Warwickshire Avon - Tatonnements and Tartarian Pits

Lots of thumb twirling this week wondering what the heck I was going to fish for. The Avon had risen and fallen nicely after the considerable dumping of rain we had the early hours of Tuesday morning so it would be in good shape for this short evening session. 

When I've been working from home my lunches have gone from sarnies and Greek yogurt with honey, walnuts and fruit to the odd hot relatively healthy brunch in-between. The cockles in need of warming it seems, and ones winter coat may have to to be dusted off sooner than I thought it would be. The fish I'm sure will start to pack the weight on from this day forward. 

Now the diary makers and bank account fillers had upped their quota this week and ones fishing opportunities would be very small indeed. 

To be fair it suits me as I'd rather cram the number of sessions in rather than one long drawn our affair. I had planned to meet up with fellow blogger The Essex Scribbler and Bureboy at the Grand Union but just couldn't make things work sadly. 

I've mentioned it in this blog many a time, just a couple of hours here and there really do work wonders for my psyche and It keeps me on the straight and narrow. Life can be all consuming and for many like me, we all need an outlet and me time whether that is riding a bike, going to the gym, walking the dog, baking cakes or for me its the piece and quiet of a river bank.

What has also helped is my presence, or lack off on social media was one of the biggest changes I made many moons ago and to be honest was a little odd a first, because back then Facebook was very new to the scene and was a must have amongst ones peer group. 

The reaction to the recent outage was quite ridiculous really like the word was about to end, but then social media is embedded in many peoples lives these days, I'm the odd one out, oh well not for the first time, I quite like it that way if I'm honest !!!  

Anyway back to the fishing, for this season whilst waiting for those Zander floats to bob down the canal I decided for this season that a 6lb Warwickshire Avon Chub would be one of my targets as would be a double figure river Zander. 

Autumn is well and truly here now, so with the leaves starting to fall and the temperatures dropping whilst the river has some more water on the conditions are certainly improving for fishing. 

I could fish rivers such as the Lower Severn or even the Trent for a better chance of a double figure Zander but my blog since its conception has always been about the Warwickshire Avon and its tributaries.

The further you go down the Avon the better the chance of a double but locally for me I haven't done too bad considering I don't fish for river Zander as much as I should do really. I suppose the canal double challenge was my Zed fishing fix and that was a single minded carpet bombing approach that I wouldn't dare to try and match on waters flowing.

I like mixing things up a bit and fishing for all manner of species be it big or small. I cannot think of many anglers that would fish exclusively for Gudgeon and then Barbel the following day. 

So for this <2 hour'er I fancied some predator fishing so two rods and small sections of roach under a float. The swim I fancied I lost a decent fish towards the end of last season and with the river up here is a nice wide open swim where two rods can be fished no problem. 

It always hold fish with water on but only the last couple of weeks its been fishable really because in low summer levels the bigger fish feel far too vulnerable here as its very open and they go where there is cover. 

When I got bankside I was amazed just how coloured the water was, I can only assume that the ground is becoming saturated now and leaking like a sponge. Now I did contemplate going back for the barbel gear but to be honest I was after Zander and they are up for a feed when it is as coloured as this.

What an odd session though, two bites within 20 minutes the first a typical Zander bite and I tightened up to nothing. Then the second bite came on the righthand rod and this one was really confident indeed, as soon as the float submerged I tightened up to the circle hook felt the fish on for a second and then it came off. 

What the heck, 🙈 two bites and two missed fish. There were minnow scattering all over the shop, were these perch chasing them in nan strong tea coloured water ?

So lots of predator activity but nothing to show for it. For the next hour all went dead apart from the mental marauding minnows and I was staring at a blank, until something that I didn't expect happened you see out of the blue the righthand float bobs and then literally submerges within a split second.

A really odd fight ensued and then when it surfaced it was a chub, a chub that had wolfed down the roach section and the circle hook to go with it. Luckily easy to unhook but it wasn't even a big Chub either, a 1lb and a half'ish maybe.

I've caught Chub on all manner of baits over the years including deadbaits but I didn't expect this especially with the water so coloured. But then nothing NOTHING gets in the way of a hungry chub that needs to quell its hunger. I fished in to dusk and a little bit beyond and no more action. With the conditions like they are I might have a short barbel session maybe, the waeter looks ideal for that it really does.