching was like getting blood out of stone. :) You'd

Yeap it was virtually impossible, but then fair enough, I'm not likely to share where the 'bullhead banker' swim is, or where the 'deep' bit on the canal is where big Zander reside, that wouldn't be right now would it.

If I look how my blogging had changed from the first post ten years ago I used to reveal the locations more often that not. 

Ok I've not a PB list to shout from the roof tops about but I'v caught some nice fish over the years and would rather keep good areas I know about to myself and maybe the like-minded if they share the passion for certain species like I do. Canal Zander and Barbel seems to get the most interest from the lazy lead lovers and to be honest, those are some of the easiest fish to catch.

I knew where the stretch was though, the only problem was it was a mile long. The stamp was a good'un as well up to 2lb 8oz's, which for a river silver bream is proper specimen no doubt. My lead in the Bloggers Challenge River leaderboard is reducing all the time though. To maintain that lead I need to catch bigger specimens of the species that I've already caught to increase my points but also to register a weight for those species I'd not already done so.

Dave Roberts with a huge Warwickshire Avon Silver Bream

A river carp, tench, silver Bream and a roach bream hybrid all certainly doable because there are areas I know they reside, in-fact the more I look at what I need to catch, I'm on it.

The problem is I don't fish properly for them to be fair but at this stage of the competition maybe now is the time that I should.

The carp can wait for a while but I've a few session planned now that hopefully will enable me to make a dent in the species I've yet to catch. Sadly the stretch is no longer available to us and because of that Dave recently revealed the location, tactics and the swim
type

Nothing startling for sure but interestingly the swim type was very much like one I stumbled upon recently which was a back eddy away from the main flow. Before I fished that however for this session I was down within a megaphone shout of the area where some of the big silver bream were caught.

Interestingly I'd caught Pike and Zander in this area also, so a double dipping session this would be, a small groundbait feeder with a fishmeal based sweet ground bait with maggot or caster as hookbait. I don't to enough of this fishing I suppose, a match fishing build up a swim jobbie. 

Sometimes though even that kind of fishing can be tough because I'd been fishing opposite a match once when after Pike and many were biteless fishing maggot despite the river being 'decent', but then you can only catch what is in front of you, if they are not there, they won't usually magically appear. 

A weapon in ones armoury though, before I'd start the session I'd put the deeper down a couple of times to see if I could spot anything of note, a possible fish holding spot or maybe even a shoal of fish.

I've not used it 'that' much to be fair, but for the gadget freak, what a bit of kit and to be honest despite being a princely sum, I've certainly got my moneys worth I reckon.

It's pretty uniform here, 7 or 8 foot being the norm and it has a nice clean bottom, excuse the pun. It didn't take long to find some fish  after a few runs through so just as the light was coming up I sorted the gear out.

A smelt was cast to next to an overhanging tree and I unpacked the feeder rod. The first bite came quite quick which I subsequently missed. Oh and a sweet groundbait mix with caster and maggot mixed in with it. A really nice smell to it, you can see why the seatbox frequenters like it.

A fish came on the second cast and it was a small roach, as I cast out for the third time I spotted two otters over at the far bank without a care in the world. They were patrolling and stalking the margins as they do and I watched them for a good while whilst they ventured upstream for hopefully easy pickings.

The roach keep on coming though and often they would grab the maggot on the drop. I missed lots of bites as well but after a good couple of hours and lots of similar stamp caught, it was time to move. The deadbait was left untouched as well and yet the swim looked ideal.

So I moved upstream and started all over again. It was a little deeper here and also a tad slower, again the small roach came quite quick but this time there was a longer wait before bites. Again the deadbait was positioned next to a snaggy overhang to hopefully drop it on a Zanders head or a mooching pike.

With only half an hour left to go the first decent bend in the rod, a fat roach of 8 ounces gave the quiver a right good doing over, determined to hook itself.

Another 3 followed of similar stamp but sadly the clock put a stop to proceedings. Oddly nothing on the deadbait and it looked perfect for a bite. Whilst I was packing up lots of thoughts going through my mind, for one the silver bream Dave had been catching came headed towards dusk after others species of fish were caught, and secondly after landing what would have been a nice bag of fish I missed lots of bites.

A change to finer wire hook I did land more in the end but It ideal for 'Mag and Wag' here so I think If I come again I'll try that out instead.

A nice introduction though I'll be back very soon.