Warwickshire Avon - Tunnels and Tuberculinotherapeutics

Walking down to the design studio entrance of doom doesn’t really do much for the soul, if I’m honest. Once you’ve negotiated two layers of security, you’re greeted by a corridor painted black, which, considering it’s supposedly a place dedicated to artistic creativity, doesn’t exactly get the creative juices flowing.

Thankfully there was light at the end of this particularly miserable tunnel, and that light came in the form of rods strapped to the roof, tackle in the boot and the knowledge that once the day was over helping designing cars I’d never buy, I could escape for a couple of hours of peace and quiet.

Or at least that was the theory.

This particular stretch now has a strict curfew, apparently brought about by one individual’s blatant disregard for the rules, but there is a positive to all this. At least I now know what the curfew actually is, which is more than I can say for a certain club I fish for, where your guess is as good as mine.

Still, rules are rules, and I had a plan.

The plan involved a lovely deep bend with plenty of cover, literally the next swim down from a very fast stretch that, at the moment, is absolutely rammed with streamer weed. It looked perfect in my head, which should have been my first warning.

Pulling into the car park there was only one car.

Happy days!

Except, of course, it was parked in the swim I wanted to fish.

Yep, sod’s law had once again decided to turn up before me and bag the peg.

I decided to head upstream and fish opposite the houses instead, although when I got there I was greeted by a rather depressing sight. Compared with my previous visit, the river had changed dramatically, with one swim looking about as static as a lake and another so clear you could practically count the gravel on the far bank.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, or in my case, desperate wandering.

I was contemplating my next move when recent match winner Shayne appeared, heading my way while doing his post-work bailiff duties. Shayne is a proper nice fella, despite being a matchman and therefore someone who apparently considers sitting on a box for six hours while feeding enough bait to feed a small African nation perfectly normal.

We had a good old chat, and naturally the conversation turned to his recent success.

He’d apparently won from, in his words, “the best peg on here,” feeding something like nine or ten pints of maggots, along with a few castors for good measure. Basically, he’d created such a feeding frenzy that the fish had apparently forgotten they were supposed to be frightened of anglers and had come right up under his feet.

Chub mostly, but barbel as well, including some breeding stock like I caught here recently.

He’d also lost quite a few fish despite using what he described as really heavy gear, which translated into normal gear as far as I’m concerned — five-pound bottom and away you go. “It’s the only way to fish it really,” he said, “feed, feed and more feed.”

Sound advice, although I suspected the ten pints of maggots might have been doing some of the heavy lifting.

Then came the words I was waiting for.

“You’re wasting your time up here. You want to go over there where the two big barbel came out.”

“Sure thing,” I said.

And the next minute Shayne and I were wandering off together, with the man himself even offering to carry my chair.

A rather pleasant chap indeed.

We’ve spoken a number of times now and it’s always good to see a relatively young angler doing well on the match scene and giving the older, seen-it-all generation a thing or two to think about. Although I’m sure there are still plenty of people who think anything involving a seatbox and several pints of maggots is less fishing and more organised livestock feeding.

Anyway, enough talking.

I’d better get fishing, hadn’t I?

The swim was around forty yards downstream, a peg where I’d had a barbel recently. Unlike the other swim, which was choked with streamer weed, this one was deeper to my left and just looked more inviting.

I wasted no time putting some bait in before slowly getting the gear sorted.

There was no rush.

A few fish were already topping, and then a bream rolled in the swim, which I took as a positive sign. Surely, Shirley, I was going to catch something.

The light was beginning to fade, the sun dropping towards the horizon, and I had about an hour before curfew called time on proceedings.

Fortunately, I wasn’t going to have to worry about blanking.

Fifteen minutes in and the rod folded over, and soon enough a lovely chub was sliding into the net. It was an absolute minter, too, with a deep belly and not a mark on it.

It certainly wasn’t the longest chub I’ve ever caught, but when I lifted the landing net it felt like someone had put a small concrete block in it.

A proper tank.

Well over four pounds, I reckon, and considering I haven’t had a really nice chub for a while, I was more than happy with that.

Then the carnage started.

Bite, chub.

Bite, chub.

Bite, another chub.

If there was a barbel sitting somewhere downstream waiting for its dinner, it must have been wondering why the chub had apparently ordered the entire takeaway menu.

Thirty minutes later I reckoned I’d had somewhere around fifteen pounds of chub.

I really couldn’t complain.

In fact, if someone had offered me that before I’d started, I’d have bitten their hand off.

Sadly, the clock was ticking.

The curfew arrived while I was still getting bites, which is possibly one of the cruelest things an angler can experience. There I was, finally in the middle of some proper action, and the rules were basically tapping me on the shoulder saying, “Lovely stuff, mate, now bugger off.”

And that’s exactly what I did.

Rules are rules, after all, and this is such a convenient stretch for me to fish that the last thing I want to do is upset the club and find myself permanently fishing the nearest canal instead.

So I packed up, leaving the fish biting and the barbel, presumably, still lurking around waiting for their turn.

I’ll be back after work during the week and see what else I can winkle out.

Hopefully, next time the peg I originally earmarked will be free.

Although having been given directions to Shayne’s winning swim, I might just have to poach that one when the opportunity arises.

Shayne, thanks for the tips, mate.

And if you happen to see me sitting in your winning peg with ten pints of maggots disappearing into the river, just remember — imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Warwickshire Avon - Drinking Birds and Dromestoners

I’ve never really got on with a full moon, fishing-wise. Some anglers apparently see a great big glowing orb in the sky and think it’s going to improve their chances, whereas I see it and start wondering whether I should have stayed at home and alphabetised the tackle box.

I’ve actually got the evidence to prove it, because whenever I look back through the blog my full-moon sessions have produced roughly the same result as putting a baited hook in the garden pond and waiting for next door’s goldfish to develop a taste for boilies. So when Sunday evening suddenly presented itself as a fishing opportunity, I was already having serious doubts about whether I was being productive or merely providing free entertainment for the local wildlife.

The previous day had seen the moon at its full-moon finest, the Harvest Moon hanging over the UK like a giant celestial indicator, although I’m not convinced it was actually indicating anything remotely useful. By Sunday it was technically a Waning Gibbous, which sounds less threatening, but to my eyes the thing still looked enormous and perfectly capable of ruining another fishing session.

I’ve been putting in a reasonable shift lately, although the fish haven’t exactly been queuing up to congratulate me on my commitment. There have been enough bites and odd fish to keep the optimism alive, but with the evenings closing in rapidly and winter beginning to rattle its keys outside the door, I’m conscious that there aren’t that many comfortable sessions left before the annual battle with darkness and Seasonal Affective Disorder begins.

I’d put some bait in the swim the day before, which immediately made me feel like someone who knew exactly what he was doing. It was the same swim where I’d had the carp, so naturally I arrived expecting the fish to have spent twenty-four hours forming an orderly queue and discussing amongst themselves who was going to be first on the hook.

This time I’d brought two rods, which isn’t normally my way of doing things because I generally prefer concentrating on one rod and pretending that every minute without a bite is part of the plan. The swim was absolutely enormous though, so two rods didn’t seem excessive and, if anything, made me look vaguely professional.

I’d also acquired a couple of those Temu indicators, because apparently fishing tackle has now entered the technological age and I’m not prepared to be left behind. One of them actually flashes blue and red when you get a bite, which means I have finally reached the point where my fishing equipment has more sophisticated warning systems than some small airports.

I arrived at about half past six and the farmer was there with his wife and son, getting ready to feed the sheep. He was fascinated by the fish I’d been catching, and it was nice to see someone genuinely pleased by the idea of a few decent fish rather than immediately asking whether I’d weighed them on something that cost more than his tractor.

He struck me as one of those proper, salt-of-the-earth farmers who keep quietly getting on with things while the rest of us discuss the price of coffee and whether our phone battery will survive until bedtime. I’m sure farming is hardly the easiest game at the moment, so if a few fish stories put a smile on his face, then at least I’d achieved something useful before even reaching the river.

Talking about farmers, a bit mad what happened the weekend at RAF Fairford, but some answers are need a local resident did attempt to alert the authorities by calling the Ministry of Defence (MoD) police directly. However, nobody answered the phone and it just rang out WTF. It reminded me off King-Size Homer, but thankfully the 999 operators helped direct the Police to infiltrate the possible sleeper cell before they could carry-out what they were up to.  

Anyway enough of that, back to the fishing, I drove round to the parking area beside the entrance to the 2nd field, sorted my gear out and headed down to the swim. A little bait went in first, followed by the slow process of assembling the usual barbel gear while trying to look as though I hadn’t forgotten something important in the car.

The sun was already beginning to drop and the view was superb, with that lovely evening light that makes even a muddy riverbank look as though somebody has spent a considerable amount of money landscaping it. This is one of the reasons I keep going fishing when the catching is poor, because occasionally you realise that sitting beside a river watching the day disappear is actually the point. 

The fish were certainly showing, with plenty of activity across the river and enough splashing to make me seriously consider whether I’d brought the wrong equipment. 

 It was exactly the sort of evening when trotting a float would have been wonderful, especially with the fading light making the float easy to pick out, but naturally I had arrived equipped for sitting behind two stationary rods like a man waiting for a bus.

Both rods were eventually out and the waiting game began. There were a few little twitches on the rod tops, which immediately caused the usual chain reaction of checking the indicators, staring at the line, staring at the water and finally deciding that the fish had probably sneezed somewhere downstream.

Dusk arrived with considerable confidence and then proceeded to leave without producing so much as a decent chub pull. The new indicators remained beautifully illuminated and completely unemployed, which I suspect is exactly the sort of career situation they were hoping to avoid when they were manufactured somewhere in China.

Then came one proper little chubby twang about half an hour after dusk, which in other circumstances might have been enough to get the heart rate going. 

On this occasion it was more like receiving a polite text message from someone you haven’t heard from in years saying, “Hope you’re well,” before immediately disappearing again.

Even the chub appeared suspicious of the situation, which is never a good sign. When the normally obliging fish decide that something isn’t quite right, you begin to wonder whether they’ve received a memo about your bait and are conducting some sort of industrial action.

To my right the moon was now shining brightly over the countryside and, despite knowing perfectly well that it was technically waning, it looked full enough to me. I stared at it suspiciously for a while, as though it had personally organised the lack of bites and was now sitting there enjoying the consequences.

An hour after dark seemed like a perfectly reasonable point to call it, particularly as I’d already been there long enough for the river to make its position abundantly clear. If anything was going to happen, surely it would have happened by then, unless the fish had suddenly decided to begin feeding at some ungodly hour specifically to annoy me.

So I packed everything away, leaving the river to its nocturnal residents and the moon to continue doing whatever it does. Another session had gone into the fishing diary, another blank space had been added to the full-moon evidence file, and once again I had successfully demonstrated that catching fish is only one of the many things you can fail to do while fishing.

Still, I’d been out, enjoyed the evening, had a chat with a farmer and watched a beautiful sunset over the river. And as every angler knows, that is precisely how you turn an evening without a bite into something that sounds suspiciously like a successful fishing session when you tell someone about it later.

Warwickshire Avon - Row-Royce's and Roentgenography

The padlocked security gate was open, which immediately meant that the other locked security gate would probably be open too, and as it turned out, I was right. There is something deeply satisfying about correctly predicting the behaviour of gates, although sadly this particular skill has yet to prove useful in any other area of my life.

The only slight drawback was that the boat club were also out in force, milling up and down the river with the enthusiasm of people who had absolutely no appreciation of the fact that I had come specifically to catch fish. They even had a little boat with an outboard motor, which produced a racket normally associated with an angry lawnmower being thrown into a washing machine.

It also had the unfortunate habit of disturbing the water, which isn't particularly helpful when you're trying to persuade a suspicious predatory fish that your lure is actually a small, delicious and completely unsuspecting meal. On the other hand, there were a couple of boats full of women in vest tops and Lycra, so frankly, sometimes you have to accept a little turbulence in the pursuit of angling.

There are plenty of things to moan about in this world, after all. Fuel prices, for example, are enough to make you consider taking up pigeon racing instead, but watching a boat full of women glide past while you're lure fishing in a nice environment isn't really one of them.

There were already a couple of other anglers on the stretch, lure fishing in much the same way as Sam and I intended to. The Warwickshire Avon really could do with a decent drop of rain, though, as the level was low and the water was ridiculously clear, the sort of clear where you can see a fish looking at your lure, reading the small print and then deciding it doesn't fancy signing the contract.

A bit of colour would have been very welcome. The Warwickshire Stour, meanwhile, apparently had enough duckweed to start its own gardening centre and desperately needed clearing out, which just goes to show that rivers, like people, are rarely happy with what they've got.

There is plenty of depth on this particular stretch, though, and over the years I've had some lovely Zander and Pike from it, both on deadbaits and lures. So there was every reason to think that one of the resident toothy residents might fancy getting involved.

I left Sam to his own devices in a couple of swims while I retreated to the back of the Jimny to perform the most important part of any fishing trip: breakfast. The air fryer was deployed, bacon and sausages were loaded in, and for once there wasn't a gas stove rattling around in the back of the vehicle. Oh and I  removed a can and a lid dumped there by an another angler, you do wonder. 

Instead, I had a Jackery Lithium Iron Phosphate battery pack capable of supplying 1500 watts without breaking into a sweat. It is remarkable how far modern technology has come, because once upon a time the height of sophistication was being able to boil a kettle without setting fire to your trousers.

As the bacon and sausages were cooking, I wandered back to see how Sam was getting on. This was where things suddenly became interesting, because a small Pike came shooting out of the depths and absolutely nailed the Temu Pike lure.

It splashed about like a fish that had just realised it had made a terrible life choice, and for a few glorious seconds it looked as though breakfast might be accompanied by a photograph of Sam holding a Pike. Sadly, the hooks came free and the Pike disappeared back into the Avon with what I imagine was a fairly comprehensive list of swear words.

Sam was gutted, and I was gutted for him. There is something particularly cruel about seeing a Pike, watching it hit the lure, fighting it, and then watching the entire thing disappear before you can even begin wondering where you're going to put the fish for a photograph.

Still, there was plenty of water to explore, so after breakfast we got mobile. We moved from peg to peg, changing lures from time to time and throwing them into the drink whenever the rowing boats allowed us the privilege.

Unfortunately, there seemed to be a rowing boat passing every five or ten minutes, and eventually the whole thing started to resemble a particularly badly organised game of Frogger. We'd cast out, retrieve, look upstream, see another boat approaching, sigh, and wait for humanity to finish using the river.

 Between us we covered six or seven swims each, giving them a decent amount of attention and trying various lures. The Pike and Zander, however, appeared to have held a meeting beforehand and unanimously agreed that today was going to be a day off.

Eventually we returned to the car, packed things away and headed downstream towards the weir. Thankfully the weir was free of other anglers, so we gave that a good go, working the likely areas and hoping that something with teeth had decided to turn up for the afternoon shift.

Nothing did. Not even the usual tentative tap that makes you think you've hooked a shopping trolley, a branch or possibly the submerged remains of a small Victorian railway.

We then headed towards the deadarm, which is normally one of my default areas for Pike and Zander on the Avon. In higher water it becomes a lovely area of slack water, somewhere predators can sit out of the flow and wait for something unfortunate to drift past.

I'd never seen it as clear as it was today. Honestly, it looked like an aquarium, except this aquarium had absolutely no intention of displaying any fish whatsoever.

We gave the margins, cover and likely ambush points a good twenty minutes or so, putting lures through all the places where I'd normally expect something to happen. Nothing happened.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was pretty much the story of the day. The Pike were apparently on strike, the Zander had booked annual leave, and the Avon had decided to provide us with a lovely scenic walking experience instead.

Interestingly, we weren't the only ones suffering. I got chatting to a couple of Ukrainian lads who were also fishing, and they were blanking too, which was strangely comforting.

There's something reassuring about a blank when you discover that the river isn't personally ignoring you. If several anglers are standing around catching nothing, you can at least blame the river rather than your lure selection, your retrieve, your technique, your breakfast, the phase of the moon or that suspiciously shaped twig you spent twenty minutes casting at.

So, despite the lack of fish, it was still a cracking day out with Sam. Plenty of steps were covered, plenty of water was explored, breakfast was consumed, and we managed to spend some quality Father-and-Son time together, which is considerably more important than whether a Pike decides to eat a bit of plastic.

I'll be heading out again later, probably into the dark after a Sunday roast. This is the last weekend of my month of abstinence, and I have to admit the last few Sundays have been very different.

I've actually missed the usual Sunday routine, wine and a slap up roast. A month has gone considerably quicker than I expected, and before long normal Sunday service will presumably resume, which means fishing, questionable decisions, cold feet, ridiculous amounts of tackle and wondering why I haven't simply stayed at home in front of the television.

But that's fishing, isn't it? You can spend a small fortune on rods, reels, lures, batteries, vehicles and equipment capable of powering an air fryer, drive miles to a beautiful river, walk several thousand steps and spend hours casting into what looks like an enormous swimming pool.

And at the end of it, the only fish you see is a small Pike that escapes.

Still, there was bacon. There were sausages. There were boats full of women in Lycra.

Some days, you have to recognise a successful fishing trip when you see one.