Warwickshire Avon - Boreholes and Borborology

Now the Kola Superdeep Borehole is the deepest hole ever dug reaches 7.5 miles below the Earth’s surface, a depth that took about 20 years to reach. The portal to the centre of the earth sits among the ruins of an abandoned project site in Murmansk, Russia, not far from the Norwegian border. Sure, it’s covered and welded shut, but it still sounds like a horror film to me. 

Well now you mention it Nine Miles Down is a 2009 horror film based on the Well to Hell hoax, a widespread urban myth (spread mostly in the 1990s) that Russian scientists had drilled so deep that they had broken through into hell and recorded the screams of the damned emanating from the borehole. 

The hole was intended to go “as deep as possible,” which researches expected to be around 9 miles. But the scientists and engineers were forced to give up when they hit unexpectedly high temperatures. At 7.5 miles below the surface, the 2.7 billion year old rocks there at temperatures of around 180 degrees Celsius .This was almost twice as hot as they’d predicted.

Such high temperatures deform the drill bits and pipes. The rocks themselves also become more malleable. The Russian scientists in Kola described the rocks at those depths as behaving more like plastic than rock. Now there are a few reasons we humans dig deep into the Earth extracting resources like fossil fuels and metals, for starters. 

A 100-year-old copper mine in the mountains near Salt Lake City, Utah hosts a pit that extends three quarters of a mile deep and spans 2.5 miles. At 215 meters, the Kimberley Diamond Mine (which I've been lucky to visit) in South Africa is one of the largest holes in the world dug by human hands.

Now talking of hoax's Barbel do frequent the Warwickshire Avon yes they do, and even my stomping ground because not only have I caught one, but I've seen a few milling around too. It helps that the river is low and clear at the minute as they are ideal to spot under the polarised sunglasses.

After catching a few chub off the top on bread I proceeded to an area I've spotted them before but a good scout around the swim I could only see chub. I put some pellet and hemp out and went to explore a few other areas where I returned to discover a few milling around. 

Not big fish, the biggest looked around 7lb or so,  but certainly worth catching. This was a shallow swim, barely knee deep so stealth is the key. I dropped in the small dynamite hot fish boilie with a PVA bag and chilled out in the pleasant evening sitting back from the river. 

What I didn't expect was within 10 minutes of the boilie being out as rattle on the rod top I was in to a fish. Only a small chub though which was landed quickly with the extended landing net as full stretch in this elevated bank.

Thankfully it didn't disturb the swim whatsoever as I almost just reeled it in 😂 I'm sure it didn't realise it was hooked !!! Anyway another pva bag went out with a change of boilie and I got back fishing again.

After a decent chub within 20 minutes which initially I thought was a barbel because not only was it pulling back hard but it looked really long too.

I don't mind catching chub on the barbel rod when they look like this with their summer colours. There was carnage in the swim but 2 more chub up until dusk the barbel were nowhere to be seen sadly. I assume they were spooked and decided to venture to a swim where they felt more comfortable. Still quite a few chub caught on two different methods in a few hours, the world is good again.