Warwickshire Avon - Braggadocios and Bon Viveurs

The fishing took a back seat the weekend when with some friends we'd ventured over to Stoner park on Henley-on-Thames where there was a dance music festival to attend.

For those ageing ex ravers like me some much needed normality was restored and those dance classics belted out from the decent speakers with the lazers and lights that accompanied those familiar repetitive beats have been missing from the last 18mths of surrealness. Those pounding low frequencies just how I remembered them. 

Oh not my usual genre as I prefer beats more on the techno side but things were all good within ones world again when those woofers were delivering the air you can literally feel. 

We were all one big family for those 7 fun filled hours where the crowd like me was as happy as I was dancing in front of the events DJ's. Football stadiums back to capacity, nightclubs open, its only foreign travel that is largely on the back burner, wouldn't have said that a few months ago now would we.

Anyway it continued on like it always does when you get carried away in good company and I woke Saturday morning to a fuzzy head, good memories and wondering where the heck the time had just gone and why my wallet was looking rather empty. Still a grin from ear to ear like my T-Shirt. 

Now what I didn't mention in the last post was that the elevated swim where I caught the Barbel from really was one of those swims most would walk past in these low water conditions. 

You see even with my extra long and beefy Gardener landing net handle and spoon net at one stage when trying to land the fish I was wondering whether I'd maybe have to get my feet wet.

A stroke of luck came my way though and after one extra reach and extension of my arm to get the net out as far as possible the fish literally swam in to it. 

This landing net combination is fine when you've another pair of hands to manhandle it ,but not when its in my weaker left hand and I've a powerful barbel on the other.

I'm sure it was one of the biggest in the shoal, maybe even THE biggest so for this short smash and grab session I'd fish another swim not a millions miles away that would offer me an easier fish landing opportunity if another came my way.

My heart was pounding ten to the dozen last time and with such a busy weekend I needed one of those more chilled sessions to get the resting heartrate back to normal levels again.

 

The same tactics and bait would be employed as the last time and again I'd give myself a curfew time because I've often found THAT bite would come just at dusk or half an hour proceeding it. As I said before I cannot be doing sat behind motionless rods for hours on end, my restless legs and being a roving angler put pay to that. 

Before I settled in to the swim I explored a few of the swims with an insect lure to try and catch a chub off the top but there was nothing doing at all. Even the swim where you can usually spot the chub from high up there were no fish milling in and around the cover.

The lure you can left drift down the river and tweak from time to time to try and provoke a reaction and then retrieve slowly to agitate the waters surface to again turn the chubs head. 

 

I've had perch on this lure as well but in the gin clear water the fish were few and far between. There was the odd dace and small perch milling around but that was it.

So with the chub not playing ball after putting in some small pellets and hemp in to the final swim I'd stick it out here till dusk and until ones eyes needed the help of a head torch.

The bats were very active indeed knocking in to my like and the coughing cows on the opposite field breaking the silence.

It was eerily quiet until the sun had set completely and the swim was almost in complete darkness, that's when I got the first chub pull. 

The small glugged boilie and a pva bag of freebies finally getting some attention. Chub downstream were starting to get active too but they were out of bounds and I couldn't get anywhere near them. 

The surface lure chucked from time to time didn't bring any takes and it was looking like the swim I chose probably wasn't going to do the business.  

And I was right because those couple or three foot pulls probably from chublets stopped completely and the rod top was now motionless. Usually by this time if there was a barbel in the area I'd have known by now but I gave it longer than I usually would and as expected there was nothing doing at all.

It was a bit deeper here so you cannot see the bottom but thinking back over the years I don't think I've ever had a barbel from it. It didn't help that when I decided to retrieve the rig and pack up the lead was stuck on some subsurface cabbages. Was the bait presented correctly ? maybe not :(

A notable drop in temperature but still it was nice to be bankside despite the blank. So on to the next one, a change of venue next time I think.