Warwickshire Avon - Jigglers and Jumbos

With the days starting to get longer its nice to start to get out on the bank midweek without having to employ the covert 'mouse jiggler' to prevent the computer going in to power saving mode and triggering the Teams 'available' status to one of 'away' heck I'm still available, I just might not be stuck in-front of the CAD machine.

From now onwards work can be done and dusted and I can be on the road and be riverside well before dusk where I can set the stall out before the blinds start to close. 

Before I start anything fishing related, for the movie lovers out there 'Nobody, is one of those movies I can certainly relate too, ok, farfetched maybe, but hey, it's a movie they are meant to be. He has two children with his wife Becca and an unremarkable office job in his father-in-law Eddie's metal fabrication company. His marriage is strained, and his working life seems tedious.

 

But Hutch Mansell, an underestimated and overlooked dad and husband, taking life’s indignities on the chin and never pushing back. 

A nobody....

At first, he seems like a passive individual who fails to act while two people rob his home, but the film ultimately reveals that he's a highly-methodical man, one with a history of violence. 

When "Nobody" sets off to find his daughter's missing bracelet, his hidden past, a life he left behind comes back bigtime and boy you don't want to get in the way of him and his compadres. 

Because when his trigger was pushed, boy all hell breaks loose. A bloodbath, lets leave it at that, give it a yourself it's a good watch. Now it is the Nobody's soundtrack that captures the mundanities of everyday life, and the collective songs correlate with the protagonist's identity crisis.

"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" - Nina Simone is the opener, "Let the Good Times Roll" - Shirley Goodman & Leonard Lee the concluder and lots of great songs in-between. 

Now talking of blood baths, with the cheesepaste reserves almost as empty as our local Tesco's man-sized tissues and chicken breast shelves it was out with the gob stopping protein filled chicken livers for this short dusk in to dark session.

Liver certainly attracts the bigger chub and I've had some reasonable success fishing in to dark when the fish are more likely to bite. 

With clearing waters and bright blue skies the fish on the Warwickshire Avon can often go in to hiding, but fish when the light goes and in that hour in to dark, if you are going to get a bite from a bigger fish, that's the small window to target I've found.

It was going to be a chilly one so I'd rather not be out in it too long so 1.5-2 hours is enough to keep not only myself on the angling rails but also to keep the every increasing workload at bay for a while. I like many don't think about anything when fishing, its quite amazing really, that life pressure kill-switch off from door to bank and bank to door. 

Planning is the key for my fishing as it works for me so well I've often penned the blog post for the session before actually fishing it, the engineer in my I suppose. 

Ad-hoc works for sure but 9 times out of 10, I know what I'm doing 24 hours before so that means tackle and bait sorted, car loaded, clothes neatly folded. As you see here, no messing with the baits bankside, the liver already neatly prepared. 

One swim was pre-baited with some pre-cut pieces of chicken livers and if the main swim wasn't doing anything well in to dark, I'd drop in to the swim on the way back to the car to see if a chub was helping itself to the freebies.

Bites can be savage using liver but every twenty minutes or half an hour the bait needs to changed ideally as the effectiveness of the oozing offal can 'literally' wear off I've found. You know me, no special tactics either, a size 6 hook, a matchbox size piece of liver, sit back and wait. !!!!

No fellow syndicate member Dave Williams abacus rod rests to be seen here, just the lightest quiver I can get away with and a dedicated chub rod to enjoy the fight. My chub fishing of later has seen little change, but there is a good reason for that, as it just works. 

Dusk came and went and half an hour in to the first swim I caught a chub from last time I was biteless and usually if there is a chub or two in waiting they would have revealed themselves by now, so it was time for a move.

I dropped in to another swim downstream and again fished this for nearly half an hour without even a knock and it was fingers and toes crossed for the final swim. The swim I'd pre-baited when I got there.

It looked perfect for a bite despite the cold but again the tip didn't flinch, didn't move. By this time everything was freezing around me and I was questioning ones own sanity

But then it was nice to be out and with homemade coconut daal and onion bhaji's to look forward to at least I had something to look forward to. On to the next one, a blank !!! On the way back I decided to stop off at Morrisons to get ingredients to replenish the cheesepaste reserves, needs must.