Warwickshire Avon - Limaciforms and Lumpenintelligentsia

Now the birds eye chilli also known as African Devil or Thai chilli, The 'Mother' of all Chillies! The chillies are used in Ethiopian and Asian dishes. Some state this is even hotter than Habanero. Bird's eye chillies produces small thin walled hot peppers, fruits ripen from green through orange to red. 

With a Scoville rating of 100-175,000 if you cannot deal with chilli heat or spice, this one ain't for you. Even for me a couple of chilli's sliced up and sprinkled over this Pad Thai dish I knocked up is about on the cusp of my enjoyment abilities.

In Vietnamese cuisine, these chilis are used in soups, salads, and stir-fried dishes. They are also put in a wide variety of sauces, pastes, and marinades, used as a condiment or eaten raw, both fresh and dried.

In Thai cuisine, these chilis are highly valued for their fruity taste and extreme spiciness. They are extensively used in many Thai dishes, such as in Thai curries and in Thai salads, green as well as the ripe red chilis, or they can just be eaten raw on the side, with for instance, khao kha mu (stewed pork trotter served with rice). Doesn't that sound nice. 

Anyway enough of that, I had fishing to do. Now a good thing about the featherweight Suzuki Jimny with its excellent ground clearance, with tyres with fat sidewalls and skinny widths is that the track down to this part of the Warwickshire Avon is no issue whatsoever.

Even when the mud is wet and sticky despite the undulating terrain and changes of gradient whack it in low ratio and whilst like for this session the other two anglers had to use the official parking scratching their chins whether not to give it a go or not, the little Jimny doesn't have to think about it. 

It means those short sessions I like to do are more palatable and it means I don't really need to do much planning really. Gear in the car job done.

For this session before doing a proper barbel session given the opportunity I'd rove around like I do with lobworms as bait. The water from being strong tea coloured was starting to clear and it was an ideal colour to try and temp a chub, perch or even a barbel.

I remember a session here a few years ago now a mad hour spell where 5 barbel succumbed to the humble lobworm where meat didn't get a look in.

The only problem is sometime the bootlace eels can arrive and they can be a hindrance. Use big pieces of meat like I do they can have a good go but they won't hook themselves when lobworms are being used.

The first swim produced perch after perch and some nice ones too. There is always a slack in this one particular swim despite how high the river is.

I've had quite a few barbel over the years here too as away from the slack when the river is up there is a nice steady glide where they can stretch their fins. As soon as the first bootlace arrived it was time to unsticks and try another swim.

On-route I'd bumped in to the other two anglers on this stretch who had been fishing most of the day.

Some nice chub were caught and also a 6lb or so barbel. He'd not caught a barbel and he was using the day ticket supplied by his mate a member. Doesn't always go to plan now does it, but he was chuffed his mate felt the power of a barbel especially when he was fishing a swim where the water was bombing through.

It didn't take long for me to catch the first chub the first fish a 3lber that had been in the wars. His flanks showing the signs of being attacked by a pike most likely. 

The chub seemed to be right on to the lobworms and I managed another 4 in half an hour so would have amassed a half decent weight considering I was only bankside for a couple of hours. No barbel succumbed to the lobworms but still an enjoyable session on a river that is fishing well at the moment.