Warwickshire Avon - Tsunamis and Tsiganology

I'm not quite feeling the fishing at the minute, and I'm not desperate to get out fishing longer than a couple hours or so. To be honest it's not that unusual for me at this time of year because I prefer autumn and winter as my preferred fishing seasons. 

Winter especially when the fish are hungry and the chub are getting fat, because not only are the banks much quieter but the fish are more obliging to take that bait. 

However when Buffalo Si from River Masters was keeping me in the loop of his barbel captures on the Warwickshire Avon it certainly got me thinking about giving the stretch a go. Especially when he'd given me a google map location of the 'hot peg no.2' where despite the conditions he'd been managing to catch them during the day. 

Not just barbel either but some decent chub to over 5lb which ain't to be sniffed at. Now I've been busy of late but Sam and I had a short window of opportunity to join him bankside to try and winkle one out. He'd managed a 7lber earlier on in the day so fingers crossed as the light went we'd manage one too. 

A nice muggy evening with lots of cloud cover it looked perfect for a summer barbel so after driving down the bumpy track after letting two cars leave, we were parked next to Si recognisable whip despite the stealth appearance. 

What we didn't expect to be greeting by was not Si, but the noise of outboard motors heading up towards us where after legging it to the river which is a stone's throw away, four small boats speed past at a ridiculous speed with the motors audibly straining under the rev of the engine. 

WTF !!! the wake, sorry tsunami that ensued really was quite ridiculous and the river went from clear to churned up and coloured in a matter of seconds. Hmmmm great start....We'd walked up to where Si was fishing and he still in the 'hot peg' thinking of a move because of what just happened but after a good chat to allow the river to settle, he'd pinged some pellets out in to the swim and the amount of fish milling around to try and intercept them really was quite ridiculous. This was in coloured water too, so dread to think what the melee would look like when it was gin clear. 

I'm not 100% sure what they were, they looked like decent roach or smallish chub, but apparently keep the pellets going in eventually you'd get to see the flanking barbel and bigger chub move in. 

We got fishing a few fegs downstream with simple tactics of a glugged Dynamite Hot-Fish boilie and a pva bag of small pellets. There was some nice cover over at the far side and some reeds to my left. Not the deepest of swims but it looked good for a bite. As dusk approached only some chublet rattles but with twenty minutes before curfew some decent pulls on the tip that looked like the bigger chub had moved in, and to be honest I nearly struck.

I left it because I was confident the bait would be still on 😁and as it was cast perfectly next to some cover I could just wait for that eventual 3ft twitch, but sadly when time to go was with us, Sam reeled in to no bleeding bait on the hair and the chub has done me over good and proper 🙈. Oh well, there will be another opportunity in the future despite the schoolboy error. Anyway we packed up to see Si and he'd just managed a chunky chub which was in the net and also missed an unmissable wrap round when he strunk in to nothing.