Warwickshire Avon - Washouts and Wapenshaws

With my plans kiboshed because Sam was ill and was off school the late morning session wasn't going to happen on the Arrow as I had to wait for the Wife to get back from work. Always the way isn't it, best laid plans and all that what a disappointing end to the river season with the local rivers being a right state again, I should have stayed at work and not taken some of my hard earned annual holiday !!! Still there was always...

....go big or go home 

So gear packed, all ready to go after a cobbled together brunch, hurry up Sarah !! Now go big or go home is a widely used philosophical idea that encourages us to be bold and brave, like with sports or gambling. The idea is that you either win big or lose big, there’s no in-between. The phrase is said to have originated as a sales slogan in the 1990s. A motorcycle parts company in Southern California incorporated the term go big or go home in its packaging for some oversized Harley Davidson pipes.

I could fish in to dusk for this session so I decided to do what I generally don't do very often and that was to fish for one bite from a BIG barbel. Two rods, a comfortable chair (with a lumbar support don't you know 😀) a big piece of meat on one rod, a pungent Vortex Baits boilie on the other. Some goodness grenades to start the swim off ©Buffalo Si and then I'd fish over the top with a feeder full of groundbait and also a PVA bag of pellets on the boilie rod.

 

I rarely target the barbel on the Warwickshire Avon within my stomping ground because well I struggle to endure sitting behind motionless rods on a low stock river. 

Gone are the days where you could rock up at Barford which was once known as 'barbel alley' just down the road from me and catch a few fish especially in to dusk and go home happy. 

Those days were long gone well before even I became a member where I did manage some nice fish including my PB of 12lb and 14oz's which was caught in February 2019. The fish that are still frequenting the Warwickshire Avon  generally are on the larger scale and fish that can obliterate my relatively mediocre PB, hence why when the conditions are favorable ie banging through and well up like it was for today's session, it's worth a dabble for them.  

Now this stretch is only 12 miles away from me and is home to some right old lunkers but they are fished for because of that, they are not stupid these barbel especially when they get to PB breaking size. Luck is a huge part of it and also being there at feeding time which might be such a small window, there is no point trying to guess. 

That's why this type of fishing is not for me despite the rewards !!! if there was larger head of fish I might fish for them more, but for now, the odd session here and there will suffice and more than enough to keeps one's sanity.  

When I arrived there was already 4 cars in the carpark of convenience, not unsurprising as we were all after the same quarry, a barbel. Some familiar faces too so after a natter I got fishing. The river was banging through and after persevering in one swim after an hour I decided to upsticks and move.

Not only was the debris coming doing wiping out one of the rods from time to time it just didn't look like a fish would be feeding in such a turbulent area. So the next swim was only just up from this but a stream that entered it from the inside and the fact the way the river coarse went meant that the water was calmer in nature. Not bubbling and boiling but a nice steady pace to it...

Most of my big barbel have succumbed to overly large chunks of luncheon meat so that went in the swim as did the other rod with a boilie and PVA bag of pellets. This time the swim steady enough to deposit some big goodness filled heavy groundbait balls that would get straight to the bottom and the same mix went in the big feeders.

I felt at least this time the bait was presented properly where as before I didn't have that confidence. Anyway was the hours went by without much happening, the anglers started to disappear one by one, with only a report of one barbel being caught that was around 6 or 7 lb. 

So in the end I was left on my tod to fish in to dusk where hopefully a last gasp bite would bring me some success. There is a good reason why the barbel hang round here because you can park right by where you fish for the first handful of swims such is the convenience, and that means more bait goes in than anywhere else on this stretch.

Sadly not even a chub pull or nibble for me gone dusk, so 5 hours of fishing waiting for that bite that never materialised really did test my patience, especially when Buffalo Si from River Masters, had sent a picture of another massive canal zander he had caught not a million miles away from here, where he had already sacked off the rivers for this season, as had a couple of other anglers I know. Anyway the Arrow beckons where hopefully I can at least catch a chub or something before the season end....