Warwickshire Avon - Acarophobia and Aischrolatry

The Wife faced her fears very well this week, she hates all things spiders and creepy crawlies and whilst I was slaving away in one of my days back in the office she had to rescue 'Yet Yet' (Sam's Yeti Teddy) from a big cricket that Ben found on the sofa and flicked in Sams direction with his wiggly worm.

She vacuumed it up followed by a rouge chocolate pillow to create the Dyson Death Centrifuge (her words not mine), a crisis averted, her fear tackled head on.

Anyway wow, what a week of weather, ridiculously hot and air very 'close' indeed. Not very pleasant if I'm honest because early to mid 20's does me no matter where I am in the world.

The lightening show we were witnessed to really was quite incredible and even Mrs Newey who like my youngest Sam is still relatively scared by thunderstorms faced another fear and sat outside with me till midnight or so to share this weather spectacle.

It was like someone pulled the pin to a grenade and it all went off (not a bad rum btw, cinnamon and caramel notes)

She even put up with the insects and bats, she must have enjoyed it. It was the coolest place to be the house still like a sauna, the bedroom fan blowing hot air around.

There was no audible thunder, well the odd rumble that was is, silent lightening almost . A shared bottle of wine a small bowl of beefy balls each it was very pleasant indeed, an almost surreal experience.

It was topped off with the most vibrant shooting star I think I've ever seen with both of us saying "oh wow !!!!" .

What was also surreal was how localised the rain was. We had the odd drop but not far away in Warwick it was a like a monsoon, a flash flood taking the drains by surprise and some of the main roads were effectively rivers.

Fishing was off the agenda despite me wanting to go but there was a threat of heavy rain to contend with, let alone a bolt of lightening up ones jacksie. Luckily for us the following day the heavens really did open and we had 2 hours worth.

Now Cloud-to-ground lightning bolts are a common phenomenon about 100 strike Earth’s surface every single second—yet their power is extraordinary. Each bolt can contain up to one billion volts of electricity, yes you heard right one billion volts.

That would smart a bit I'm sure, I'd rather not find out, no fishing for me....!!!!

Now a typical cloud-to-ground lightning bolt begins when a step-like series of negative charges, called a stepped leader, races downward from the bottom of a storm cloud toward the Earth along a channel at about 200,000 mph. Each of these segments is about 150 feet long.

When the lowermost step comes within 150 feet of a positively charged object, it is met by a climbing surge of positive electricity, called a streamer, which can rise up through a building, a tree, or even a person. 

When the two connect, an electrical current flows as negative charges fly down the channel towards earth and a visible flash of lightning streaks upward at some 200,000,000 mph transferring electricity as lightning in the process.

Anyway back to the fishing !!!

A fish, any fish would be nice so bread was the order of the day to at least try and get a bend in the rod. A chub would be nice, not caught one of them in a food while, a decent one either thinking about it. With the leaves starting to fall now though autumn is on the way and hopefully ones fortunes will change and I will get my mojo back.

I've just not been that keen to maintain my 3 times a week fishing for some reason, the weather isn't helping I suppose and the fact that the forecasters seems to get their predictions wrong more often than not. In-fact it seems to be getting worse as the years go one.

Maybe they are using the same modelling bunch that got involved with the COVID-19 GCSE'rs. Talking of which I was one of those that took GCSE's for the first time. Seems like an age now and to be fair it was, time flies.

To cut a long story short the Singapore Noodles was the highlight of the evening, the water temp still 21 degrees I didn't really want to pester the barbel but after being plagued by small fish trying to remove a huge piece of breadflake (would have bagged up on maggot), a trundle through of the swim before the bait settles a savage take and a Barbel was on.

The first Barbel I've ever had on bread and it powered off upstream and I had to try and stop it as it was reed bound.  It felt a decent fish but basically I could't do anything about it the clutch was a tight as I dared and it was pulling line by the bucketloads. I had to use my hand to apply more pressure and yeap, the fish broke me off. The hooklink breaking at the knot, damn, a lost fish.

And still the spam comments keep on coming, over 10 a day now !!!!