Warwickshire Avon - Voyeurs and Volumenometers

It may seem I fish a lot looking at this blog, but the reality is my sessions are often short ie 2-4 hours, with 5 hours at a push. Little and often works for me because to be honest I struggle to sit behind motionless rods waiting for that bite which some sessions dictate. 

Fishing at the right time and the right conditions for a particular species can often pay dividends and arrive a couple of hours before dusk like I did for this session, you're often in prime bite time. Those that say they haven't time for fishing, have a word with yourselves !! for me I need that fishing fix to keep on the straight and narrow. 

I'd not fished this club water, well in this area anyway for a good while but it's usually good for a bite so I wanted to see what I'd been missing if anything ? A couple of anglers were just leaving as I arrived and I don't think they did any good, well they certainly were not forthcoming with any information !!

Unlike my old house in Birmingham thankfully no blatant exhibitionists to be seen here !!, just some nice fish to catch, as fishing opposite houses is not ideal as your effectively looking in peoples windows. The fish seem to like it here however and I've caught plenty of barbel in years gone by here.  😁. They are the odd one or two flitting about but they are certainly not in the numbers 'barbel alley' once had.

A proper lovely sunny day again it was too, so I was surprised after setting my stall out and pinging in a few pellets with a couple of pellets on the hair I had my first chub pull. I thought that would materialise into a fish eventually but didn't until I changed to a boilie and a paste wrap which was nailed by a fish after a few minutes of being out. That was quick !!, maybe they had been on the Carling. 

I knew it was a chub and a decent one too but it was soon in the landing net using the 1.75TC Harrison Barbel rod. A lovely really stocky fish of 4lb and 7 ounces around 15 minutes of getting there. Happy with that !!!

I got the rod back out after returning the fish upstream and again after pinging in some pellets the rod top was starting to nod with another bite. I struck in to another solid fish, this one taking some line and giving me the run around. Another chub, this one far bigger than the first fish and went 5lb and 8 ounces on the scales. 

This one built like a brick out house, not far off 60cm's in length and felt a decent fish as soon as I lifted the landing net. It felt cold when the sun disappeared and dusk came and oddly apart from a few more sharp twang's on the rod top, that 3 foot twitch never materialised. 

Curfew had arrived and I'm sure I'd catch another chub if rules were not an issue, but to be honest with around 2 hours fishing I was happy with that. The chub seems to have a different statue down this neck of the woods, however because there is regular matches on here they do see more bait that than the stretches I usually fish.

I was in two mind to renew this book in the new season as I've only fished it a handful of times, but it could be getting back to some form and it's Soooo convenient and so much to go at it would be stupid not to really. It's certainly on my radar again anyway, happy days !!. 

Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.21

A dawn roving session, two missed bites in the same swim where on the second missed bite, the hook comes back with a rather large scale. Damn It !!!

Still the sun came out and stayed out, and despite the lack of action I stayed till curfew time because it was just sooooooooooooo nice out there. Kites and Kingfishers and Kangaroo's (ok maybe the latter was an exaggeration), heck even the noisy planes stayed away for this session where I finished up at 11.00am.

It's just nice to be out sometime isn't it, from a misty frosty start to full on blue skies and sun. It felt great just to be alive !!!

Shame the fish didn't play ball !!!

Small Brook Fishing Pt.27 - Fiends and Fiddle-faddle

In fishing small running waters there is no room for the man who wants to perch himself on his basket for hours on end. It is mostly a moving pastime and one which calls for more versatility, combined with watercraft, than any other form of angling.

Once the technique is mastered the continual surprises in size, quantity and variety of catches cause one to wonder why we ever bother to fish in more popular waters, almost rubbing shoulders with our companions.

Millions of words have been written about freshwater fishing, in fact so many that it hardly seems possible that enough new information could be gathered together to produce yet another book. Despite this tremendous amount of literature it seems to me that one field (and a very special one) has not yet been covered, namely that of angling on small running waters.

With the ever increasing population of anglers, and the continual struggle for more waters, fishermen are beginning to turn their attention to waters which, a few years ago, they would have overlooked as not being worthwhile. 

Disused gravel pits, derelict canals and even farm ponds which were spurned as being not worth fishing, are being sought out and fished, and many surprises have been revealed both in the number and quality of the fish in many of these neglected places. On these waters some anglers prove more successful than others. Each water needs a different technique and the more adaptable angler is usually the more efficient. 

Amongst game fishermen there is an old saying that trout like the sun on their backs. There was never anything more true and the same maxim applies equally to coarse fish. In daylight hours during the summer months fish generally spend more time in shallow water, when they are not disturbed, than in the deeps. 

For one thing it is warmer there and usually the shallows are richer in both oxygen and plant life, the latter harbouring live food upon which the fish like to feed. They can be caught there provided the angler does nothing to alarm them.

Once the fish are located the first essential is not to scare them. This rule has been stressed time and time again by anglers far more experienced than myself, and yet from what I see each time I go fishing there is still plenty of room for repetition.

Particularly on small running waters, which are often both clear and shallow, the approach is the deciding factor between a good bag or no fish at all. A clumsy approach sends the fish in panic stricken flight, either upstream or down, and once thus alarmed they take quite a time to settle down and recommence feeding.

Now anglers often travel up to two hundred miles on a round trip for their day's sport and frequently return home shaking their heads, saying that fishing is not what it was and murmuring about pollution. We anglers are a strange race. 'We search the country wide for our fishing, but we are wont to overlook the abundance on our doorstep.'

I can only hope that this blog of mine encourages some of you to 'look around the corner' and try your hand on the small running waters on your doorstep. Anyway to the fishing, well a hard frost overnight I didn't think much would be biting on the bigger rivers so with a pint of maggots to the little stream it was.

I'd seen a couple of otters on here not long back so wanted to give it a go because the adjacent canal wasn't frozen as it was last time I set foot here. After retracing my steps to find the end of my drennan specialist landing net handle after the locking bush wouldn't lock, I finally got fishing.

I fished a handful of swims trotting maggots and only one swim produced any bites and they were dace thankfully where this one pictured was the biggest. Not a huge dace for this stretch but at least they can talk about the visit to their mates by the furry fiends.

I managed two more smaller dace and that was it. I'm sure the hard frost overnight didn't help as I suspect the fish might well be shoaled up somewhere. Oddly though the deeper swims didn't hold any fish, and the swim I caught the fish in was quite shallow and pacey, not what I expected anyway. 

The River Arrow - Chub Lovers and Chronosynchronicity

Poaching is always a problem. It can take many forms, from the harmless attempt of a child to hook a trout on a worm and a bent pin to murderous high-seas netting that may destroy a complete river system's salmon stocks in a few years or even months. Individual poachers also vary enormously, from the small-time village poacher to the commercial gang bent on wholesale slaughter. Every now and then a poacher of extraordinary eccentricity pops up. 

One such was an elderly woman it was thought that she was a local retired schoolteacher of the greatest apparent respectability but with an inordinate passion for fish. She operated on the falls of a small spate river near her home. Whenever the river was up and the salmon were running she was always to be seen watching intently from a position about two-thirds of the way up the falls and off to the side. She never stood on the bridge higher up, but always on the footpath. 

For years, whenever she was seen in her favourite spot it was assumed that she was out on one of her nature rambles and simply hoped to catch a glimpse of a salmon launching itself into the air to clear the narrow falls and reach the pool above. 

So few people paid much attention to the fact that she always carried a large and curiously heavy-looking umbrella on her walks. True, it was often raining while she stood in apparent contemplation overlooking the river, but it was only much later that people remembered that, curiously, the umbrella never seemed to be open and in use.

Then one fateful morning the real purpose of the old lady's river watching was discovered. For her the discovery was sheer bad luck, for the other villagers it became a local legend that was talked about years afterwards. A newcomer to the village who happened to be a keen fisherman was out a little earlier than usual and decided to walk up the river to see if anything was happening. 

It had rained overnight and there was, he thought, a good chance that the salmon would be moving. The old lady was there before him. 

Having lived in the village all her life she knew pretty much the habits of all the locals. None would be out so early for a walk. 

As he reached the bridge above the falls the newcomer saw out of the corner of his eye an elderly woman he had noticed often around the village. He was about to shout 'Good morning' when what he witnessed left him completely speechless. 

Something silver flashed for an instant in front of the old lady and in that split second her arm, which had been holding a long, unopened umbrella aloft came down in a flash, knocking the silver object, obviously a salmon, out of its path. The newcomer moved quietly into a position that would give him a clearer view of what was going on. 

As he did so he saw the old woman leap like a girl of twenty down the steep bank and, using the handle of her umbrella, she pulled out an apparently dead, but perfectly fresh salmon. 

The newcomer was afraid the old lady would spot him so, rather than go any further on his walk, he retraced his steps back to the village, but resolved to investigate this business further. Over the following three months he saw the old lady several times in her chosen place, apparently innocently watching the falls, but she always happened to be there just after fresh rain and each time he watched her he saw that umbrella put to deadly use.

The thing that he found most astonishing was the old woman's speed and strength. She was quite clearly so experienced that she could time her blow exactly to coincide with the salmon's leap. Admittedly the river was so narrow at the falls that you could virtually jump it, but a leaping salmon is poised in mid-air only for an instant.

For the old woman that was enough no sooner was the salmon in the air than down came her umbrella with a mighty thump. The salmon crashed back into the river and she scooped it out in the calmer waters below. In an average year the old woman probably did little harm, but what she was doing was illegal. Now the newcomer was in a difficult position. He didn't want to make himself extremely unpopular in the village by going to the police, but he thought she ought to stop. 

After much deliberation he decided that the best plan would be to mention to someone, anyone in the village who was known as a gossip, that a group of schoolchildren had been inventing a ridiculous story about people poaching salmon on the local river using a strange new gaff.

Within weeks of setting the rumour going the newcomer noticed that the old lady no longer appeared at the falls and the salmon were left in peace to leap and soar free of the risk of meeting a rolled umbrella halfway to the top.

Anyway no umbrellas to be seen here !! before the season end I fancied trying to catch a nice chub on the Arrow. The Avon is proving hard work at the minute but the Arrow drops faster and obviously being a smaller river those fish are a little easier to locate.

When I arrived though the river was proper brown, a strong tea colour which when you have bread and cheesepaste not exactly ideal. Cheesepaste though I have huge confidence with and that would be the mainstay.

Swim after swim though not a bite however a missed bite in one of the swims I put some liquidised bread in and let it rest and that was the key. You see in half an hour on the way back to the car I managed three chub in less than half an hour and they got bigger with every bite.

A 2lber first, then one knocking on the door of 4lb and the last one a proper warrior of fish that give a cracking fight on light tackle going 4lb and 7 ounces. After those three fish the swim went quiet and sadly curfew came but cheesepaste was king. The bites went from zero to melt down and messing with the bait at all despite the cold temperatures. The glasses well, if they are yours let me know 💗, but they are now sadly armless but I thought rather fetching in the winter sun. I LOVE CHUB !!! 

Barbara the Barbel - Broom handles and Bromatology

 After operating in stealth mode for a while the secret is out and I shared the information with the like-minded and to be honest, we need more rods on the ground. I really want to see how big this barbel is that I saw in the summer so to lower the probability after trying Soooo many times, it was inevitable really.

Many sessions are often short however choosing the right time to fish for example in to dusk or in to dark, or during floodwater conditions is the best I can muster up at the moment.

I'm sure it will slip up eventually and obviously I'd like to be the one to catch it but there are other encouraging signs of other barbel on this stretch, albeit none have appeared on the bank as yet. I've caught them downstream a stone and a catapult away so they are milling around, however this is the Warwickshire Avon in 2025, many stretches like this one it's a low stock, but usually big fish.

George Burton is one such angler who is also fishing it and he remember is accustomed to barbel and big ones too, and one of Warwickshire Avon's biggys can be seen in this video.

So when I pulled into the layby after finishing work it was nice to see George's can there because he like me wanted to make use of the better fishing conditions for Barbel. The Avon had rocketed up with the mild rain overnight where the temperature had gone from 8.8 degrees to 9.5 degrees so fingers crossed the barbel were up for a feed.

I had a curfew though which meant only a couple of hours fishing however the last hour was after dusk so at least I was there at the witching hour. 

The Avon was banging through with whole trees coming down from time to time, but at the top of the stretch there are a couple of swims where not only would a barbel feel comfortable but a chub too. Ok I was fishing with my broom handle Korum Big Water Barbel Rod but I've not caught anything decent for ages.

Anyway the ever reliable Dynamite Baits Hot Fish boilie with a matching paste wrap was the pungent bait I chose for this short session. 

George was fishing downstream and I was upstream, I did walk some of the stretch but no real smooth glides just a swirly river carrying some pace. I settled in to the first swim but after being wiped out twice by debris coming down which was a surprise because there was a rather large snag to the right, I moved upstream to the next swim, where some slackish water and a small back eddy was met with a large pacey crease. 

The light was starting to go now and with clear skies the stars started to shine brightly. After a rather nice bit of warming sun on the day as soon as it dropped behind the horizon the temperature dropped noticeably. 

With only 40 or so minutes left with no bites whatsoever out of the blue a three foot twitch happened where a fish must have hooked itself. For a split second I thought this must be a barbel but upon the first pull of the fish I knew it wa a chub.

Completely overgunned I felt a bit sorry for it as there was no real fight. I'm sure on the first bend of the rod he knew his game was up, that's why I like fishing lighter tackle for chub I enjoy the fight they give on balanced tackle.

A rather nice Warwickshire Avon chub though and deserved a weigh. A large frame but actually a bit hollow but it still went 5lb and 5 ounces on the scales, so not a bad one. I returned the fish to the next swim downstream and got the bait out quick sharpish to try and get the target fish.

Sadly it didn't happen this time with half an hour without a bite, and George after catching a 5lb Warwickshire Avon chub only 24 hours before didn't even have a bite this time sadly. I'm sure the swim I was fishing helped though, a lair where both species of fish would feel comfortable. I / We will be back !!!

Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.20

Well I returned for a second go, nada, zilch, nothing, well apart from the odd 1 foot chub pull....It was good to catch up with George though.

 I'm taking up knitting !!

Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.19

Am I a barbel fanatic ?. They say it is the fish we do not land which excite us most, and this might well be the case. I have seen big barbel in the river. Great, bronze fish big enough to beat my PB of 12lb and 14oz's by two or three pounds at least, and every time a big barbel pulls at the rod top, I think of those fish.

I am not alone in my obsession. Walk along the banks of the Royalty Fishery in summer, a quiet meadow beside the Dorset Stour, the Kennet, Swale, Thames, Trent or any other barbel river, and there you will find the followers of the barbel cult.

Today the word is barbel. We have seen the changes and trends, we who have developed into anglers over the past fifty years. At first there was the carp, and this was the first great step towards specialisation.

For fifteen years the carp reigned supreme, but now the barbel challenges this supremacy. 

Each season more and more anglers come under its spell, and because the barbel is not as widely distributed as we might wish, many anglers travel hundreds of miles to rivers where these fish exist. James Denison being one of them !!

But really this is nothing new. Well over one hundred years ago the barbel knew great popularity, but at that time the great barbel river was the Thames. 

Also in the Trent, before pollution struck, there were some really big barbel, but let us return to the Thames. At the various fishing stations there would be intricate preparations before a barbel fishing session. 

For days, sometimes weeks, a hired man would be baiting up swims for anglers. 

Thousands of lob-worms would be gradually introduced to the water in clay balls holding a dozen or so worms for a medusa effect, until the fish were swarming in little swims along the river. 

Then the visiting angler would station himself above one of these swims in a boat, and trot his tackle to the fish massed downstream. 

There were huge catches made in those days, and forty or fifty fish at a sitting was not exceptional. From this mighty barbel river the fish found their way, by steam wagon, to the Stour, and from there into the Hampshire Avon.

Then the scene began to change. Barbel interest waned as class values came into angling. Certain species became the right fish to fish for, or at least, to be seen fishing for, and fish without that little fin became established as coarse fish. Barbel were forgotten. 

Now the popularity has returned with added fervour, and even the tackle trade caters now for the barbel specialist. With such a concentration upon barbel, I believe that very soon there must come a barbel large enough to beat the current record easily, a 25lber ? well why not ?

Anyway with the weather ridiculously mild after what has felt like a really long and cold winter I fancied trying for an Untrodden Barbel with the water temperature on the rise. They are here because not only have I seen them, but Eric has also lost a couple when trotting. 

There are some good chub as well to be caught, so for this session I'd be a bit lazy and fish a couple of rods, one with a small piece of flavoured meat and the other with a boilie with a PVA bag of freebies. I'd ping some pellets out for some much needed catapult practice from time to time, where hopefully the noise would bring the fish in for a nose. 

There is a good reason why I don't do this very often because sitting behind motionless rods is just not me really where dusk is king for good reason. 

After an hour or so without a bite I'm looking to move on, and in this morning session I decided sit it out far longer than I usually do, which soon got me thinking about the other distractions, not only where there lots of cormorants about and the odd heron, but the planes, boy the planes, so loud and a few of them going around and around and mostly right over my head.

In the end I decided to move swims for the last hour without even a chub pull where the same thing happened again, nada, zilch not even a pull. 

The water temperature was good, very good in-fact but when the Avon is green and clearish like it was today, trotting is the way to approach it really because it can often bring those fish out from their hidey-holes. Fishing static probably isn't the way to go but you never know, I'd rather hook a barbel knowing that I've got more of a chance of landing it on proper gear.

So in the end I packed up and headed home early knowing that at least there is a bit of bait out and that I might as well give it another go later on in to dusk, where the probability of a bite would be much better. To be honest I could have probably told you what the outcome of the session would be before it had finished, yeap a blank. 

Warwickshire Avon - Misanthropy and Microseismographs

Blog Post 1750 👀😂

So I might as well go fishing to one of my favorite areas of the Warwickshire Avon and try and catch a decent Chub. I've not caught a 5lber in a good while, and here some reside. Well they have over the years anyway. !! So simple tactics, some liquidised bread and bread on the hook. 

Now no matter how far away from human habitation the often misanthrope angler sits, that dreaded fear kicks in when that speck on the horizon gets bigger and bigger. 

The sinister old boy with the long raincoat, silk scarf and shuffling walk, must be dealt with immediately and firmly. Poor old lad, his basic problem is loneliness and lack of love. But you are there to fish, not to play psychiatrist to every old kink who comes your way.

The danger with this old lad is that once he starts talking he is almost impossible to shut up. In the absence of any courting couples, he will stand behind you for a time, coughing politely to attract your attention.

After ten minutes or so of unheeded coughs, sniffs and shuffles, he will sigh and say, 'Ah, patience is a wonderful thing.' Answered or not, he will continue: 'I've always fancied fishing myself, very relaxing, I believe. And my doctor is always telling me to take it up. But I don't have the patience, not really. I was telling my doctor only the other day.

Unchecked, he will wander through a detailed list of his symptoms and arrive, through some curious process of DOM logic, at the Problems of Young People Today. 

He will be seriously concerned about teenage sex, horrified at the spread of VD, aghast at see-through blouses and mini-skirts, appalled at the permissiveness in the cinema, on the stage and in the bookshops. Oh, horror. Oh, woe. And he'll enjoy every minute of it.

The only thing to do is to stop him before he gets into his stride. Ignoring him is useless. So is arguing, or pleading to be left in peace and quiet. So you say, with an occasional sniff and twitch:

'Yer, patience. That's wot the headshrinker said I needed. Fer me nerves, like. When I came out after me last stretch fer GBH, he told me ter take up fishin'. Stop me smashin' geezers up fer nuffin', like. I wouldn't care, but the last bloke I duffed over only needed 27 stitches. Nah, the bloke before that-he really was in a mess, I've got to admit it....'

By this time you should be talking to yourself, with the long raincoat doing a quick shuffle into the middle distance. 

Anyway to the fishing, as per the norm I didn't really have much time to winkle out a chub or two because after finishing work I also had a curfew to get back. Dusk is the best time really to catch a chub in these conditions so I was surprised when a bite came pretty quick in the second swim where the bread must have got the attraction of a greedy Chevin.

It went round the swim like a heat seeking missile but it was soon in the net as it wasn't that big. Still a fish is fish and I didn't think I'd catch one so quickly. 

Only a small one for this stretch, still I wasn't complaining. I wasn't complaining about the weather either it was nice and mild, so the winter clobber wasn't needed. Anyway with that fish released I went on the rove to try and catch another one. As I was moving from swim to swim, a video call from Nic from Avon Angling came out of the blue, and he after trotting maggots on the Avon for some nice chub, he'd hooked what seemed like the bottom then it started moving !!! 😆

He'd managed to hook and land a lovely Warwickshire Avon barbel which he showed me, and was around 6 or 7 lb or so, the milder weather definitely helping I'd imagine. Now I've not had a Warwickshire Avon barbel for ages, but Barbara the Barbel surely needs another go before the season end, so fingers crossed the stars align, because my fishing results of late, have been rather mediocre I must admit. 

When the light started to go I caught another chub of similar size to the first one, then another literally at curfew time which was probably the smallest of the lot. Nothing big showed for me during this session however at least I managed to get a few bites.

The water temperature is going to rise that's for sure, so hopefully I'll manage a few sessions when a barbel is more likely to turn up !! we will see, it would be nice to end the season on a high wouldn't it. The conditions haven't exactly been favourable over the last numbers of weeks so fingers crossed the higher water temperatures will bring some more bites. 

Warwickshire Stour - Cacophonous and Cacaesthesia

Fishing midweek on a school day !!, well it is half term after all where I decided to take a rare day off from work. With some ten pin bowling later on and a curry afterwards I had a morning to go and do some fishing down at the lovely Warwickshire Stour.

Fishing can be very hit and miss on this river but it offers the angler that small river fix that many like me require from time to time. 

The chub don't go big, a 4lber is a good'un but it is the nice roach that from time show up with 1lb 9oz the biggest I've managed to muster up so far. I lost one recently that was much bigger than that and would it have made the magic 2lb ? well I'd never know but quite possibly, it was certainly the biggest roach I'd ever seen.

I arrived at dawn on a rather cold morning with the water temperature a nadger over 4 degrees and got fishing. Simple tactics of a small feeder filled with some groundbait and liquidised bread and a thumbnail piece of bread on the hook. 

Like many small rivers the depth can vary considerable where just in this swim it goes from 6 ft to shallow, to 12 foot over a small distance. The 3/4 oz quiver amplifies those roach bites and they are so distinctive and quite easy to tell the difference from a chub bite. 

I was only fishing for ten minutes when a chub bite came out of nowhere and when I struck the fish had powered downstream right in to a snag within what seemed like a split seconds. A fish that knew its home that's for sure. Damn it !!! 

Bites were forthcoming on nearly every cast and in the deepest swim after some telltale sharp roach pulls a fish was on and the bite matched the quarry. A nice roach of around 12 ounces succumbed to the small piece of bread. 

I'm sure if I had used maggots I'd catch more fish because small fish I'm sure were messing around with the bread unable to get the bait in their mouths. A good hour in the first swim the bites dried up and I got on the move. 

There is a good reason why I prefer other sections of the Stour and that is because despite the public footpath slap bang in the middle of the two fields, dog walkers ignore that complete and hug the river bank the best that can. I don't really want a dog sniffing around me and its owner shouting it back at the top of his voice, and I don't really want a dog chasing its ball feet from me, but both of those happened in this short mornings session. 💩

Then the chainsawing started, as did the planes which seemed one after the other, not exactly a peaceful morning in solitude I must admit. 👀

As the time ticked by the bites became hard to by but I did managed another similar sized roach and a chublet as I headed down the stretch. Even Nic from Avon Angling banker swim didn't produce so a very tough morning really, the fish just were not up for a feed really most likely having a short feeding window and I wasn't there to capitalise on that.

Still I could get used to this fishing when I should be working, despite the fishing being mediocre and the background noise being I know would I would rather be doing !!

Warwickshire Avon - Holts and Hulks

Another day in the office, another half a dollar in the coffers I fancied trying for a chub on the way home. An overnight hard frost and the river was still pretty high I still reckoned the chub would be biting and luckily I know a few slacks on this stretch.

The river after being a nice tinge of green had coloured up a little more after the rain so it was out with the cheesepaste. I concocted a new batch recently and this an albino shrek colour was also made a little softer which I'm sure helps with hook-ups. 

With the river cold any cheesepaste that contains fat will obviously harden in texture so you need to make sure it's not too hard to begin with. This batch was 2 parts Danish blue, 1 part grated mature cheddar, some shortcrust pastry mix and some Dynamite Baits, garlic and cheese liquid attractant. There is no recipe for this as you often have to judge the quantities when you are making it.

The last chub I caught on this bait nearly took the rod in the bite was so violent. 

A good fifteen minutes in a swim primed with some liquidised bread I was getting ready to move to the next swim, and them Whammm !!! the elevated quivertip jumped in to life and continued on going. 

I love watching a float go under but Wow !!! this really was something else.

I don't fish that far out using cheesepaste if I mould it directly over the hook, I more often than not fish near snags and an underarm cast is all that is required. If I want to cast it any distance I use some of my 3D printed paste cages. I prefer to mount directly on a big hook mind you.  

Anyway back to the fishing, there is a curfew on this stretch but enough time to try and winkle out a chub. Well an hour and a half, which isn't much in the scheme of things, but when the river is cold, very cold and a river that is boiling and swirly those slacker areas are where the fish are likely to be sitting. 

Still it was a rather nice day with clear skies and some sun for once so it was quite pleasant being sat by the river waiting for a fish to appear. I had a particular swim in mind to fish where last time in the deep trough I managed to catch two chub in quick succession after only being there for 15 minutes or so.

That swim was unfishable really, properly banging through where I bet I didn't even have any leads in my armoury that would sufficiently hold bottom.Thankfully on a bend (Sean's Favorite Peg) there is a couple of slacks that could be fished.

Both with a satisfying donk of the small bomb It was fingers and toes crossed something would turn up to bite despite the very winterty looking river. A good twenty minutes in the first swim I moved upstream and went to fish another slack where ones peace was interrupted !!

Now Shrek is an anti-social ogre who loves the solitude of his swamp and enjoys fending off mobs and intruders. One day, his life is interrupted after the dwarfish Lord Farquaad of Duloc exiles a vast number of fairy tale creatures, who inadvertently end up in the swamp, for me this was another resident Otter, where I assume there must be a few on this stretch, as I saw two together at the lower end of the stretch recently. 

I've certainly seen more this season than I ever have done, even though they have been there since I had this book many many moons ago. I had a few years break from this stretch because ones barbel returns were very few and far between, however more recently seems to be the odd one coming out in matches, and also many are lost to the inadequate tackle of the 1.5lb hook link users, so they are still about.

This Otter hadn't a care in the world though and after appearing over at the far bank it swam straight in to the drink and proceeded to meander downstream fully aware I was there. Anyway dusk was just round the corner where to cut a long story short, unsurprisingly I blanked. Not a chublet pull or anything despite the bait being presented nicely. 

Oh well I tried, I could do no more than that !!, I've a morning off tomorrow, I fancy trying for a Roach down the Warwickshire Stour to try and avenge losing that PB beater !! . The weather is getting milder too, I might try and see if I can get closer to Barbara the barbel 👀😀