I was in two minds whether to go post Sunday dinner but with Sam pestering me to go, whilst he was finishing off the remainder of his I was cobbling together some bait and tackle to head down to the Warwickshire Avon.
This, the end of one of my club waters is very handy indeed, no locked gates to get through just a winding undulated and bumpy path to negotiate, which to be fair is fair game for the little Jimny.
The only stipulation here is that you have to be off half an hour after official dusk (19:40) which to be fair was ideal as Sam had school in the morning so we'd need to be off by 8.00pm anyway.
We arrived at 18.40pm so there would be no messing around, which not much more than an hour fishing we had to make haste. With the Avon tough as old boots during the day because it is obscenely low and clear and the fish just seem to disappear , this is the time to be bankside.
"Four steps to the car from the swim, 6 to the passenger door" (Sam Newey) we couldn't really get any closer to the river. Ideal when the session is a long as a match fisherman takes to set up his top kits prior to a match.
With the weather still mild and the water following suit I tend to fish the same way in big open swims for the Chub and Barbel. I use a large bait dropper an deposit a maggot container full of hemp and mixed pellets an hour before dusk and then sort the rods out to fish one bait over the top and then another bait away from the Smörgåsbord.
For this session it was a piece of meat secured using a cat bait screw which would be fished downstream and then a paste wrapped boilie over the carpet of bait. It's amazing just how the fishing can transform when the light goes and this session was no exception.
With dusk approaching the first knocks and pulls started, some decent ones too especially on the meat rod where a couple of times we had to check the bait was still on the bait screw such the ferocity of some of the bites. The screw doing an excellent job of retention we need not worry.
I always use air dried boilies now because you can just leave the bait out despite any attention it may receive from even the most determined of gluttonous chub. If a Chevin eventually hooks itself you will certainly know about it, Barbel well, stupid question, they tend to hook themselves anyway.
I was worried we might be fishless when we had to go but despite the missed bites eventually a proper bite on the boilie rod Sam was reaching for the rod and centrepin. The staging was a little way down from the bank but Sam was down there like a shot playing the fish.
A decent bend in the rod too but I knew it was a Chub rather than a Barbel. He was doing well till the Chub went on one last run towards a thick reed bed and I had to take over to avoid the inevitable.
Sam switched to landing duties and we had a decent Chub in the net. Now I was a little worried if there would still be big fish in the area because since I was here last the lovely section of really thick overhanging cover that existed here since I've been a member for some reason had been hacked back to an inch of it's life.
So much so you wouldn't even know it existed if you hadn't cast eyes on it before. It was an area fish took sanctuary, where Barbel used to call their home during the daylight hours.
Just goes to show get your timings right you can still get amongst the bigger fish where fish during the day you'd have a bag of bits if you were lucky. It was Sam's fish to be fair and a new PB for him, 4lb 10 ounces of Warwickshire Avon Chub.
It was now time to go, so as quickly as we arrived we were headed home again, this time though a talk of all things Chub, rather than where did we go wrong.
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