Warwickshire Avon - Otters and Otorhinolaryngology

To be honest I wasn't that eager to get down to the Warwickshire Avon but I wanted to see if one of the Drake Wagglers I got snagged up in some sunken reeds was still there. They don't come up for sale very often and I was gutted when it happened and this was only the first real opportunity I'd have to go and visit the stretch again. I've got a cold brewing which doesn't help but after CAD bashing all day I needed some much needed fresh air. 

Obviously to kill two birds with one stone whilst I was there it was out with the Depth Bomb to try and winkle out a chub before I needed to hotfoot it out of there. Now I knocked up in CATIA (15 minutes 💣) and got these Depth Bombs 3D printed a few years ago now and I cannot believe how well they work, certainly better than the other tackle manufacturers offerings. 

However every initial design needs fettling once parts are received and this was different. So I've knocked a version 2 up on CAD as shown above which addresses some of the previous designs inadequacies. Slightly bigger overall basically and also the line attachment point was beefed up. 

It would be quite easy to adapt to a multi cavity injection moulding too, would just need some uniform thickness and some draft tweaks to suit the movers that would be required. 3D prints haven't got this issue though because can print whatever you like without any DFM (design for manufacturing) problems.

When I go to the swim the float wasn't in the swim, hmmm. The problem was that the river had risen probably a foot or so since I was last there and that meant that the float might well have been still there but I couldn't see it because it was still under water. So if this swim didn't throw up a fish within half an hour or in to dusk then when I headed to the corner primed swim I'd give it a few rakes to see if I could snare it.

So I settled in the swim with the landing net already starting to freeze up, the mist had started to come down already as the light was going and the moisture obviously seeping in. It was just below freezing and yeap, it definitely felt like it was, very cold indeed.

I've never done very well when the river is like this especially with a very full moon that was just starting to rise but the swim rarely doesn't produce a bite, so it was gloves on and fingers crossed. Nothing happened until the light was almost gone and then I noticed a large ripple in the swim where upon lifting my head and leaning over to have a better look, a huge splash and the back of rather large otter revelived itself.

That could well explain the lack of action so with that swim kiboshed I racked the swim and didn't manage to get the float back, so either it wasn't there, or I was raking in the wrong place.

I was off the river an hour after dusk so I had about half an hour in the last swim where I had already primed with some bread mash. The torch required at this point to illuminate the tip despite the rather lovely yellow moon being right behind me.

I expect a quick bite in any swim I've already primed and rested and despite this being a decent sized slack away from the main flow that bite didn't materialise.

So in a desperate attempt to get a bite I ventured down to another swim which has some nice cover to the right where chub usually hang out. The river was up more than I'd like and despite adding another SSG shot to the link ledger the first cast the rather large piece of cheespaste must have rolled in the flow straight in to a snag, bugger...

I wasn't going to set-up again with it being so cold and the fact I needed to be off there anyway, so a catalogue of disasters to conclude the rather lacklustre session. So a blank, not unexpected I must admit because one look of the river I had already come to that conclusion. On to the next one !!