Warwickshire Avon - Raffnads and Radappertization

Sam has been a little less interested in fishing recently, in-fact after I told him the little stream we had been fishing for a couple of years was out of bounds and we would need to find another stretch to fish for bullheads, his eyebrows raised, and he said.

"The GONK !!! swim then" "lets just fish that"

"Hmmmmm, ok, one BIG issue though"

The problem was I wasn't going to renew this stretch if I'm honest however I lost a proper decent fish here at the end of the season and it may well have been a species that I want to target from the Autumn onwards. It also helps there is some of the Stour that is quite picturesque with lots of character that offers another river to fish.  

This stretch sees little pressure when the weather changes for the worse and like for this short evening session I was roving the banks of a stretch of the Warwickshire Avon closest to me all on my tod. The weather was very humid indeed but a pleasant evening to be out despite all manner of inspects trying to bite me. 

The chub love it here because of the cover and in the summer when its clear I love nothing more that fishing with a loaf of bread and a rod rigged, with, well a hook and that's it. Back to basics fishing, what's not to like. 

There was more pace on the water than I expected but then with some heavy rain in the week that was to be expected I suppose. From some of the elevated banks in a couple of swims I could see the chub holding up just off the cover and they drifted out in the main flow to intercept anything that came their way. 

Well I say intercept, they are very very cagey and literally inspect every single piece of potential food to the nth degree. Great to see though, its always nice to 

Confidence is the key to catch these fish and that can take a while but the rewards are there if you put the effort in. An alternative approach is to fish baits that they've not seen before and I've fished some proper weird stuff over the years, liver will feature again this season because the bites were just ridiculous and with the Warwickshire Avon chub getting  bigger a 6lber is now a realistic target. 

Chub are up there with my favourite species because I love their character and this near 4lber I caught gave me a right good scrap after it took a large piece of bread off the surface. I lost another fish at dusk that I managed to bump off but none of the bigger fish that reside here seemed to be interested. 

There was some huge splashes downstream on the last swim I fished but the fish were out of sight sadly. A couple of Barbel were spotted, one a 7 or 8 pounder, so lots to go at here.