River Arrow - Mojo's and Mogigraphy

Now perhaps like me at the moment your fishing mojo has gone missing of late, to give you a chance for pause and reflection ?, this lull in your energy and enthusiasm might be a sign to take stock of what's going on for you.

Instead of becoming frustrated by your change in mood, take a large spoonful of self-compassion and allow time to do its thing.

It hasn't helped that after returning from sunnier climes the countdown to the closed season is on big time and the rain well, it has been relentless hasn't it. 

Those days are flying by, and sadly dog poo / tramp alley beckons, a busy stillwater, or dread the thought a commercial fishery which will obviously be the last resort.  (Sam keeps on asking to go to Tunnel Barn !! 😭)

 
With the closed season being less than a month away now it hasn't helped that many of the local rivers have been over their banks again, so I've not really had the urge to get out there fishing, even though I've had the odd gap in my busy schedule. 

Work, life Blah-di-Blah etc etc all get in the way don't they, it's not like I can just decide to go spur of the moment, the diary makers as I refer the aforementioned too, have had their say much of this week. 

But then I've only added to that, because with a window of piscatorial opportunity (only the cut sadly) I decided to meet up with some friends for a big fat curry in Warwick and a couple of beers instead, rather than hit the river bank. To be honest my options were seriously limited anyway, some spice serotonin was the obvious choice, this garlic chilli chicken one of 5 main dishes shared between the group. 

Anyway a new river stretch to fish felt the best way to get back in to some fishing where this was merely a reccy really to try and winkle out a fish, but to also check some of the swims out.

I've fished the Arrow plenty of times and it's a lovely little river that suits my roving style. I fancied trying for something to give the string a pull for this session so the plan was to try for a proper pull on the rod using lobworm, cheesepaste or pungent meat as bait, and roving around to check some of the swims out too. 

Now a hard frost greeted me when I woke up and after de-icing the car and debating whether or not to go back to warm bed with overly large plump pillows, I headed to the river where the wife let out a breath in a sigh of relief. 

The river was still motoring through but despite that these small rivers there is always somewhere to fish so I got on the rove to try and find the fish. I started at a convenient point swim that looked good for a bite with two merging columns of water where there was a nice slack and some depth too, it looked a perfect swim to start my campaign on the new stretch. 

I gave that a good half an hour with no bites so made my way down the stretch where I'd fish the slacks and any likely looking fishing spots. I bet it looks completely different in the summer so I'm looking forward to that.

The water temperature was 6.5 degrees which I didn't think was too bad but swim after swim there wasn't much doing whatsoever. I even tried some bread at one point to no avail but then out of the blue a fairly open swim with a back eddy produced a bite using lobworm as bait.

The problem was they were fast rattly bites that I just couldn't hit and none of them developed in to a proper bite a chub or barbel would give. Small fish I assume, but at least it showed I should stick to lobworm.

There was only a couple of inches of visibility and the river was still strong tea coloured but I thought a chub might be up for biting. Sadly it wasn't though and after giving probably 5 or 6 swims ago and falling arse over tit at one point when I tripped on a partially trodden on fence 😆, I decided to call the session half an hour early.

So a blank but the session wasn't all bad because when I hacked out one swim to get close to a snag in the process I managed to bag myself a nice little stick float. A well worthwhile reccy though and I'll be back when the river is in better fettle.