Piscatorial Quagswagging

...the diary of a specialist angler in around the Warwickshire Avon and its tributaries.

Thursday 13 January 2022

Warwickshire Avon - Burkas and Bruxomania

The little Suzuki Jimny is over 2 years old now and despite adding 17367 miles from new when I picked it up, its only needed its tyres changed this week.

It helps being a light as a feather, where more 'modern' tech means that the bigger SUV's need 600kgs of lithium iron batteries alone just to power their motors and that's without all the added battery management systems and DC/DC invertors that each and everyone one of them requires just to move one of their rather large wheels. 


That's 2/3 of the Jimny's mass right there, but a worn tyre is a worn tyre whatever the car and after a oversteer hold on tight moment when I nearly ditched it recently when an untreated rod fought back, it was time for an upgrade.


The Jimny is RWD 90% of the the time you see, and its only when the 4x4 H/L lever is engaged, all four wheels are driven, so it can be a little lairy when the roads are slippy and before the traction control kicks in, especially when all the weight is at the front. 

Gone are the days when I used to enjoy the thrill of lift-off oversteer in my MG Metro hooning around the back lanes of Meriden at 80mph that I knew like the back of my hand, or the enjoyment I got from the ridiculous speeds seen in my TVR Cerbera without any modern safety aids whatsoever. (before it broke, oh and broke again)

Now its been unstoppable off road, well from the extremely muddy tracks I've driven anyway and that was on 'highway tyres' so I've stuck with the same make Bridgestone and decided to give their AT001 a go. 

A more versatile all terrain tyre that balances on-road and off-road characteristics for a comfortable journey and has a Three-Peak Mountain Snowflake certified for its winter performance. Can we have some snow before winter is over please, I'd love to give them a proper go in the white stuff. 

Anyway enough of that, but then the Jimny is part of my fishing adventures, after all, anyway for this session I wanted to visit the syndicate stretch on the Warwickshire Avon to try and winkle out a chub. It has been more miss than hit of late for me and the other members but with the river at a nice level and a small window available for me to fish I quite fancied a dabble.

Dusk and beyond seemed to bring most of the bites here so that was my plan and I'd only fish one rod, and that would be my dedicated chub rod with cheesepaste. The chub seem to be here or not and when they are here on this small stretch, they have been a good stamp with quite a few 5lbers caught and one 6 lber if I recall. 

Now a Warwickshire Avon 6lber is definitely one of my targets and now is a great time to catch one because they have put on some timber recently judging by the ones I've caught of late. 

I must admit I've struggled to get in and amongst the biggers ones apart from the odd one or two but I was hoping for a change for this session. 

Talking of change you know me I love experimenting with different baits for chub and its well documented that they will happily take a deadbait and having caught one recently on another stretch on a snack sized roach I had out for Zander, I'm going to try a couple of sessions here in to dark using deadbaits to see if I'm missing a trick. 

I've caught chub on deadbait before to be fair and you never know maybe there is untapped Zander potential here, only one way to find out I suppose but that can wait for another session when I've sorted the gear out.

I fished a couple of hours and an hour in without a bite I got restless and moved downstream to a peg with cover and with dusk been and gone I decided to play about with the new phone the Wife got me for Xmas.

My iPhone 7 had done me proud for a number of years but a few pics in low light from one of the front cameras I'm amazed at the result.

This picture no flash, no big fettling and this is the result with only the moon providing the illumination where I assume some software tweakery works its magic. A step up from the old phone so I'm looking forward to seeing what nice pictures I can muster up.

Anyway I was 10 minutes from packing up and not much doing with everything freezing around me when out of the blue a pluck, then another pluck and then the tips pulls round nicely. 


A chub is on !!!!

Not a huge one the way it was pulling back but then when it popped up at the surface it was bigger than I thought. At 4lb 8 ounces a blank saver and I'm sure as I said, there are some much bigger ones lurking in this relatively untapped stretch. This a pic taken with the front camera with flash, not too bad I suppose, but the main camera 👌

I'll be back, oh and my recent purchase a NGT snood I was toasty warm !!!!

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