Warwickshire Avon - Troglodytes Trophotropisms

Got to love an Indian sizzler the problem was the king prawns lamb chops, sheek kebab and tandoori chicken was about to be deposited on top of a prawn puri and a couple of poppadum's already sat in the pit of my stomach. So with rice and a naan to accompany it, a loosening of the belt was a required 

We timed it right too as there must have been an issue with one of the local roads as traffic was being diverted past the curry house to almost gridlock levels. Tractors with trailers trying to get past, it really was a nightmare out there. 

With the sanctuary of the hostelry, comforting food and the good company I know where I'd have rather been. So thankfully for us when we said our goodbyes and the traffic has dispersed and the Falling Down situation (1993 btw 🤯)was everted. 

Anyway I was feeling rather full sat in the office the following morning and with some harness routing to sort out on a side-line project I'm working on (Jack of all trades me) was a nice distraction from the main stay as an interior design engineer, but I needed to get out when my work was done for the week. 

What to do where to go ?

Well I just fancied some bites if I was honest and with some maggots in the bait fridge getting bored of their containment, I headed down to the Avon to get a much needed dip of the float, the vitamin D levels up and past a troglodyte.

Very nice it was too with the sun high in the sky and the temperature around 17 degrees, the river was gin clear as expected but one of the the swim below has some small fish milling around.

However a sprinkling of maggots soon got them feeding and after ten minutes or so it was a bit every time the float went down the flow. Not the biggest of maggot munchers admittedly but when the small float disappeared from view it's a lottery what is going to be on the end.  

I baited two swims with hemp and pellet and I periodically returned to them but I couldn't see anything bigger than half a pound. 

Not unexpected but months now the river has been like this and it is very tough going indeed with dawn and dusk the best time for a bigger fish.

There is plenty of cover here though where the chub and barbel often tuck themselves away and drift over the bait from time to time. So the smaller of the two swims I fished a tiny pellet over the freebies with only a couple of tiny chublet pulls to show for it. 

Hard going at the moment, still there is a 6lb chub to catch....

...and I'll keep on plugging away !!!

Warwickshire Avon -Teetotallers and Tetrakishexahedrons

Apparently the average angler has a collection of 673 floats and 4,258 bits of float with which he intends to do something with one of these days. Now out of the 673 floats he uses two, and the rest are for playing with.

Among the transitional games played are:

Soldiers On Parade. The floats are lined up in rows, graded according to size, graded again and according to colour, picked up one by one, drooled over, and again and then put back down again.

The Money I've Spent. Each float is assessed at its retail price and the total added up. The angler works out the final sum in terms of pints of draught ale or maggots for the teetotallers. Then he breaks down and cries !!!

Bobbing In the Bath. This is a great advance on the old-fashioned rubber duck. Before a bath, you prepare several floats by tying a small length of weighted line on the bottom of each. When these are floating around the bath with you, you reach under the water, tug at a line, and see the float disappear as if a gigantic fish has taken it. An advanced version of the game uses hooks on the end of the line, but this is not recommended to beginners who wish to avoid doing themselves a mischief. 

Now by making your own floats at home you can save pounds and finish up with floats which look just as good as the shop bought ones, even though they do have a tendency to get waterlogged and sink after the first ten minutes.

There are so many different kinds of float that it would be outside the scope of this blog to attempt any detailed instruction in float making. And it's dead boring anyway, well unless you study the illustrations of the revolutionary Piscatorial Quagswagging range of floats, Kit's for these, with full instructions, are available for only £35.88p each. Here a small selection.

Anyway enough of that guff on to the Warwickshire Avon chub where my quest for a 6lber continues. I'd not been down this neck of the woods for ages and this would be a session of two parts, where the first I'd feed some small balls of mashed bread and trot some breadflake to try and intercept a chub. Then the second part fish static in to dusk and beyond where hopefully the bigger chub would show themselves.

When the flow is pedestrian I do like fishing a short chubber float especially with some of the long trots this section has because the extra weight and girth just seems to suit the conditions. 

I've noticed in these low clear conditions those larger Chevin just seem to be absent in those areas they usually show. Here there is plenty of character for the fish to find sanctuary and I was hoping one or two would show up for this short smash and grab session. 

I really should have put the lure rod in the car because when I got bankside the predator activity was quite ridiculous, with not just perch which showed up last time I was here but also Pike.  

After moving from a biteless swim after feeding bread eventually the float went straight under and a fish was on. Now when chub show up here they are usually good'uns (quite a few 5lbers) but disappointment when the fish was splashing around on the surface on the first lift of the rod.

Yeap a small chublet sadly and after trotting till I couldn't see the float it was clear it was going to be a hard session.

Still the moon was nice and vibrant and I still had the prebaited swim to fish which was next to an overhanging tree. As soon as the bait hit the deck a sharp pull on the tip eventually pulled nicely round but I was rather premature on the strike, but it didn't take long to get another bite, where I had the same result.

Yeap a chublet of similar stamp succumbed to the bread, hmmmm 🙁 the temp had dropped considerably by this point with my breath clearly visible. So I gave it another 20 minutes without another nibble and headed back home rather disappointed. 

Warwickshire Avon - Mopers and Mompreneurs

After a rather lacklustre morning session after a walk out with the rabble in to Stratford-Uopn-Avon for some lunch and a pint, I got back, unloaded the car and was twiddling my thumbs what to do.

So after making a chicken dhansak (always tastes better when rested) I do what I always do and started to mope around the house getting under the Wifes hair. 

"Why don't you go fishing again"

"Errr yeah ok, see ya !!!"

It was a lovely day, in-fact I was quite happy walking around in my t-shirt.

The sky couldn't have been bluer, and which a Warwickshire Avon rather out of sorts being very low and gin clear, headed in to dusk and beyond is the best way to pick up something half decent. 

I arrived at the stretch of convenience just before 6.00pm and with dusk only an hour away the plan was to try and find a few fish before baiting one spot near some cover and then fish that swim till it was curfew time.  

I've mentioned before when there is colour in the water the fishing can transform, because I assume the bigger fish are confident in venturing out from their lay-up with the fear of being spotted by a furry predator that frequent the same waterways. 

The bait fish don't care though happily playing around with their mates in the mosh pit.

Anyway talk about a river devoid of big fish, swim after swim nothing was showing whatsoever so I decided to head to the chosen swim before I intended to.

After balling in some scolded pellet what I didn't expect was the first chuck of the link ledgered bread was to have a fish on so soon. The problem was it caught me off guard a bit so after a confident pull round I tentatively struck in to the fish. 

I though was some debris taking the line out, but no a fish was on to the bait straight away. The first proper bend of the rod though before the drag could even activate the hook pulled and the Chub had gone.

Damn, still three more small chub caught in quick succession the reduced light levels was obviously bringing the fish out to feed. 

When the light had all but gone a tentative couple of pulls the 1oz tip jumps in to life and I'm hooked in to another fish. 

This one pulling back and taking line in the first rum. It was soon under control though and when in the net not exactly the stamp I'm after, being around 3lb not the 6lber that I know is swimming here.  

The iPhones flash taking me by surprise like the chub was to be caught on a Saturday evening when most people have better things to do. And that was my lot, I stayed another half an hour but the commotion of that fish I'm sure sent the other fish that might have been in the swim packing. 

On the walk back to the car I used my head torch to peer in to a couple of the elevated swims where again, the bigger fish were nowhere to be seen. It's tough out there at the minute but I'll keep on plugging away.