Warwickshire Avon - Deserters and Deuteroscopy

For the coarse angler, March is a cruel month.

There are the notorious March winds, for a start, scourge of the reservoir fisherman who follows the experts' advice about fishing into the wind and the reason why few March anglers go fishing in a kilt.

Anglers whose noses or ears drop off as a result of prolonged exposure are advised not to panic, but to place the appendage in a clean plastic bag and take it to the nearest casualty ward. They can do wonders with replacement surgery these days. 

Anglers with a broken or otherwise misshapen nose should ensure that the surgeon knows which way up it ought to be. A nose replaced upside down means that every time you sneeze your cap blows off.Ears replaced back to front are not so serious a problem: at least you'll know when your deadly rivals are talking about you behind your back.

The cruellest thing of all about March is that the fifteenth sees the start of the three-month close season for coarse fish.

Many areas in the British Isles have no close season for eels. So that's something you could try for. And if the odd perch grabs at your lobworm, how the heck were you to stop it? So perhaps it's not so much cruel as highly confusing. And perhaps the best advice to any frustrated coarse fisherman is 'On yer bike'.

March sees the opening of the trout season. So any coarse angler really suffering withdrawal symptoms could put aside his prejudices and join the game fishermen for a while. He could start with still-water trout fishing, preferably on a newly-stocked water where the hand-reared trout have not had time to become suspicious, thinking that every weighted lure is another high-protein pellet. (What was that about prejudices?) 

Once he's got the hang of things he could move on to chasing wild brownies in fast water. Now and again he'll run into the tweedy-twit type of game fisher who thinks that coarse fishing is only one step removed from glue sniffing, certainly not a pastime for an officer and a gentleman. 

It's really only ignorance on their part, and any remarks such as, 'Coarse fisherman, eh? Extremely coarse, I'd say,' can be countered by a sophisticated riposte such as a swift welly to the naughty bits.

(Only kidding. Ha ha. We don't want to give coarse anglers a bad name, do we?)

Anyway back to coarse fishing !! where the heck is everybody. The rivers, well the ones I fish anyway seem to be deserted of anglers, all very odd. 

The conditions are ok at the minute too, well I say that because a couple of hours at the stretch of convenience after 5 or 6 swims I managed to catch a nice chub at dusk that fought like a demon despite only being 4lb or so.

It gave such a whack on the tip where I struck in to nothing I was surprised it came back for more, but I assume the bread flake was too tempting for it.