Warwickshire Avon - Salad Dodgers and Salamandroids

With the nights drawing in now and with work every busier those fishing opportunities are limited to a couple of hours after work and that's my lot. That means to maximise piscatorial pleasantries those venues close to home, or those on the way back from the office commute are about all I'm able to muster up.

The thing is I've never been about the big fish chasing really, the venues locally are nice enough to get my fishing fix and those ventures further afield are limited to here and there. To be honest that's more my own self imposed limitations than those forced upon me, so I shouldn't moan really.

Take this section of the Warwickshire Avon that's I've fished since the blogs inception really, I timed it the other day, once the gate is shut behind me it takes me 8 minutes to get back home such is the convenience. Double figure barbel, 16lb pike, 5lb chub and 2lb perch have all graced my net from these special (to me) waters and ok I'm limiting my catch potential, but it's nice catching some half decent fish when they turn up from my closest bit of the Avon. 

So with the river still bombing through Barbel were the target because I've caught some nice ones here in similar conditions where the river is barely contained and coloured up to that of hot chocolate. 

There was only one bait of choice and that was a large piece of spam mounted directly to the hook with some stinky groundbait for something for the fish to home in on.

Now what I didn't expect when making my way up to the area to fish was that flooding had wiped out a whole fields of salad leaves and not only that had taken some of the meshed covering fabric with it. These are massive covering where you need a tractor just to shift them so it's going to be a heck of a task to retrieve it now they are soaked in water as well.

Not only that but all the rotting greenery is now congregated in one huge pile where a stopwatch is needed to negotiate it, it's not a hot skip and a jump that's put it that way. The levels like there were for this session limit you swim selection some what, but those more calmer and less turbulent swims are quite evident.

Anyway you can see the colour of the water in this pic, some of the most coloured I've seen it to ne honest, the banks like a mud pit so not exactly brilliant fishing conditions but I managed to cover 3 swims to try and get a quick bite, before settling in the first swim for the last 40 minutes. 

It was about the only swim that had steady water and I felt the bait go hard on the gravelly bottom. The other two swims I was being taken out by the debris every ten minutes and then got snagged up both times to streamer weed I assume.

To cut a long story short despite the bait being presented as good as I could, nothing whatsoever was interested in taking the bait. Not even a nibble or a pull from a greedy chub, still at least the sunset was nice and the Canadian geese greeted me when I passed their newly formed watery hold-up. 

Sitting ducks (literally), watch yourselves guys !!