Warwickshire Avon - Ventripotent and Veganuary

I didn't notice much when arriving at dawn however when leaving, the aftermath was all there to see. You see an old Range Rover ( Reg No. was still on the bumper ) must have left the road, hop, skipped and jumped down a small track before taking out a couple of trees before ending up in a ditch, looking at the debris and tyre tracks.

I assume the recovery truck was there to 'recover' as the area was littered was post accident polypropylene, unless the culprit that caused the destruction managed to free the car and drove away like nothing at happened....

....nothing to be seen here !!!! 

The driver could well for a second or two could well have been looking at the scythe of the grim-reaper judging by some of the trees he'd hit and the one in the picture must have taken the brunt of it.

Clearly not a local driver as the bend can catch you out if you're unaware off it, but it must have been carrying some speed looking where it left the road and where it ended up. Almost like the driver hadn't send the bend at all. 

Anyway luckily for me I had a decent session again chasing chub down at the Warwickshire Avon. I was back on the same stretch again I fished 36 hours earlier but this time would fish it a little differently. 

There seems to be an abundance of tame robins down here at the minute and having the stretch to myself again the sound of running water and a feature filled river the worlds ills are quickly forgotten about.

 

I'm still wondering where the heck the other anglers are because I'm yet to bump in to another one for quite a number of sessions now.

Ok the weather is cold, but so what, wrap up warm and get out on the banks as the conditions are pretty good as I'm typing this and should be decent for another week or so at least.

Now this time rather than fish a float I'd fish my standard quivertip chub set-up which consists of a size 6 hook, a feeder bead with small weight with a bb shot on the hooklink to anchor the bread disk to the river bed.

The plan was to still feed bread mash to try and turn the heads of the chevin and get them feeding confidently but first I needed to find the fish.

You see I've found that fishing a bait without any feed first seems to be the way to go and if one is caught retain it in the net as they could well be another one, two or ten waiting round in the mix.

6 swims down in swims that looked prefect for a bite nothing was doing at all but luckily for me the banker swim would be the last one I'd fish.

Within seconds after getting the bait out I had a bite and a smaller 2 lber succumbed to the bread offering.

With that retained it's just a matter of feeding golf ball sized bread mash to drift down the fairly shallow but pacey swim. The fish tend to stay a good 30 yards away down stream but the mash really does make their cautiousness go out the window and multiple fish can be caught.

I bought my bigger landing net this time as the lazier bigger fish I was after do seem to prefer a static bait. Well I say static because the bread disk does fluttering about in the flow despite the bb shot acting as the anchor.

With the smaller fish chasing the pieces of mash drifting over their noggin's the larger fish I'm sure are opportunists to hover up whatever is left. In these clearing waters there really is no better chub bait than bread it just works like it has done since day dot. No meat products to be seen here, they have gone vegan for January. 

To keep them interested I fed almost a whole sliced loaf of mash and with multiple fish caught within about forty minutes it's surprising just how quickly you get through it.

No need to strike either as they almost always hook themselves and as soon as they realise they end up in the main flow of the river and battle commences. With balanced tackle I love the fight that chub give and as expected the larger fish did turn up for this short trip out.

None of the monsters turned up but with fish firmly in the 4's this was another enjoyable winter chub session where ok, night-time may bring in the potential PB beaters but still with chub of this stamp I'm not complaining where if I were in a match I'd be posting a decent weight again.

I suspect the fishing could get tougher for certain species next week as the colour was almost all gone and in one of the swims I could see a metre down at least. Still get the chub confident in feeding anything can happen. Another decent session, I could get used to this.