Warwickshire Avon - Tuggers and Tangerine Tornados

The first outing to the 'bomb hole' couldn't be more successful, the first fish in the landing net a PB Warwickshire Avon chub of 5lb 6oz's without let's be fair, barely trying. The deeper castable fish finder locating the 'feature' given to me by postie Bob who used it fish it many moons ago quite quickly, which meant I could concentrate on the session to see if there was method in ones madness.

And there was, boy there was !!!!

A subsequent trip showed signs there were fish there again but nothing materialised apart from some sharp snatches of the deadbait.

Now it's common knowledge that Chub like deadbaits and many angling publications over the years have featured chevin caught this way.

I've a book from the 80's from Peter Stone ' Fishing for Big Chub' where fishing stillwaters he didn't want to be bothered with small chub he advocated the use of deadbaits. At the end of the book, he states that all his 6lb chub had fallen to deadbaits such his confidence in them.

Variety is the spice of life and all that, then again these are gluttonous Chub after all, their greed knows no bounds.

A couple of years ago now I fished whitebait successfully for Chub and have used them ever since and have had quite a few zander and pike sessions where I have picked Chub up on deadbaits. They are greedy after all and especially this time of year love to keep their bellies full, their fat reserves up.

The last session though the Chub were obviously doing what they do to hair rigged baits for Barbel and grasping the bait firmly and giving it a firm tug.

The bobbin rose the alarm sounded, then nothing....

....so a change of tactics for this quick afterwork in to dusk session, I rigged up some double ryder hooks to be able to hold the deadbait in the tail and head, that way if a chub snatched at the tail then the extra hook may well take a hold. Small roach would be used for this session as well because smelt which is my default deadbait for Zander and Pike these days is a tad soft, and to reach the 'bomb hole' it's not exactly an underarm cast.

Fore !!!!

Ok fishing like this isn't cricket I suppose but the rods are my standard canal Zander rods so at least if a chub was hooked I'd get some enjoyment out of it. Chub don't like the feel of wire though (apparently) but get anywhere near their powerful pharyngeal teeth they can make light work of most hooklinks anyway.

I'd a few hooklink material in ones armoury but I settled on knotable Fox Predator Carboflex which is soft(ish) and almost Dacron like, I did think about 18lb flourocarbon as I use that for Zander and never had a bite off and also landed double figure canal pike without issue, but I thought I'd give this a go first considering I'd not used it before.

There are other predators here though that might try and get in the act, so I needed a little protection from razor sharp teeth if a pike decided to get in on the act. It was the Zander that could well reside in this crater that get me overly thinking though, so rather than fish a chunk of cheesepaste, meat or bread, double dipping dictated the session to try and see what likes living where clearly the sun don't shine.

You see it was a fish holding feature and a deep one at that. Now bathymetric maps are recorded when you use the On-shore GPS mode of the deeper sonar. Recordings made in these sonar modes will contain both sonar and bathymetric data, and you can view the maps at any time on the Lakebook website.

By dragging the cursor to the bottom of the 'bomb hole' it showed that the deepest bit I found was 5.9m or over 19 foot to old'uns like me.

It was a proper hole too, a hole Donald Trump would be waving the Stars and Stripes again over this crater of such magnitude, this wasn't a gradual change, it was 4 or 5 foot deep and then BOOM !!!!. 

Iran now have placed a $80million bounty on Donald Trump's head in the wake of General Qasem Soleimani's assassination, what a great start to 2020 we don't need anymore big holes thanks, however I'd best make the most of this one before others are added !!!!

So as my sessions are planned, rods made up, the minimum of tackle, get there, get fishing, I packed the deeper in the quiver though as I wanted to make sure I had the bullseye as my sessions are short, I haven't time for a second visit, a military operation this type of trip, days in the making, well an hour or so of my valuable time anyway.

Back to the session in hand....

After all that, a God Damn Blank !!!!

What an odd session, I got there half an hour before dusk and fished for two hours'ish, not one fish topped, not one fish moved, the bobbins remained motionless, the bite alarms silent. It was pleasant to be out though and if I knew what I know now, I'd have had one rod out for Barbel, an unseasonably mild 14 degrees, yes 14 degrees when I got back in the car.

So one PB and two blanks now, don't worry, I've not forgotten about it yet, I'll be back.