Warwickshire Avon - Stalagmites and Stauroscopes

Now recently temperatures in China’s northernmost city Mohe plunged to minus 53°C its coldest ever recorded, meteorologists said. Located in the north-eastern Heilongjiang province supposeand nestled near Russian Siberia, Mohe is widely known as “China’s North Pole” and is one of the few places in the country to have a subarctic climate.

So a recent purchase a Ocoopa handwarmer, I don't think it would quite cut it where if you'd taken a pee outside you would end growing a stalagmite from ones appendage . Initial trials really are encouraging in a typical winter in the UK, not only does it heat up fast but the battery lasts a decent amount of time too. I don't mind fishing in cold weather, I have the gear after all. 

But after handling a fish without gloves when the mercury is hovering below zero, or having to re-bait or re-rig, or when trotting without gloves, ones donnies can really become very painful indeed. We are talking temperatures when a wet landing net turns in to a rock hard one a few minutes of removing it from the drink, oddly anything above freezing my hands are not too bad thankfully.

Anyway, a few minutes with hands clasped around this, all is good in the world again !!!

A Piscatorial Quagswagging seal of approval anyway if you're in a market for this sort of thing, the battery on it isn't massive, but the fact it is almost instant heat you don't need to be draining it all the time.  

Oh and the colour, well hopefully I'd not lose it so easily when fishing in the dark like I do. Talking of which, for this short smash and grab session after work I'd fish three swims, two primed with some bread mash and both primed swims would be fished in to dark. It's all I could muster up to get that fishing fix sadly. 

These are ideal trotting conditions to be honest and not helping that Nic from Avon Angling UK messaging me this week who has been bagging up on the Avon with the aforementioned with one of his best sessions ever, sadly I didn't have that option (well half an hour trotting about all I could muster up). Still, oddly I don't mind fishing in to dark, often the biggest fish appear from their slumber in these clearing conditions.

After removing a rubber ring from one of the swims I got fishing. The river had dropped considerably and having to lay down fat and stretch out to get water in to the bread mash bowl, I just knew it was going to a scratching around session. You see it's very shallow up this end and when you can see the bottom in two foot of water they fish tend to bugger off elsewhere.

When it's like this though when the light goes the fortunes can turn and it would be dusk half an hour after turning it anyway, I was in prime biting time. 

Talking of which I was trying out a new sliding rod rest fellow syndicate member Dave put me on to. I certainly won't lose this, can probably be seen from space I'd imagine, but it was helping him with hook-ups with these often cautious biters.

I use a 1oz glass tip if I can get away with it because it offers little or no resistance when the chub are biting. When there is one iota of resistance often one pull is all you will get.

This mitigates that in more times than not. Sadly though to cut a long story short despite fishing past curfew time, well in to dark and 5 or 6 swims not one bite. In banker swims too, all very odd. But that's fishing for you, cannot have it easy all the time now can we.