Warwickshire Avon - Trick or Treat

I thought I better get out you see amber severe weather warnings for wind have been issued by the Met Office ahead of Storm Ciarán moving in on Wednesday night. Damaging gusts of wind and stormy seas are expected in southern parts of the United Kingdom. Heavy rain will also spread northwards which may lead on to further flooding issues.

It seems Storm Ciarán (pronounced Keer-on) will be rapidly developing on its approach to the UK, in a process called explosive cyclogenesis, the low pressure system will deepen by over 24 millibars in 24 hours.This explosive cyclongenesis is being driven by a very powerful jet stream winds high in the atmosphere with speeds of around 200mph. 

This contains a lot of energy for the storm system to develop. Storm Ciarán could indeed be one of the deepest areas of low pressure recorded in November in the UK, close to the current record of 948.4mb in 1954.We might be sheltered from the worst of it in the Midlands but my brother who lives in Westward Ho !!! will be battering down the hatches (AGAIN !!). 

 

This picture was taken outside of the Fairway Buoy his favourite pub the weekend  just gone. To be fair my social life is also getting in the way of fishing at the moment as I do like these post work smash and grab sessions. 

Now I've experimented with loads of different baits for chub in ones blog posts gone by, treats such as liver, steak, whitebait, heart, mackerel chunks, ragworm, oh and some unfathomable meaty treats from China, however Tesco raspberry mushrooms were probably my favourite weird bait thus far.  

However when Sam was munching his way through some of the latest Halloween treats he conned his mother in to buying I thought, hang on a minute !!!!, these look perfect for chub. Big and  white what's not to like. 

But then what isn't !!!! they seemingly will eat anything that is put in front of them, like me at the moment I suppose, fattening up for winter for harsher times ahead.

So the stretch of convenience was the order of the day because well, there are some nice chub there to be caught, and for a quick bite and the fact I know the swims well means the probability of catching one was higher. I did put a few nuggets of cheese paste in one of the swims but I'd fish that on the return with one of the ghost marshmallows on the hook. 

The pre-baited swim 

The river was well up as expected but it was a lovely light green colour this time and I knew if I presented a bait in-front of a chevin he would take it. These marshmallows had a sweet pungency to them which I'm sure will help the piscatorial cause.

So like I said, two swims both with slack in the inside were fished for this hour and a bit session. It didn't take long to catch one either with the bait being out for 10 / 15 minutes or so before the tip bounced in to life, pulled a good foot and then after a few seconds a large drop back bite.   

A spirited fight with the chub trying to get right under my feet, this is why a long rod helps giving you the leverage you need. Not a bad chub either because I thought I was going to lose it at one point. It was soon in the net though after some bullying tactics and looked around 3lb or so.

I returned the fish downstream and then gave it another 10 minutes before moving to the next swim which was almost at dusk at this point. This time after dropping the marshmallow in the slack water I had a bite within seconds this time a chublet decided it wanted in on the trick or treating. 

I decided to return to the first swim rather than sit it out there because I thought there was much more cover in the other swim where a bigger fish might be hiding. I had to illuminate the rod tip this time though as the light was all but gone.

In my experience this is bite time if you are going to get one, the 'witching hour' not in the true sense of the meaning because in folklore, the witching hour or devil's hour is a time of night that is associated with supernatural events, whereby witches, demons and ghosts are thought to appear and be at their most powerful. Definitions vary, and include the hour immediately after midnight, and the time between 3:00 am and 4:00 am.

For me and many anglers its heading up to dusk and an hour beyond when the bigger fish start moving around hence why for me these short sessions are perfect to capitalise on that. So yeah another bite 15 minutes of getting the bait out, this time a no nonsense bite, the tip literally went round and didn't stop.

A decent fight again after this time it headed to the tree right out in front of me. A better fish than the first one this and it went 4lb 12oz on the scales. That will do, I ended the session there and ticked off another bait I've caught chub on. 👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻