Warwickshire Avon - Wideboys and Wombats (River Carp !!)

When we first acquired our little section of the syndicate stretch, I can fully understand why the landowner only gave us one bit of river to play with initially. After all, there’s no point handing over several hundred yards of prime Warwickshire Avon to a collection of complete strangers who may immediately erect bivvies, fell half the woodland, install a three-course kitchen and generally behave as though they’ve been given planning permission for a small caravan park with fishing rods.

The general principle, I suspect, was very much out of sight, out of mind. If we could demonstrate that we were reasonably normal human beings who occasionally caught fish rather than a travelling circus of nocturnal woodland developers, then perhaps further negotiations could take place.

Fortunately, we must have passed the audition, because eventually the second section of river, rather grandly christened 'The Untrodden', became available to us too. 

This was largely down to the negotiating skills of George Burton, whose ability to persuade somebody to part with something is apparently only surpassed by Herb Cohen, although George has yet to publish a book entitled You Can Have The River, But Only If I Can Have The River First.

The Untrodden really does appear to be just that. There are stretches where you get the distinct impression that a human being hasn't cast a bait into it since the invention of the wheel, and possibly not even then, although there are rumours that a Bronze Age angler once lost a wooden float in swim fourteen.

The irony, of course, is that now we can drive virtually bankside and park behind the swim we intend to fish, the original stretch has become rather neglected. Previously, you had to park beside a busy road, climb through a hole in a fence that appeared to have been specifically designed to remove skin from your elbows, and then descend the steps I built many moons ago, which had gradually acquired the structural integrity of a well dunked digestive biscuit.

With the Warwickshire Avon currently running low, however, the neglected stretch suddenly looked rather interesting. It carries considerably more depth than some of the other water, and as anyone who fishes rivers knows, a bit of extra depth can make a man start thinking thoughts that would otherwise be considered completely unreasonable.

So, naturally, I decided to have a go.

Sam and I had fished the stretch on Sunday and, unfortunately, there were signs that somebody else had discovered it too. 

A makeshift rod rest had appeared, and the gap in the fence looked rather suspiciously inviting, which is generally the point where your mind starts imagining somebody arriving at midnight wearing camouflage, carrying three rods, a folding chair and a Tupperware box containing enough luncheon meat to feed Wolverhampton.

I had already put some scalded pellet in beforehand, knowing I was going to fish the following evening, so when I arrived at The Untrodden I parked at the bottom of the stretch and wandered over to the swim. 

I put some more bait out, had a look around and then decided it was probably time to make the original access slightly less accessible, if only to give any potential nocturnal entrepreneurs a minor inconvenience to overcome.

It wasn't exactly Fort Knox. I was merely trying to make getting through the fence sufficiently annoying that anyone contemplating a bit of unauthorised fishing might conclude that Netflix was actually a better option.

The evening itself was absolutely glorious. Clear skies, completely still water and that lovely period around dusk when the river starts changing character and you get the distinct feeling that something is about to happen, even though nothing has actually happened and you've spent the previous forty minutes staring at a motionless float like a man waiting for his broadband engineer.

As the light faded, the fish activity increased. Nothing enormous was topping, but there was enough going on to suggest that the river was waking up and, for a brief moment, I felt that I had timed things rather cleverly.

This is always dangerous.

The water was still absolutely tap-water clear, and from the swim I could see all the way down to the bottom in around six feet of water. Had it been twelve feet deep, I reckon I could have identified the make and model of any deadbait resting on the bottom, along with the expiry date on its packaging.

But this is the Warwickshire Avon, and once darkness arrives it has a habit of changing the rules. Things happen at dusk, things happen after dusk, and occasionally things happen that make you question whether the fish have been attending secret evening classes while you've been at work.

I filled the feeder with scalded pellet and attached a Sonubaits Oozing Sausage Sizzle dumbell, wrapped in one of my homemade Robin Red paste concoction. It was cast over the prebaited area, which had been sitting there for around thirty-six hours, and I settled back expecting, at best, a few enquiries from the local chub population.

What I wasn't expecting was what happened approximately twenty minutes later.

There were a couple of little bangs on the rod tip, followed by a steady pull that developed into one of those unmistakable something rather substantial has just decided it doesn't want to be here moments. I lifted into it and immediately found myself attached to a solid fish that appeared to have no interest whatsoever in discussing the matter.

Initially it simply sat there on the bottom. Then it started moving left in that familiar barbel fashion, and when it eventually felt the full bend of the Harrison rod it suddenly remembered that it had somewhere extremely important to be.

It took line like nothing I'd hooked for quite some time. The clutch was tightened as far as I dared, the reel was protesting, the rod was bent over and I was concentrating so hard that I probably looked like someone attempting to defuse a bomb using a packet of Twiglets.

I absolutely love this 1.75TC Harrison rod. It's got that wonderful combination of power and balance where you know you've got some serious stopping ability without feeling as though you're wielding a scaffolding pole.

The fish, however, wasn't particularly interested in my equipment review.

It was properly beasting me.

I did wonder whether I'd finally connected with some enormous barbel that had spent the last decade living underneath a submerged washing machine, and for a few moments thoughts of a new personal best began floating around my head.

This is another dangerous stage of fishing.

The brain starts doing things it shouldn't. You begin mentally writing the blog post, deciding which photograph will be the lead image and considering whether the words absolutely monstrous might be considered an understatement.

I was just about ready to put my hand over the spool and give it some additional encouragement when, after its initial twenty-yard run, the fish suddenly turned around and came charging back towards me.

Pheeeeeewwwww.

That was all very well, but when it eventually broke the surface I realised I hadn't hooked the gigantic barbel of my dreams at all.

I'd hooked a carp.

A very good carp, admittedly.

I'd caught a carp from this stretch before, a fourteen-pounder, but this fish was clearly bigger. For a few seconds I thought I'd got it under control, at which point the fish spotted the landing net and immediately decided that this was an unacceptable development.

It went absolutely berserk.

Another enormous run followed, accompanied by the sort of frantic clutch adjustment and rod manoeuvring normally associated with somebody trying to land a washing machine that has just been thrown into the river from a bridge.

I was holding on for dear life, praying that nothing would come adrift, but I was confident in the tackle. The Harrison rod was doing exactly what it needed to do, absorbing those savage lunges and taking some of the sting out of the fish's attempts to relocate itself to Birmingham.

Eventually, after what seemed like an age, the carp appeared to accept that its escape plan had been systematically dismantled.

The net went underneath it.

The fish went in.

I punched the air.

There are few things more satisfying than getting a good river fish safely into the net after a proper battle, particularly when you've spent the previous ten minutes wondering whether you're about to be humiliated by something with fins.

I let it rest for a while, sorted out the mat, sling and scales and eventually weighed it.

16lb 5oz.

Not a bad carp at all.

And this wasn't some obese, overfed, semi-domesticated lake carp whose idea of exercise is moving six feet between a boilie and a floating pellet. This was a proper river carp, built like a brick outhouse and shaped rather like an Australian wombat that had spent several years doing deadlifts.

An impressive beast, in other words.

I took a few photographs, admired it for a while and then slipped it back into the Avon. It swam away strongly, presumably off to tell its mates that some lunatic had tried to abduct it using a sausage-flavoured dumbell.

I carried on fishing for another forty-five minutes, well into darkness, but there wasn't so much as a chub pull. Nothing, nada, zilch, the sort of silence that makes you start wondering whether the fish have all gathered in another swim and are currently laughing at you.

It didn't matter.

I was still grinning.

There's something particularly satisfying about catching a surprise fish from water that you've perhaps been overlooking, especially when you arrive wondering whether there's actually anything worth bothering with and leave having just had your arms pulled off by a sixteen-pound river carp.

It also leaves the rather interesting question of what else might be lurking in that neglected stretch.

There are certainly barbel there. There are carp. There are chub, although apparently none of them felt sufficiently charitable to make an appearance on this particular evening, and given the depth and relative lack of disturbance, I suspect there may be one or two other surprises waiting for somebody sufficiently stupid—or optimistic—to go looking.

And that, really, is the problem.

Once you've caught one good fish from somewhere like this, you don't go home thinking, Lovely, that's that then.

You go home thinking, I wonder what's underneath that tree?

Then you start looking at the river differently.

And before you know it you're studying maps, checking levels, examining gaps in hedges and convincing yourself that a swim you haven't fished for three years is almost certainly holding the biggest fish in the county.

Which means, inevitably, I'll have to go back.

Not because I'm greedy, obviously.

Purely for research purposes.

And if another sixteen-pound carp happens to accidentally fall into my landing net while I'm conducting said research, then frankly it would be rude not to weigh it.

Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.56

There are certain noises in life that a sensible man learns to recognise, and one of them is the faint, nagging ache coming from the lower back which, when translated from the language of bodily complaints, basically means “pack your gear away, you idiot.” As a previous sufferer of sciatica (6mths of hell), I am normally reasonably good at listening to such warnings, although apparently there is a small but extremely stupid part of my brain that believes pain is merely the body's way of asking whether I fancy doing something considerably more physical. So, after Friday’s trotting exploits had left me with that annoying little ache down the lower back, what did I do the following morning

Well, obviously I went fishing, because common sense is very much like a waterproof jacket in my house: I know where it is, but rarely remember to bring it with me. Having spent the previous day kitting Sam out with some new fishing clothes because the boy appears to have discovered growth hormones and has shot up like a weed over the last couple of years, we headed off to the syndicate water where I planned to do some peg trimming while he christened his new baitcasting set-up. 

Looking back, there was absolutely nothing wrong with this plan apart from the small matter of me being the one who had to wield the cutting tools. The day before donning his new gear he'd been fishing on the local canal with his mate Noah where they dropped in to Martyn's Stratford on Avon Fishing and Outdoors where he gave them to free maggots where they caught 9 fish !!, Sam has certainly got his mojo back which is good. 

The water had cooled off considerably of late and, with a deadbait positioned where I could keep one eye on it, I started trimming away in a few swims while Sam went off chucking his lure around. I was secretly hoping the deadbait might produce something interesting while I was hacking away at the vegetation, because there is nothing quite like pretending you are doing essential fishery maintenance when what you really want is for a float, indicator or alarm to suddenly start doing something exciting. 

Sadly, the deadbait remained as lifeless as my enthusiasm for further peg maintenance and the pike, barbel and anything else with fins collectively decided that today was apparently a good day for a lie-in it was quiet !!.

Sam wasn't having much more luck either, although unlike his dad he had the advantage of possessing a functioning lower back and considerably more enthusiasm. 

With the river gin clear, he'd sensibly been trying more natural-coloured lures, but after a while he turned to me with the sort of expression normally reserved for children who have just decided that Dad clearly knows absolutely nothing about fishing. “Daddy, can we try the biggest lure now, I reckon we need to go OTT instead?”

Now, I would love to claim that I carefully analysed the conditions, considered the behaviour of the quarry and arrived at the conclusion that a larger, more conspicuous lure would be the logical choice. 

In reality, Sam suggested it and I immediately agreed, thereby allowing me to look like an experienced angler while contributing absolutely nothing to the decision-making process. The lure was duly attached, allowed to sink almost to the bottom and, on literally the first cast, something absolutely hammered it.

“I’ve got a fish on, I’ve got a fish on!” came the cry, at a volume normally associated with someone discovering that they'd won the lottery rather than caught a small pike. 

Sure enough, an unsuspecting pike had absolutely nailed the lure, proving once and for all that when confronted with gin-clear water and cautious fish, the correct answer is apparently to throw something resembling a brightly coloured aquatic brick directly at them. It wasn't a huge pike by any stretch of the imagination, but to Sam it might as well have been the biggest fish ever to swim the river, and judging by his grin I suspect he'd have happily carried it home and put it in the bath.

I landed it for him and gave him a close-up lesson in how to unhook a pike safely, explaining that next time it'll be his turn under my guidance. There is something particularly satisfying about watching your lad catch a fish using a rod and reel that he's only just started getting to grips with, especially when you've spent a small fortune on the aforementioned rod, reel, lures and clothing and are now emotionally committed to proving that buying all of it was absolutely necessary. 

Naturally, Sam was already planning the conversation with his mother before we'd even left the swim, and I could practically hear the words “I caught a pike” being rehearsed in his head.

There were no more bites after that, but quite frankly we'd already had what we came for and anything else would merely have been greedy. We packed up and headed home with Sam still buzzing about his fish, while I was beginning to feel that familiar ache in my back and wondering whether my body had perhaps been trying to communicate with me using a language I was deliberately refusing to learn. 

The irony wasn't lost on me that the youngest member of the party had demonstrated excellent lure selection, impeccable timing and considerably more common sense than his father.

Sunday arrived and, after cooking a roast, I had every intention of heading out in pursuit of a barbel because apparently one small pike and an aching back had not yet completely cured me of my stupidity. However, for perhaps the first time in living memory, I decided that sitting on the sofa and watching YouTube might actually be the sensible option, which was a decision so unusual that I half expected someone from the Environment Agency to knock on the door and check whether I was feeling alright. 

With three short sessions planned during the week anyway, I figured the barbel could wait and, judging by how my back felt after an afternoon doing absolutely nothing, I suspect it was quietly thanking me for finally developing some common sense.

And that, really, was the lesson from the weekend: Sam listened to his instincts, chose the ridiculous lure, caught a pike first cast of the big lure and went home looking like he'd just conquered the River Amazon. I ignored mine, tried to turn myself into a one-man groundskeeping department and spent the rest of the weekend negotiating with my lower back like it was an angry union representative. 

There are many things fishing teaches you over the years, but apparently one of them is that sometimes the cleverest thing an angler can do is put his feet up, watch someone else catch fish on YouTube and give his spine a well deserved day off.

Warwickshire Avon - Nurseries and Numismatography (Baby Barbel)

Well, autumn has certainly decided to announce its arrival, and judging by the temperature the other morning on the way to work, it had clearly forgotten to send a polite letter first. One minute we were enjoying the seemingly endless summer, the next I was sitting in the car wondering whether I'd accidentally driven north and ended up somewhere considerably closer to the Arctic Circle. It was, in other words, bloody chilly.

I'm not complaining though, because as much as the long, drawn-out summer was rather pleasant, after several weeks of sunshine and absolutely bugger all rain it did begin to feel like we'd been permanently relocated to Spain. The grass was turning the colour of an old pair of khaki trousers and every time you looked at the river you could almost hear it asking someone to please turn the tap back on. We like our seasons in Britain, or at least I do, particularly the ones where the weather becomes increasingly unsuitable for normal people and increasingly attractive to anglers.

There is something rather satisfying about the arrival of autumn, even if it does mean wearing a winter jacket before going to work while wondering where you put the gloves you haven't seen since February. The rivers start to look different, the trees begin throwing their leaves into the water with gay abandon and suddenly you can justify wearing six layers of clothing simply because you're going fishing. It is a wonderful time of year, provided you aren't expected to actually enjoy being outside for anything other than fishing.

Getting out this week was always going to be slightly problematic, largely because the diary makers had been at it again and filled the bloody thing with commitments. There is also the small matter of having a child with special needs at home, which means that although Sam is perfectly capable of looking after his brother for a couple of hours, anything much longer than that is something neither of us feels entirely comfortable with. That's just the way it is, and fishing, despite what some head wand donners who don't live in our shoes believe, occasionally has to take second place to real life.

The good news is that things are changing as Sam gets older, and the wife and I can now actually go out for a meal together without having to organise what resembles a military operation involving timetables, contingency plans and even rarer babysitters. Sam has grown up considerably, and not just vertically, although he is now taller than me which I find deeply offensive on a personal level. He also understands that from time to time he has to be responsible for his brother, which is something that has made life just that little bit easier.

Anyway, with the wife out, the house was mine, and apparently this was considered an opportunity for me to prepare myself some food rather than simply standing in front of the fridge repeatedly opening the door in the hope that something interesting would appear. The suggestion was, and I quote, "Why not make yourself some fish or something spicy?" which I interpreted as an instruction rather than a casual culinary suggestion. Naturally, I went for the second option because apparently I enjoy making decisions that will later have consequences for everyone around me.

What followed was a proper old-school garlic chilli chicken, the sort of meal where the recipe should really come with a warning from the Health and Safety Executive. By the time I'd finished cooking, the kitchen looked like a small explosion had taken place inside a Chinese takeaway and then decided to have a second go. There were chopped chillies everywhere, garlic on every conceivable surface and enough washing-up left behind to make me seriously consider moving house.

It was, however, absolutely bloody delicious, which is really all that matters when you've reached the point where the kitchen looks like evidence from a crime scene. I consumed enough garlic to ensure that for the following couple of days I wasn't so much breathing as exhaling a defensive chemical weapon. My work colleagues, unsurprisingly, were absolutely delighted when Friday lunchtime arrived and I finally disappeared from the building.

Forty-three hours had been ticked off for the week, the coffers were a few pennies heavier and I decided that enough was enough. I needed to go fishing, even if it was only for a couple of hours and even if the weather looked like it was considering throwing every possible variety of autumn at me simultaneously. So, on the way home, I decided to detour down to the Warwickshire Avon for a spot of trotting.

The swim I had in mind was one where you need to don the waders, which is always a good start when you're already slightly tired and the temperature has dropped sufficiently to make you question your life choices. 

Float peddler Dave Harrell had been down there not long previously and had apparently bagged up on chub and even managed a barbel trotting, which naturally made the whole thing sound considerably easier than it probably was. 

If Dave can do it, I thought, then surely I can too, although history has repeatedly demonstrated that this particular line of reasoning is deeply flawed.

I'd fished the stretch since Dave's visit and had previously enjoyed some success catching chub off the top on bread. Unfortunately, the warmer conditions seemed to have encouraged the bigger chub that had been sitting in the oxygenated water to relocate themselves to somewhere considerably more convenient for them and considerably less convenient for me. 

Still, I'd come this far and wasn't going home without at least having a poke around.

The weather wasn't exactly helping matters either, with a fairly strong wind blowing across the river and making the business of trotting a float look more like an exercise in remote-control boat operation. Despite wearing jeans underneath neoprene waders, after about two hours I was beginning to feel the cold creeping in. It was the sort of cold where you start telling yourself that you're perfectly comfortable while simultaneously wondering whether your feet can still actually feel anything.

The tactics were wonderfully simple, which is generally my preferred approach because the fewer things there are to go wrong, the fewer things I can subsequently blame. Six-millimetre mixed-colour pellets were loose-fed into the swim and a banded six-millimetre pellet was attached to a size 16 hook, which was about as complicated as the operation got. No twelve-page rig diagrams, no obscure Japanese hook pattern and no bait that costs more per kilo than the average family spends on groceries.

I fed the swim for about twenty minutes before making the first trot, mainly because I'd decided that the fish deserved a decent opportunity to arrive before I started disturbing them. The float went under and a small chublet was attached almost immediately, which was rather encouraging and also made me wonder whether I'd really needed to spend twenty minutes feeding the swim in the first place. Still, anglers are creatures of habit, and if you've spent twenty minutes throwing pellets into a river you feel obliged to pretend there was a carefully considered reason for doing it.

The next cast produced another bite, although this time the result was rather less satisfactory. The float disappeared, the fish shot off to the right with considerably more enthusiasm than the previous occupant and the hook promptly pulled just before it reached the safety of the reeds. Damn it, I thought, because that had probably been a decent chub and I'd managed to do the angling equivalent of dropping the winning lottery ticket down a drain.

Throughout the session it became increasingly obvious that the bigger chub simply weren't there, or if they were there they'd collectively decided to ignore me. The smaller chublets, however, were more than happy to keep me entertained and provided plenty of action, which is one of the reasons I enjoy trotting so much. You can spend hours chasing a particular fish and then suddenly realise that the smaller ones have actually provided most of the fun.

Then, completely unexpectedly, the float buried again towards the end of the run. The resulting fight didn't feel quite the same as the chub, and after a few moments it became apparent that I'd connected with something considerably more interesting than another small chub. It was a tiny baby barbel.

Now, I genuinely wasn't expecting that, and for a moment I just stood there with the sort of grin normally associated with somebody who has just discovered they've won something they didn't even enter. The little barbel had gate-crashed the chub party completely uninvited, but I couldn't have been happier to see it. Sometimes fishing has a funny way of giving you precisely what you didn't realise you were hoping for.

The significance of that little fish wasn't lost on me either, because this is one of the stretches affected by the severe fish kill back in June 2023. Thousands of dead fish, including mature chub, barbel and pike, were discovered along stretches of the Warwickshire Avon around Warwick and Barford, with angling subsequently suspended while the situation was investigated. The Environment Agency attributed the disaster primarily to low oxygen levels following sudden heavy summer storms washing accumulated road and gully pollutants into an already warm river, while local anglers raised other concerns including untreated sewage foam and pollution.

Whatever the precise combination of circumstances, the result was the same, and seeing so many dead fish was something that nobody who witnessed it is likely to forget. Rivers don't simply bounce back overnight from something like that, particularly when you're talking about mature fish that have taken years to reach any worthwhile size. Every surviving fish therefore seems a little bit more important, and every young fish feels like a tiny sign that the river is quietly getting on with the job of rebuilding itself.

I've caught barbel on this stretch during the previous season and have already had some this season as well, which has been hugely encouraging. But catching this particular little fish was different because it was so obviously young, and that made me wonder what the river might look like several years down the line if everything continues moving in the right direction. Perhaps that little fish will one day become one of those big, powerful Avon barbel that has some poor bloke standing in the reeds wondering why his rod has suddenly turned into a banana.

For me, that was the real highlight of the session. I hadn't caught anything big, I hadn't bagged up and I certainly hadn't achieved anything that would make the angling press sit up and take notice, but none of that mattered. Sometimes a fish doesn't have to weigh ten pounds to make an impression, and this one certainly did.

I sat there looking at the little barbel and couldn't help but smile. It was only a tiny fish, but given the history of the stretch it felt like a rather significant little fish, and one that I suspect I'll remember for a very long time. There was something rather special about seeing one of the next generation swimming around in a river that had been through such a terrible episode.

Eventually I packed away, climbed out of the waders and headed home feeling considerably happier than I had arrived. I'd been cold, I'd lost a decent chub, I'd caught a collection of chublets and I'd spent a couple of hours standing in a windy river wearing neoprene trousers like some sort of aquatic sausage. Yet somehow, that tiny barbel had made the whole thing worthwhile.

Fishing is funny like that. You can spend an entire season obsessing over big fish, looking at weather charts, river levels, moon phases and every other piece of information you can possibly find, only for the most memorable fish of the week to be something you could probably have carried home in a particularly enthusiastic cupped hand. It isn't always about what you catch, and occasionally the smallest fish can leave the biggest impression.

So, autumn is here, the temperatures are dropping and the rivers are beginning to look like proper fishing rivers again. The garlic has hopefully now vacated my pores, my colleagues have probably recovered sufficiently to return to work without fear and the diary makers have been warned that there are limits to how much of my life they are allowed to fill. Most importantly though, somewhere in the Warwickshire Avon there is now a tiny barbel swimming around, and for this angler, that was the icing on the cake.

Talking of Barbel, a link to Gale Lights podcast..