The River Leam - Troughs and Tropophytes

Now as anglers a feature, any kind of feature as we know can hold fish, but some of those features are hidden from view. Take the 'bomb hole' a deep hole at a stretch of the Warwickshire Avon that is deep, very deep, and over the years like I found out, harboured some nice fat Chevin.

Postie Bob knew about that one and put me on the right track, but then out of the blue one of the syndicate members mentioned a 'very deep' area of the river Leam either side of the rivers shallow humdrum. 

So with the river being low, could this also home to some larger specimens....?

...only one way to find out, out with the deeper forthwith !!!!

Now a 4lb Leam chub was ten a penny when Tony Miles was dangling his maggots in his local waters where 5 lbers were possible but in more recent times, those 4lb Leam chub are few and far between, well until recently however, because fellow syndicate member Eric managed to winkle one out to George's surprise.

It was certainly testing conditions when I got there because there was a biting wind and also the 'pump pool' was very choppy indeed. Rivers like this the fish can switch off just as quickly as they switch on and it can be very day dependant.

There were a few fish topping though and George had fished it recently and had managed a couple of nice chub albeit they came at dusk. Dusk was only a few hours away though so I'd stick it out and see if I could catch anything.

Not quite 'bottomless' as some of the syndicate members portrayed 😀 because a few scans of the deeper showed is was around 12 or 13 foot deep where over at one side it was over over 14ft. The deepest bit I could find was 14.7ft, still decent depth considering what is either side of it.

So how to approach it ?

Well Sean had managed a pike here when he used to fish it many moons ago, so I'd have a roach deadbait out as a sleeper and fish bread flake on the hook and some liquidised bread in the feeder. 

Sean ended up catching the same pike three times in the end, and that was back in 2014/2015 so it would certainly be a lot bigger now if it was hanging around.

An hour in without a bite but with small fish topping all around me I did think if bringing a float rod and pinging out some maggots might have been the way to go, but the tactics should produce something bigger and lets be honest, that's what I wanted really. 

Another hour went by and the only action was when a dog walker decided to skirt the rivers edge away from the path and his small white dog off the lead decided to try and get under the pike rod, and in the process took the bobbin and rod with it. !!!!!

I didn't say a word, but just looked at him and my eyes said it all.  With a halfhearted apology thankfully he left and I got back to the fishing. The quiver was bouncing all over the shop most of the session and sadly only from wind and not from the fish, so after removing the pike rod I went for a rove to try and find some shelter.

Upstream there are some lovely looking swims and the depths can vary from a foot to eight foot but after 3 swims down without a nibble on the bread I was wondering what the heck was I doing wrong.

So it was to the pump pool where I'd get both rods out again and fish in to dusk. As I said before there were certainly signs of fish as there were quite a few topping. One even looked like a small bream rolling but whatever they were they didn't want to try the bread on the end of my hook.

Dusk came and went and the chub especially were either not there at all, or just were not in a feeding mood. I should have known the outcome but I stuck it out well in to dark with the torch illuminating the rod top but nada. nothing, zilch.

Two blanks on the trot now, but that's fishing for you isn't it. What to do, where to go, I just haven't a clue at the minute. I'll get out over the weekend though, just need to watch the weather as its a little unpredictable at the minute.