Warwickshire Avon - Gadzookery and Galactophagists

With the conditions till favourable for barbel for this dawn 3.5 hour session I decided to fish the syndicate stretch to see if one of the lumps that 'we' are sure live here, or at least transition up and down the river was up for a feed.

Since we have taken on this stretch to be honest it hasn't been prolific, but then where is on the Avon these days. Well certainly the bits I and the other members fish anyway. 

The numbers may not be anything like the Wye or the Severn but there are still some right old lumps still swimming around these largely unfished waters.

The problem is you are having to fish for a bite, not numbers of bites and as someone who struggles to fish more than 5 hours, sitting behind motionless rods really ain't my cup of tea.

It's one of the reasons why I prefer to fish when they are most likely to bite and those conditions are right now. The river was still high but on the fall and the water temperature had risen to over 9 degrees.

A change of tactics for this short trip, meat on one rod and lobworms on the other. The decent barbel that I have caught here have taken a variety of baits and to be honest I don't think it matters to be honest, you just need to be confident in a bait and need fish in-front of you. 

Now what I didn't expect was a decent shoal of roach were in the first swim I tried and were mullering the lobworms, so much so a change of bait was required because I was running out of them thick and fast, and the bites were decent enough to move a 1.75TC barbel rod. 

So I switched to boilie with a paste wrap and stuck to big baits for the remaining of the session but kept a couple back to fish a swim I bait dropped some pellets, meat and chopped worm.

The river looked bob on for a bite but a good hour and a half went by without any interest but then not entirely unexpected here because often blank, after blank can be rewarded with a decent fish.

I've caught double figure barbel, 6lb bream, 14lb carp and decent chub, and it was a decent chub that turned up out of the blue once I changed swims and switched back to lobworm.

I carefully dropped the rig in to an overhanging tree and within minutes of the lobworm settling on the bottom a couple of sharp jabs turned in to a proper bite and a fish was on.

No match for the barbel rod but it felt a good fish and sure enough when it surfaced up this deep bodied chub looked half decent, and it was too at 5lb and 2 ounces, which ain't a bad Avon fish. The barbel, well for me anyway, reamained as elusive as ever.