Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.23

Well it looks like Barbara was finally revealed to the world, you see Sean caught a 13lb 10oz barbel from a swim up from where I saw the fish. 

All that effort I put in, it just goes to show, the right time the right place and when the stars align, you can catch a fantastic fin perfect fish like this one was. A superb fish and congratulations to Sean, WHAT A FISH !! 🆒

Could there be bigger swimming around here ? quite possibly but it was great to finally see a decent barbel caught on the stretch, what an awesome looking fish too. 

Now high-protein baits may be sure-fire fish attractors, but they don't come cheap. And they get dearer by the season. It's not so much the hook baits that cost the money (for the number of bites I get, two or three flash-fried hi-protein black-pudding balls will last all day). No, it's the groundbait. A few handful of that and the old après-pêche social fund (i.e. beer money) is looking a bit sick.

I've always been heavy on groundbait because of my general lack of accuracy (I'm no Jon Arthur). I tend to depend on the splatter effect, being a bit short-sighted, uncoordinated and not over-endowed with means of propulsion such as muscles. But I can't go on just throwing bait out and hoping for the best. I'm practising accuracy and investigating the means of getting just the right amount in exactly the right places.

An old angling book I've got suggests swimming out with the groundbait. That must have been written when Britain was a tropical swamp; these days it's a bit chilly round the Trossachs.

There's the old-fashioned angler's throwing stick, of course, either thick bamboo with the top joint sliced vertically in half, or an ordinary stick with a dessert spoon tied to the top. I find the bamboo type OK for distance, but a bit lacking in accuracy. With the other, I find that after a few throws the spoon tends to come off and follow the bait. The wife is getting a bit fed up of eating custard with a fork.

I did think of catapults, especially after I discovered one with a pistol grip, arm support, wrist guard and other aids to accuracy and distance. But I had one or two reservations, apart from the fact that I did myself a mischief just pulling the elastic to full stretch. A catapult is too much of a temptation when there are intrusions in your swim, such as swans, ducks, power boats, cormorants and definitely not the otters. 

'What did you get today, dear ?'

'Oh, a couple of roach, two ducks, a swan, a feller with a commodore's cap and a snotty-nosed little tyke who was fishing too close.' At one point I thought I'd really found the answer: a giant pea-shooter. You can get them in plastic, about three feet long and with a half-inch bore. Saw a bloke using one. He filled it with small balls of bait, rolled in flour to reduce friction, and blew them a hell of a distance.

It looked highly impressive and completely foolproof. Until his mate came along, just as the lad was about to blow, grabbed .hold of the other end and blew first. With mates like mine, I daren't risk it. There's something about flour-coated minced worm-and-catfood balls that puts you off your ale. Even if they are flash-fried.

Finally I thought of a kite, with a little platform underneath that could be tilted when it was over the target. But for that you need a smooth lift-off if you're not going to be covered in protein and have tweety-birds pecking at you the rest of the day. And you need the wind blowing steadily in the right direction.

It could be embarrassing, after a sudden crosswise gust, to have a police person striding down the bank towards you. Blowing black-pudding balls out of his walkie-talkie.

"Ello, 'ello, 'ello. Having a nice play are we? And what little toys have we here, then?'

'Nothing officer. Ha ha. Just a kite, a throwing stick, a catapult and a pea-shooter."

Anyway back to the fishing  it was out with the catapult and some pellet pinging because the other day I had a few bites and caught a couple of nice chub one going 5lb 8 ounces and around 60cm's long doing exactly that. 

I'm sure it's the noise of the dinner bell where now with the water a tad warmer (it was 8.5 degrees when I measured it yesterday). 

Fish a small bait and with some freebies to get the fish grubbing about, bait and wait basically, and whilst I did that I'd wait for a pike bite. Which to be honest happened half an hour on getting there. A weird bite though, from nothing, to one bob then it went straight under and then when I lifted up the rod whatever it was had already made off at one heck of a pace and over 3 metres to my left.

The fish dropped the bait with one hell of a disturbance on the water, bugger !!!  I had another chance half an hour after that bite which was a normal pike bite. The fish was messing with the bait for a while then the float went off towards the middle of the river where after a few seconds of feeling the weight of the fish it dropped off. This didn't feel that big though so I wasn't really too bothered about that.

And that was as exciting as it got a few more hours fishing and nothing to show for it. I even fished the swim where Sean caught the fish for the last hour but no one was home. Still what a lovely morning though, and lots of wildlife about. It's not all about catching fish now is it.