Warwickshire Avon - Monks and Moneyocracy

The Warwickshire Avon 6lb chub hunt continues and after a stupidly busy day at work overworking the CAD machine it was nice to have some downtime to chill and have a bend in the rod beside some flowing water.

Now talking of downtime with dry January done and dusted the Wife and I are firmly back on the grog and after a curry and a couple of pints of HPA with a mate yesterday evening, I followed up with a couple of bottle of Owd Roger (Thanks for the reminder Baz) that I managed to track down despite the three hopeless aborted deliveries attempts from APC.

Brewed to a recipe believed to be over 500 years old, using well water, both pale and roasted malted barley, and English hops. Owd Rodger is a homage to an old style country ale with an explosion of rich fruit flavours followed by a dry, bitter-sweet finish

At 7.6% ABV it should be savoured in moderation (apparently). It is hard to better this classic winter drink.

Well unfortunately McEwan's Champion is more to my taste post the spicy Lamb Kashubo palate cleanser, but you can imagine this is the beer some monks brewed themselves in generations gone by and helped them through the sexless solitude. 

A proper beer I suppose and the colour is black, literally black and not the dark brown I expected it to be.

I suppose it was a little sweeter than I can remember, because I've certainly had it in a pub before,  many many moons ago mind you.

Anyway to the fishing, I'd arrive forty five minutes before dusk and fish in to dusk in the area I've stumbled upon some some nice fish. I'm sure its safety in numbers and having caught a few from the shoal now I'm surprised they haven't moved on or wised up to ones tactics yet.

To be fair I swapped float tactics for a ledgered bait of late and bites still came thick and fast almost like they were fighting to get for the cheese paste offering. The larger lazier (I assume) fish seemed to bully the smaller fish out the way as there was a definite increase in size compared to those caught on the float.  

Anyway to the actual fishing wow what a difference from the last time I was here. Not a touch in the banker swim where the river looked like it had dropped a significant amount and with it being clear maybe this shallow area wasn't for them.

I thought when the light dropped things might have improved but no, the fish were either not there or not moving whatsoever.

I decided to fish a couple of more swims upstream where there are some depth and more cover for fish to hold up, but only one swim produced bites, and only small plucks and pull, which I assume were small fish.

I wouldn't say back to the drawing board because I've done ok here recently, but this is river fishing, the fish can switch off when you least expect it.