The couple of days proceeding the start of the season when some storms brought some much needed rain, a near PB beating barbel, a 14lb carp and decent bream succumbed to the larger baits of the various syndicate members.
A rather large tick went in the box 'Decent Fish to be Caught ? '
Sure the smaller species are always well up for a feed, they always are generally when maggots are on the Smörgåsbord but for me as a specialist angler from time to time, if I target at Barbel it would be nice to catch one. I could venture to a club water not far from here where there are Barbel in numbers but at the minute I'd rather wait till the banks are a little quieter after the initial drawbridge raising stampede .
A slight change of tactic for this session though, gone were the pva bag of freebies and one rod would be out specifically for Chub, obviously ones own Depth Bomb Paste Holder was the order of the day and I'd made a batch of paste for the winter recently so it nice to open a fresh batch and scrape ones finger down it lovingly. I love cheesepaste for Chub, it's one of those default baits I use for Chub that they seem like more and more I fish with it.
I likened to a Laska I'd made last week. Apart from the freshly made paste, which is a blend of lemongrass, dried chillies, shallots, ginger, turmeric, spices, and shrimp paste, the noodles sit in the coconut broth with chicken, birds eye chilli, coriander, spring onions and beansprouts.
It really does hit the taste buds and the more I make, it, I could become a staple in ones own growing list of specialities that we both seems to gobble down and wish we'd made some extra.
There are certainly good Chub below here, in-fact you could probably walk it, I'm talking 5lbers here, not the small'ish ones I have been catching thus far. If a Barbel wasn't forthcoming one of those would do in this short 2 and a bit hour session.
Now on the second rod the bait I'd have out for a Barbel needs careful handling, you see, I bought some rather large garlic pellets off Ebay sometime ago and the smell is frankly quite ridiculous. To to be fair they could do with having accommodation of their own, that or permanent quarantine. Even if you get in on your fingers it like having eating a heavily laden garlic naan from when I progressed to solids solids till as I type this, I'm talking over 40 years of garlic abuse.
It stays on for ages too, luckily the Newey household is awash with all manner of of Covid-19 killing concoctions and I'd be back when the Wife would be already in bed so I could give them a good scrubbing. I'd usually fish with Garlic spam but I've sadly used the lot now, and to be fair this was a bit of a cobbled together session as the winds didn't seem as bad as predicted 24 hours earlier.
After a long day in the home office stuck on the CAD screen, I needed that water fix. I fear that I'm chopping and changing too much, but then it's good to mix it up a bit, you never know I might stumble upon something that could help me in future sessions. Certainly my usual Barbel attack didn't work, so why not try something else.
Barbel need to be there though, the one that was caught could well be a transient fish and stumbled upon some on the way to where it normally resides.
If there are Barbel in the swim they are not that hard to catch, the problem is they need to be there first and these short sessions are not ideal to try and track down a Big potential loner, not a group of fish which I suspect are not here. It's not been fished for a good while, as I said before, that is the appeal of it all.
So all that typing, and I'd not even cast a line yet !!!!
I left the tackle in the car and went for a nose, the Warwickshire Avon is clear, I mean proper gin clear. It took me a while to get the tackle out the car, wondering to actually fish or not. I'm only 10 minutes away by car that's the appeal so I could have gone back, but it was a rather nice evening so I decided to stay.
I set-up the rods ready to cast out and after half an hour chucking a lure around which I always keep in the car. I'd fish the paste in a couple of swims with cover and then head back to the swim and set my stall out for the last hour in to dusk and possibly beyond. Probably the third or fourth cast a jack pike nailed the lure and a fish was on.
I could see it stalking the lure as well and a slower retrieve than normal it nailed it. Not a huge fish but a welcome bend in the rod. Still I wasn't here for predators so after a couple of swims without ever a murmur on the cheesepaste rod and even a freelined slug which I found bankside I settled in to the last swim.
A few freebies in and around the pellet rod which was to my right and the paste went to my left near some reeds. As expected it took a while for the fish start to move with small fish topping eventually and the odd bigger fish.
Dusk came and went though and still nothing doing on both rods. Some nice bream rolled in front of me and upstream though, maybe not fishing to big and heavy might be worth doing as some of the fish looked decent. Remember I caught my PB from here so certainly some good fish around.
I stayed forty minutes past official dusk and apart from the odd nudge and small pull nothing materialised in what you could consider a proper bite. Thursday evening I might have another go for a Barbel this time at a different stretch where there are fish in numbers usually.
Well say that I found it tough last season there ( 1 in 5 sessions I managed one if I recall ), but then again I fished only one area the top end, I might have a good at the middle where there is more cover, again in to dusk.
Another option is to bait drop some hemp in at the upstream end at the syndicate stretch where it's shallower and feature-filled and fish some fake casters or small pellets, those tacticts have worked well in the past. Then again, you need barbel in front of you, that could be the biggest problem especially for the short sessions I do.
A slight change of tactic for this session though, gone were the pva bag of freebies and one rod would be out specifically for Chub, obviously ones own Depth Bomb Paste Holder was the order of the day and I'd made a batch of paste for the winter recently so it nice to open a fresh batch and scrape ones finger down it lovingly. I love cheesepaste for Chub, it's one of those default baits I use for Chub that they seem like more and more I fish with it.
It really does hit the taste buds and the more I make, it, I could become a staple in ones own growing list of specialities that we both seems to gobble down and wish we'd made some extra.
There are certainly good Chub below here, in-fact you could probably walk it, I'm talking 5lbers here, not the small'ish ones I have been catching thus far. If a Barbel wasn't forthcoming one of those would do in this short 2 and a bit hour session.
Now on the second rod the bait I'd have out for a Barbel needs careful handling, you see, I bought some rather large garlic pellets off Ebay sometime ago and the smell is frankly quite ridiculous. To to be fair they could do with having accommodation of their own, that or permanent quarantine. Even if you get in on your fingers it like having eating a heavily laden garlic naan from when I progressed to solids solids till as I type this, I'm talking over 40 years of garlic abuse.
It stays on for ages too, luckily the Newey household is awash with all manner of of Covid-19 killing concoctions and I'd be back when the Wife would be already in bed so I could give them a good scrubbing. I'd usually fish with Garlic spam but I've sadly used the lot now, and to be fair this was a bit of a cobbled together session as the winds didn't seem as bad as predicted 24 hours earlier.
After a long day in the home office stuck on the CAD screen, I needed that water fix. I fear that I'm chopping and changing too much, but then it's good to mix it up a bit, you never know I might stumble upon something that could help me in future sessions. Certainly my usual Barbel attack didn't work, so why not try something else.
Barbel need to be there though, the one that was caught could well be a transient fish and stumbled upon some on the way to where it normally resides.
If there are Barbel in the swim they are not that hard to catch, the problem is they need to be there first and these short sessions are not ideal to try and track down a Big potential loner, not a group of fish which I suspect are not here. It's not been fished for a good while, as I said before, that is the appeal of it all.
So all that typing, and I'd not even cast a line yet !!!!
I left the tackle in the car and went for a nose, the Warwickshire Avon is clear, I mean proper gin clear. It took me a while to get the tackle out the car, wondering to actually fish or not. I'm only 10 minutes away by car that's the appeal so I could have gone back, but it was a rather nice evening so I decided to stay.
I set-up the rods ready to cast out and after half an hour chucking a lure around which I always keep in the car. I'd fish the paste in a couple of swims with cover and then head back to the swim and set my stall out for the last hour in to dusk and possibly beyond. Probably the third or fourth cast a jack pike nailed the lure and a fish was on.
I could see it stalking the lure as well and a slower retrieve than normal it nailed it. Not a huge fish but a welcome bend in the rod. Still I wasn't here for predators so after a couple of swims without ever a murmur on the cheesepaste rod and even a freelined slug which I found bankside I settled in to the last swim.
A few freebies in and around the pellet rod which was to my right and the paste went to my left near some reeds. As expected it took a while for the fish start to move with small fish topping eventually and the odd bigger fish.
Dusk came and went though and still nothing doing on both rods. Some nice bream rolled in front of me and upstream though, maybe not fishing to big and heavy might be worth doing as some of the fish looked decent. Remember I caught my PB from here so certainly some good fish around.
I stayed forty minutes past official dusk and apart from the odd nudge and small pull nothing materialised in what you could consider a proper bite. Thursday evening I might have another go for a Barbel this time at a different stretch where there are fish in numbers usually.
Well say that I found it tough last season there ( 1 in 5 sessions I managed one if I recall ), but then again I fished only one area the top end, I might have a good at the middle where there is more cover, again in to dusk.
Another option is to bait drop some hemp in at the upstream end at the syndicate stretch where it's shallower and feature-filled and fish some fake casters or small pellets, those tacticts have worked well in the past. Then again, you need barbel in front of you, that could be the biggest problem especially for the short sessions I do.
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