Warwickshire Avon - Gobbies and Gigantomachy

A return to the gudgeon utopia for this short session. Sam you see, like his Dad loves fishing for gudgeon because for such a diminutive fish they have bundles of character, and despite their size really can give the 1oz quiver tip a good pull round. 

Last time here you see we struggled to track them down but this time armed with a link ledger set-up this time we could drop the maggots in to some deeper holes to hopefully track a few of them down.

The river is still up and not all the swims we usually fish for them were fishable but still there are in numbers here most of the time. In certain conditions if you found the shoal fish after fish can be caught and a dozen or so landed in as many minutes such the biomass sometimes.

"Gudgeon, Gudgeon, Gonk, Gonk, Gudgeon, Gudgeon then another Gonk"

The sport can be frantic as time, it was an odd morning mind you, because the usual banker swim was devoid of them altogether and it took the fourth swim to actually get to see our chosen species.

Perch and small roach seemed to be the order of the day however bites seemed to be at a premium, usually here is a bite a chuck as soon as the maggot drifts down the water column.

The bleak had all but disappeared too, and it just goes to show how quickly a stretch can change and the fish can appear and re-appear in different times and circumstances.

The perch provided some decent sport luckily but they were not our intended target. The first one we tracked down seemed to be on its lonesome because the only other fish we could catch were minnows. 

So a rove was in order and we doubled backed upon ourselves and headed to the very bottom end of the stretch where there is some extra cover. The river when it's in flood also carves out the bank here too and over the years it has made a nice deep pool.

The first cast was a maggot sucking roach but then when the maggot went back out after a 5 minute wait the tip rattles a couple of times and then pulls round properly.

Considering how small they are give a great battle gudgeon and I knew exactly what it was before it surfaced. It carted off the left to try and get to freedom but was under control despite its heroic efforts. 

"Dad, DAD DAD it's a GONK, it's a decent GONK "We need to weigh this one, could be a PB"

And Sam was correct in his observations, it really was a GONK and the PB had been bettered again to one of 32 grams or 1 1/8 ounce. The maggots then seemed to just turn on the minnows and sadly no more gudgeon came our way. 

Cannot complain though, it was an enjoyable morning. Brian from Pike Blog needs to design a T-Shirt, money at the ready.

"Size doesn't matter ..."