Warwickshire Avon - Perambulation and Perturbation

Well, the session didn't exactly get off to the most auspicious of starts, although to be fair, down here it’s generally about as peaceful as Piccadilly Circus at rush hour, only with more bivvies and considerably less public transport. 

As I pulled into the car park, there was already a van positioned broadside across the swim I’d intended to fish, with its occupants apparently settled in for the duration, having brought enough tackle to suggest they were either planning a week-long campaign or preparing to excavate the Avon. Rod pods, gear everywhere and what appeared to be a takeaway on the go completed the scene, because apparently barbel fishing now requires catering facilities.

I looked downstream towards Plan B, only to see the unmistakable silhouette of line stretching across the water after another angler had just cast out. Bugger. As I sat there contemplating whether Plan C was actually going to be Plan Z, another bloke appeared carrying a rod pod, closely followed by his missus lugging what looked like a moon chair, heading towards one of the convenient swims adjacent to the car park, presumably because walking more than twelve yards from the car was considered an unreasonable hardship. 

I eventually settled on Plan C, which was upstream to Neil from the garage's peg, or Buffalo Si's sloppy seconds, otherwise known as ‘last year's hot peg’, although despite its reputation it’s still a decent bit of river and one that ALWAYS seems to produce. It’s only about eighteen minutes from home, but I don't fish it that often because, Jesus Christ, it sees some foot traffic. 

Not just anglers who seem intent on pouring enough bait into the river to qualify as civil engineering, but the great unwashed too, all wandering about with dogs, children, sandwiches and absolutely no awareness whatsoever that somebody might actually be trying to fish. 

Still, I lowered the bag and rod, ready for a relatively short session from 6.30pm until a nadger past dusk, and immediately my rod caught the little elastic strap on the smiley acid-house bracelet Sam had bought me.

The elastic stretched, twanged and surrendered to the laws of physics, sending all the tiny smiley faces exploding in every direction like a psychedelic hand grenade. 

There I was, crawling around amongst the detritus of the peg to retrieve tiny yellow faces while simultaneously wondering whether this was some sort of omen. Clearly it was, and I shall have to order another bracelet, although next time I may choose something less emotionally and mechanically fragile, such as a length of chain.

Eventually I got myself sorted and started setting up, at which point a long, grey-haired fella appeared with a couple of dogs which, judging by their behaviour, had either never attended a training class or had been expelled from one. They proceeded to run all over the peg I'd chosen, sniffing around for anything edible and generally conducting themselves like two furry members of a forensic investigation team. It turns out they were, as their owner cheerfully explained, ‘luncheon meat monsters’, which did at least explain why they were treating my fishing gear as though it had been served up on a buffet.

The same performance occurred on my return, despite me having a word with their owner, who appeared to regard my concerns with all the urgency of someone being told the kettle had boiled. Still, I resisted the temptation to feed him to the dogs and carried on. Shortly afterwards three perfectly pleasant Eastern European lads came wandering along, roving around chucking lures left, right and centre, including, naturally, directly through the areas I was fishing.

“Come on fellas, there are plenty of pegs to fish, can't you see I'm fishing here?” I politely enquired, receiving the sort of response that suggested they regarded my stationary rod, baited hook and general angling activity as an unnecessarily dull interruption to their mobile entertainment. 

Apparently they liked to move around when lure fishing and didn't do the “boring fishing” that I did, which was fair enough, although I did briefly consider demonstrating just how boring I could make a fishing rod by inserting it somewhere inconvenient. Eventually, mercifully, the chaos subsided. The dogs disappeared, the lure chuckers moved on, the banks emptied and the riverbank finally became quiet, which suited me perfectly because I am, by my own admission, something of a misanthrope. 

This particular stretch is normally rammed with fish, largely because it receives enough bait to keep a small aquatic population in permanent employment, and the Avon here is effectively the all-you-can-eat buffet of Warwickshire. Barbel, chub and everything else hang around because there is always something dropping through the water column, which makes the complete lack of action that followed even more baffling.

The target was barbel, so I primed the swim with a scaled pellet and groundbait mix, allowing it to settle on the bottom before giving things a rest. Tactics were deliberately simple: a Robin Red drilled pellet on the hair, accompanied by a small PVA bag of freebies, which has been my usual approach of late. Because I was only fishing a short smash-and-grab session into dusk, I deliberately made the hair longer than normal, hoping to be a little more selective and perhaps avoid the attentions of every small chub, gudgeon and aquatic idiot that fancied a nibble.

I needn't have worried about being selective. Despite decent fish showing, not only in my swim but in the areas immediately to my left and right, the rod remained about as animated as as Trigger's broom handle leaning against a shed.  

Not even a chub pull materialised, which on this stretch is frankly bizarre, rather like turning up at an all-you-can-eat buffet to discover that the entire kitchen has gone home. I moved the bait around the swim, tried a few different spots and found a reassuringly satisfying thud as the lead hit bottom, so presentation was clearly fine.

And yet… nothing. Not a tap, not a knock, not even the sort of pathetic little twitch that allows you to convince yourself afterwards that you definitely had a bite but were simply too slow to react. As darkness crept in, the fish continued to show themselves with the sort of calculated indifference usually reserved for people you owe money to, while my bait sat beneath them apparently invisible. 

Eventually I called time, packed away and headed home wondering quite how a place that normally resembles a barbel branch of Tesco's had managed to close its doors for the evening.

So, all in all, not exactly the session I'd envisaged. I arrived to a human traffic jam, lost my acid house bracelet, had my swim invaded by luncheon-meat-obsessed dogs, had lures fired through my fishing area and then spent the evening watching decent fish show everywhere except on the end of my hook.

Still, that's fishing, I suppose, and perhaps the Avon was simply having one of those evenings where it had decided that despite providing everyone else with an all-you-can-eat buffet, my table reservation had mysteriously been cancelled.

On a better note, a link to the River Severn Trip with Nic from Avon Angling where I actually catch some fish !!

Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.54

I was genuinely surprised the other day when Sam announced that he wanted to go fishing. This is becoming something of a rare event these days, a bit like seeing a kingfisher in a swim you've been baiting for three weeks, because getting a fifteen-year-old out of bed and away from a screen requires planning, negotiation and, on occasion, the sort of psychological warfare normally reserved for hostage situations.

Like his mother, Sam has developed a rather healthy appreciation of his bed, although at his age I suppose I can't really complain. The difference is that when I was fifteen I wasn't particularly interested in sleeping until lunchtime because I was too busy roaming the streets, riding my BMX, building dens and generally doing things which, viewed from the perspective of adulthood, probably involved considerably more opportunities for serious injury than I realised at the time.

Fishing was also a big part of it, and I remember cycling over to Somers in Meriden with my brother, rods strapped to our BMXs, probably looking like a couple of Victorian chimney sweeps who had somehow acquired bicycles. We thought nothing of it, whereas today if I suggested Sam cycled several miles to a stretch of river with a fishing rod attached to his bike, I'd probably have Social Services, the police and holier than thou Chris Packham turning up on the doorstep.

Of course, times change, and gaming is a massive part of young people's lives now. Those lockdowns certainly didn't help, although when you're stuck indoors for weeks on end with your mates available only through a headset, I suppose Call of Duty, Siege and whatever else the kids are playing these days became the equivalent of sitting on the wall outside the chippy and talking complete rubbish for six hours.

Sam's latest enthusiasm for fishing was partly driven by a Temu purchase, which immediately raised my eyebrows because I'm not entirely convinced that the words 'Temu' and 'quality fishing tackle' have ever previously appeared in the same sentence. Still, he'd bought himself a pike lure for about £1.50, a multi-jointed affair which, to be perfectly honest, didn't look half bad when I inspected it.

I'd expected something which would fall apart if a pike so much as looked at it, but it actually appeared reasonably well made. I suppose for £1.50 you can't expect it to come with a certificate from the British Standards Institution, a handwritten note from the lure maker and a small gold-plated plaque commemorating its birth, but it certainly looked capable of catching something.

The other part of the Temu order was rather more difficult to explain. Sam had purchased a balaclava, black ski goggles and a propeller hat, which is a combination that raises rather more questions than it answers and isn't something you generally expect to see assembled together unless you've accidentally wandered onto the set of a low-budget Scandinavian children's television programme.

Apparently this is connected with playing Siege, where he likes to dress in the sort of sweatshop-produced tactical gear that makes him look like a counter-terrorism operative who's been sent to neutralise a particularly dangerous gang of pike. I decided not to ask too many questions, because frankly I'm happier knowing less.

Anyway, the syndicate stretch is ideal for a short session, so there was no need for one of those ridiculous 4.00am starts that I used to consider perfectly normal and now regard as a form of self-inflicted sleep deprivation. These days I'm rather enjoying my bed myself, and by just gone eight o'clock we were ready to go, with Sam actually prepared before me, which was a slightly disturbing indication that something important was happening.

The conditions weren't exactly screaming 'lure fishing bonanza', but we'd come to fish, so fish we would. Sam headed off with his £1.50 Temu pike impersonator while I prepared myself for the more sedate pursuit of perch and chublets with a smaller Salmo Hornet, because apparently I'd reached the stage of life where catching a six-ounce perch had become an entirely acceptable objective.

Then, about five casts in, came the shout every parent who takes their offspring fishing wants to hear.

"I've got one on! I've got one on!"

There was a slight pause before the second declaration, delivered with considerably more certainty and volume.

"It's a pike! It's a pike!"

And, remarkably, he was absolutely right.

I looked over and there it was, a decent pike which I'd estimate at around five or six pounds, and suddenly that £1.50 Temu lure had gone from being an amusing experiment to the most expensive object on the bank because, as we all know, once a lure catches a fish it becomes priceless.

I grabbed the landing net and headed over, and Sam was doing exactly what he needed to do, keeping the fish moving and trying to prevent it from finding the nearest bit of underwater vegetation. Unfortunately, the landing net was at full stretch and the pike had other ideas, heading off to the right with Sam having to apply some serious side strain to stop it disappearing into the snaggy bits.

For a moment it looked as though we'd got it beaten.

The fish was coming towards the net, the Temu lure was hanging out of its mouth, Sam was concentrating like a bomb disposal expert and I was standing there with the net thinking this was all going remarkably well considering we'd spent approximately the price of a packet of crisps on the lure.

And then the pike launched itself out of the water.

Under the tension of the line it somehow managed to throw the hooks, and in the blink of an eye we went from 'that's a lovely fish' to 'Damn it!!!'

There are few sounds in fishing more depressing than the collective groan produced by an angler and his dad when a good fish falls off at the net. Sam was absolutely gutted, and I was gutted for him, because when you've watched your son hook a decent pike within five casts, the fish has already become something much larger in your imagination than it actually was.

It was probably twenty pounds by the time we got home, judging by the way these things normally develop.

Still, that's pike fishing, and there wasn't much Sam could do about it. He carried on fishing the swim and had a couple more follows and one or two snatched attempts, but nothing properly connected, so eventually we decided to have a wander and see if we could find anything else willing to participate in our little Temu-sponsored expedition.

We went on the rove, both of us now fishing lures, although I'd sensibly downsized to the Salmo Hornet in the hope of finding a perch or perhaps one of the Avon chublets. Sam continued with the pike tackle, presumably confident that another aquatic missile was waiting beneath the surface to redeem the previous one.

Sadly, the river had other plans.

It was tough as old boots.

We worked our way along the stretch, casting likely spots and covering different bits of water, but the expected procession of perch, chub and pike failed to materialise. It was one of those sessions where every swim looks as though it should contain something, but the fish have apparently received a memo informing them that today was not the day to cooperate.

Eventually Sam returned to the swim where he'd hooked the pike, which at least gave him another opportunity to torment himself by imagining the fish he'd lost. While fishing there he managed to pick up a dace on the retrieve, which he'd somehow managed to impale with the lure rather than actually catch in the conventional manner.

Fortunately the dace went back absolutely fine, so we could at least claim another species for the morning, although I'm not entirely sure 'accidentally speared by lure' is a technique that will be appearing in the next edition of Improve Your Coarse Fishing.

And that, unfortunately, was about it.

Two and a half hours of fishing produced a missed pike, a few follows, a couple of snatched attempts and one rather unfortunate dace, which isn't exactly the sort of catch report that gets the national press knocking on the door. Still, Sam had enjoyed himself, and for me that is considerably more important than filling the net.

The interesting thing is that the river can change dramatically as the light begins to disappear.

 I've always found this stretch comes alive as the light levels drop, particularly when the Avon is clear, and it can feel like you're fishing an entirely different river once dusk starts creeping in. 

During the brighter part of the day it can look almost devoid of life, but give it a bit of shade and low light and suddenly you start wondering whether every dark shape under the far bank is a chub, a barbel or something considerably more interesting.

Before we packed up, I put some more bait down in one of the swims, as I always like to do. 

There isn't much point in fishing an empty-looking swim and then simply walking away from it, particularly when you know from experience that a bit of regular bait can eventually encourage the better fish to hang around.

I'll have another go during the week, probably into dusk and beyond, and see if I can winkle out a decent chub or perhaps another barbel. The Avon has a habit of keeping a few cards close to its chest, and sometimes the best fishing begins just when the sensible people have gone home for their tea.

So, all in all, not the most productive couple of hours, but definitely one I'll remember.

Sam hooked his first pike of the session within about five casts on a £1.50 Temu lure, lost it dramatically at the net and was then reduced to catching a dace by the wrong end. Meanwhile, his dad stood there with a landing net, a Salmo Hornet and the gradually dawning realisation that perhaps the teenager who'd rather be gaming isn't quite as difficult to tempt out fishing as he'd imagined.

Perhaps the answer isn't banning the Xbox after all.

Perhaps we just need to buy more cheap Chinese fishing tackle.

Although I'm still drawing the line at the propeller hat.

Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.53

So, we're back in business then, although whether that's good news for anyone other than me is open to debate. I have no doubt that several readers have been sitting patiently by their laptops, refreshing the page every six minutes, wondering whether I'd finally run out of things to waffle about, only to discover that sadly I have returned and, rather like Japanese Knotweed, appear to be almost impossible to eradicate.

The first day back at work after the August excesses started reasonably enough, although it wasn't long before I encountered something that reminded me that I'm clearly earning money in entirely the wrong profession. I wandered back from my lunchtime walk towards the main building and there, sitting outside the entrance, was a rather enormous Range Rover that I initially walked straight past without giving it a second glance.

Now apparently, however, this wasn't just any old Range Rover but the new electric one, which explained why several people seemed to be standing around it looking considerably more interested than I was. Once I'd been informed of the specification, I suddenly became very interested indeed, although mainly in the sense that you become interested when someone tells you the price of a bottle of wine after you've already ordered it.

Nearly three tonnes, around 370 miles of claimed range from a 118.5 kWh battery and prices starting somewhere around £150,000 before you've started clicking the options box like a lottery winner. That's a huge battery by the way as it will take approximately 17 to 19 hours to charge from 0% to 100% on a standard 7kW home charger.

Apparently they can wander north of £250,000 once you've ticked enough expensive little boxes, which is quite handy because if you've got that sort of money lying around, you're unlikely to be worrying about whether your bait bill has got slightly out of hand this month.

I have to say, though, it was an impressive thing in the flesh. Massive doesn't really do it justice, and I'm fairly sure you could lose a small family in the back of it and not discover them again until the following Tuesday. 

Cars just seem to be getting bigger and bigger and someone that works in a design studio on cars that will be out in 4-5 years that's not changing !!, at this rate the next Range Rover will require planning permission, a runway and possibly its own postcode.

It did get me thinking about the little Suzuki Jimny which is a 1/3 of the weight, otherwise known as the Mountain Goat, which in a couple of weeks will somehow be seven years old. Seven years! I can still remember writing the first blog post about buying the bloody thing from new, although apparently time moves considerably quicker when you're driving around in something that looks like a Tonka toy with number plates.

It's been absolutely brilliant, though, and hasn't missed a beat. It's probably the easiest vehicle I've ever owned to like, largely because it has absolutely no interest in pretending to be something it isn't, and while the new Range Rover could probably cross the Atlantic with the correct optional extras, the Jimny would be quite happy bouncing over a muddy field while making noises that suggest it needs urgent medical attention.

In fact, I reckon you could probably put the Jimny in the boot of the new Range Rover if you gave it a decent shove and ignored several minor issues concerning dimensions, suspension geometry and the laws of physics. The new Range Rover really is a behemoth, and although I'm sure it's lovely to drive, I think I'll stick with the Mountain Goat for a while yet.

Besides, after a month of considerably more eating and drinking than was strictly necessary, I suspect I am currently approaching the same gross vehicle weight as the Jimny and driver combined. August has been a spectacular success in that department, so with the weather finally looking a little more conducive to fishing and a month off the grog now underway, I'm hoping the waistline will gradually return to something resembling its previous shape.

There are worse ways of doing it than sitting beside a river, although I'm not entirely convinced that consuming several packets of biscuits while waiting for a bite constitutes an effective weight-loss strategy. 

Still, every journey begins with a single step, and mine apparently begins with having a cuppa.

Anyway, back to the fishing, which was the whole point of this particular excursion despite the lengthy automotive and dietary diversion. 

The evenings are drawing in alarmingly quickly now, with dusk arriving at around 8.25pm, which seems ridiculous because I'm fairly certain it was light until about half past eleven last week.

Before we know it we'll be talking about Christmas, which means mince pies will be appearing in the shops, people will be putting decorations up in November and I'll be wondering where another year has disappeared to. 

I therefore decided to make the most of the remaining daylight and fish into darkness, which also gave me a good excuse to sit beside the river for several hours without anyone expecting me to do anything productive.

I'd chosen the syndicate stretch for this one, with the vague intention of catching a fish and the much firmer intention of not doing anything remotely complicated. I had considered targeting barbel, especially as I'd caught one here fairly recently, but if I'm honest I fancied a chub more.

Chub have always been a favourite of mine, proper characters of fish that seem to spend most of their lives looking suspiciously at whatever you've thrown in the river before eventually deciding that perhaps eating it isn't such a bad idea after all. They're also particularly satisfying when you're trying to winkle one out, because there's something rather pleasing about fooling a fish that's spent twenty minutes staring at your bait as though it has just spotted you trying to sell it a timeshare.

There was another reason for fancying the chub, too. I've done particularly well using Robin Red pellets on the Avon, and while the fish obviously don't read my blog and therefore aren't aware that this particular bait is supposed to be irresistible, they've certainly developed a taste for it.

The plan was therefore straightforward enough: a couple of Robin Red baits hair-rigged, a small PVA bag of freebies alongside them, and a decent pre-baited swim to fish into dusk and beyond. Nothing clever, no laboratory equipment, no underwater drones and certainly no bait preparation involving ingredients that require a trip to three different supermarkets.

Before settling down for the evening, though, I fancied a bit of roving. Chub can sometimes give themselves away if you're prepared to look for them, particularly when there's bread involved, and I thought I'd wander through a few swims with a loaf and see whether anything fancied an early evening snack.

There is something wonderfully simple about fishing with bread. You take a loaf, tear some off, put it somewhere near a chub and wait for the fish to either eat it or look at you as though you've insulted its entire family.

Anyway when I got trackside, the farmer had kindly left the track free, presumably because the sheep were in the field and he didn't fancy scraping one off the front of my motor. Halfway down the straight I had to stop anyway, because a bloody great branch had fallen straight across the electric fence, so there I was doing my bit for the farming community and trying not to become the biggest shock of the evening.

Good deed done, I carried on to the first peg and performed a three-point turn which was probably closer to a seventeen-point turn in a Range Rover, before eventually getting myself sorted. Out went a decent helping of my heavy, spicy meat groundbait concoction, which plummeted straight to the bottom and would hopefully sit there quietly for a couple of hours before I put a bait over it, because if something works occasionally there really is no point messing about trying to improve it.

I then mashed up some bread, grabbed the light chub gear and set off roving, priming a few swims as I went that I'd fish on the way back. The Avon was still clear, certainly where I was fishing, and there was a bloody good head of water on, which looked absolutely perfect, although as we all know, rivers have a habit of looking perfect right up until they dump a chublet on your hook every thirty seconds.

The first underarm chuck with the link-ledgered bread hadn't even properly settled before something snatched it on the drop. "Bloody hell, that was quick," I thought, and it turned out the swim wasn't exactly short of residents. In fact it was absolutely rammed with fish, unfortunately they were all the sort of size that could probably swim through the eye of the hook.

That's the problem with bread at this time of year; the bait fish are still knocking around and they're bloody fearless. Give them a decent lump of bread and they'll whittle it down quicker than a bloke at the pub saying, "I'm only having one."

The chublets got stuck into the bread in most of the four swims I fished, and fair play to them, they attacked it as though they'd been waiting all week for a takeaway. Some of the bites were so violent they genuinely felt like barbel, particularly on the little chub rod with its daft little 0.5oz tip, which makes everything feel approximately three times bigger than it actually is.

I missed two BIG chub bites, although "missed" is probably being generous. I basically didn't connect with the fish because the bite was so hard the rod bent all the way round to the joint and by the time I'd worked out what the bloody hell was happening, the fish had buggered off. I wouldn't say I got bored of catching chublets, but that's precisely what happened, and I started thinking about something with a bit more attitude.

Still, I hadn't blanked, which is always a useful phrase to mutter when trying to convince yourself the evening is going brilliantly. With the wind now picking up considerably, I decided to stop poncing about with the light gear and set up stall in the prebaited swim with the bigger rod, with dusk only about forty minutes away.

Two small Robin Red pellets went on the hair, accompanied by a PVA bag of mixed pellets, and after fifteen minutes or so there was a proper whacking bite that came from absolutely nowhere. I lifted into it expecting the heavens to open and a barbel to announce its arrival, only to discover that once again the chub had beaten the bigger boys to dinner.

As the gloom settled and dusk finally arrived, there was another whack on the rod top, followed by another, and this time the fish had done me the enormous favour of hooking itself. I lifted the rod and found another chublet attached, the greedy little sod, and by now I was beginning to suspect there was a meeting of the Avon chub population directly underneath my bait.

Where the hell were the bigger fish? With the pellets mangled beyond recognition, I changed to my default much larger Robin Red pellet, giving the single bait a little more space between hair and hook. After another couple of clangs on the rod tip it seemed to be working, or at least the chub were finally beginning to realise that this particular buffet item was going to be more trouble than it was worth.

Then everything went quiet.

I sat there in the gathering darkness, listening to the river pushing through and the occasional rustle from the bank, when a barn owl appeared on the far side of the Avon. It ghosted silently across the water towards me, barely making a sound, then turned and floated downstream into the gloom, and for once I wasn't thinking about fishing, bites, bait or whether I'd remembered where I'd put the landing net.

You're bloody lucky when you see something like that. You don't get it sitting at home watching Coronation Street or Love Island, although obviously if that's your thing then crack on, I'm not here to judge, but I'd rather watch a barn owl hunting silently over a river any day of the week.

Then it happened.

One pull on the rod top and the whole bloody thing went into meltdown. The rod folded over, the reel started doing something far more interesting than it had done all evening and instantly I knew what was on the other end. "Yeap, barbel," I thought, before immediately adding, "Don't get too confident now, Mick, you've made this mistake before."

Thankfully the fish didn't seem to have received the memo about escaping. It put up a spirited battle, surging around in the darkness and making me work for it, but eventually I got it into the landing net and there it was. 

Oh yes, oh bloody yes! As Carl Cox might say, although I'm fairly sure Carl has never had to say it while standing in the dark with cold hands, a muddy backside and a barbel trying to climb out of a landing net.

It wasn't a huge fish, and in fact it felt a little hollow, but this is the Avon we're talking about. 

More than fifty sessions here and perhaps one in eight or ten produces a barbel, and most of those seem to turn up once it's properly dark, so when one does eventually come along you don't start worrying about whether it's going to break some personal best.

I didn't weigh it. There was no need. I was just chuffed to bits to have another Avon barbel in front of me, because sometimes the fish itself is the bloody trophy and the number on the scales is completely irrelevant.

I fished on for another twenty minutes or so, but nothing else happened, which was probably just as well because I was beginning to get that smug feeling that usually precedes something going horribly wrong. 

Eventually I packed up and headed back along the track, leaving the Avon behind in the darkness. It had been one of those evenings where nothing particularly spectacular happened for most of the session, yet somehow everything felt right. 

A few chublets, a barbel, a load of water, a fair bit of wind, a tree sacrificed to the electric fence and a barn owl drifting silently downstream as the light disappeared.

Not bad at all.

I drove home with a stupid grin on my face, already thinking about the next visit and wondering how long I could realistically pretend that this was all part of a carefully planned fishing campaign rather than me disappearing off to sit beside a river in the dark because I've got absolutely no sense.