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.

Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.57

When chaos engine Donald Trump met elected by his mates to lead the country Andy Burnham at the United Nations, social media naturally did what media does best and immediately turned a perfectly ordinary diplomatic encounter into a forensic examination of two men standing approximately three feet apart. Burnham, with his wonky glasses, slightly rigid posture and expression suggesting that somebody had just whispered "we need a word" in his ear, was soon being compared to Ronnie Corbett halfway through a particularly uncomfortable monologue, which seemed a little harsh until you looked at the photograph again.

There was something about the whole thing that reminded me of fishing the Warwickshire Avon when it is gin-clear, because that is precisely how you feel when you are stood on the bank and every fish in the river knows you are there. 

You do not simply feel like you are fishing; you feel like you have been invited onto a television quiz show where the fish are the audience, the presenter is a particularly judgmental chub and every movement you make is being marked out of ten.

The difference, of course, is that Andy Burnham probably had advisers, security men and assorted United Nations types around him, whereas I had a tub of mashed bread, a quiver tip and a cormorant that looked like it was waiting for me to make a mistake. 

I suspect Burnham's advisers were marginally more useful, although whether any of them could have located a chub in gin-clear water is another matter entirely.

The reason I found myself on the Avon in the first place was largely because my fishing partner has recently rediscovered his enthusiasm for fishing, although calling him my fishing partner at the moment is perhaps being slightly optimistic. 

Sam has been going fishing with me since he was four years old and has now reached that rather annoying stage where he is actually becoming quite good at it.

He likes nothing more than stalking chub off the top, fishing a float for whatever happens to be swimming about, or chucking a lure around for predators, which seems to be his current obsession. I suspect this is partly because quite a few of the youngsters his age are currently indoors shouting at people they have never met while playing computer games, whereas Sam is outside shouting at fish he has never met, which seems considerably healthier.

Although, to be fair, fish do not usually respond by telling him that his mum is something unrepeatable. They tend to just swim away, which makes them considerably more civilised than some of the people he could be talking to online.

I can fish for several hours, carefully select a swim, contemplate the hydrology, assess the light levels, consider the wind direction, choose the perfect bait, make three hundred casts and return home with a damp sleeve, while Sam and his mates chuck maggots into a canal and catch nine. At some point you have to question whether your carefully developed fishing philosophy is actually just a very elaborate way of not catching fish.

The problem is that Sam's renewed enthusiasm has resulted in me being somewhat demoted. Last weekend he was off fishing with some mates from school and this weekend he was off again, meaning that I appear to have gone from being chief fishing companion to something resembling an Uber driver with a landing net.

The previous report had been particularly galling because it had been delivered with the sort of casual indifference normally reserved for somebody telling you they had popped to the shops for some milk. "We caught nine," he announced, as though catching nine fish was something you simply did between breakfast and lunch.

Nine.

Still, I cannot really complain because at least he is out there fishing, and a couple of his mates apparently want to go but do not have anybody in their family who fishes. That is a difficult one when you are a youngster because unless an adult is prepared to take you, fishing is not exactly something you can simply decide to go and do.

So, after picking up some maggots from Martyn's, I dropped Sam off just outside Stratford-upon-Avon to meet Hugo, this time rather than Noah. I think there are a few of his mates who would like to get into fishing, but when there is nobody in the family who fishes it becomes surprisingly difficult for a youngster to get started.

Sam is competent enough to know what he is doing, which is slightly irritating because his Dad isn't always quite so sure. I have spent years teaching him how to fish and am now discovering that the most dangerous stage of parenthood is not when your child starts walking, talking or answering back, but when they realise that Dad occasionally has absolutely no idea what he is doing.

He had wanted a lie-in, naturally, so I did not drop him off until around 9.30am, which is not exactly an ideal time to be starting a serious summer fishing session. By then the sun was already doing its best to illuminate every pebble, weed stem and suspiciously positioned fish in the river.

Still, I decided to kill two birds with one stone, although given the number of birds involved later in the session I probably should have chosen a different expression. I would bait up the swim where I had caught the carp recently, ready for fishing on Sunday evening, and then spend a couple of hours roving around trying to winkle out a chub while getting some exercise.

I parked at the top of the stretch, grabbed some mashed bread and set off down the river. The plan was to prime seven or eight swims, put plenty of bait into the area I intended to fish the following evening, then return to the car, get the fishing tackle and see whether I could persuade a chub to make a catastrophic error.

The Avon was proper clear.

Not just clear, either; this was the sort of clear where you begin to wonder whether the Environment Agency has quietly drained half the water out during the night. You could practically see the fish thinking, and I am fairly sure one of the chub looked directly at me and then moved behind a piece of weed specifically so that I could not see it.

Now, trotting a stickfloat with maggot would probably have produced some bites because maggots are basically the fishing equivalent of ringing the dinner bell. But I fancied a decent chub, and there is something about bread fishing in clear water that appeals to the part of the angler's brain that apparently enjoys making life unnecessarily difficult.

I settled into the first swim with bread on the hook and, almost immediately, the quiver tip started moving. It was not the lovely, confident pull-round that suggests a decent chub has arrived for breakfast, but a frantic series of bangs and snatches from small fish that seemed to believe I had delivered a buffet specifically for them.

The tip was constantly on the move, literally every swim, with the bread apparently causing more excitement among the small fry than I had anticipated. It was less like presenting a bait to a wary chub and more like throwing a loaf of bread into a swimming pool full of toddlers.

Still, I persisted because that is what anglers do when the fish are small. We tell ourselves that the proper fish will be along in a minute, and then spend twenty minutes proving that it will not.

In the third swim I finally managed to connect with a chublet, so technically I had caught exactly what I had come for. Admittedly, I had been hoping for something around ten times the weight, but I have always believed that you should never look a gift fish in the mouth, particularly when it is small enough to disappear through your fingers.

At least it was not a blank, and that is an important distinction. A blank is a blank, whereas a couple of tiny chublets can be described as "a difficult session where I managed to nick a few fish", which sounds considerably more respectable when you are telling somebody about it later.

I moved on, continuing the old roving routine that I have always enjoyed. There is something wonderfully simple about carrying a small amount of tackle along a river, dropping into likely-looking swims and never quite knowing whether the next cast will produce a tiny chublet, a proper fish or absolutely nothing whatsoever.

The beauty of roving is that every new swim brings fresh optimism. Fresh optimism is one of the most important pieces of tackle an angler possesses because it weighs nothing, costs nothing and can be replenished simply by walking twenty yards downstream.

At one point I dropped the bread into another swim and within a few seconds something substantial appeared from the depths. For a moment I thought I had finally found the decent chub I was after, before a huge cormorant surfaced right in the middle of the swim. You forget just how big cormorants are until one suddenly appears a few feet away from you. Close up they are basically a scale model of a prehistoric bird that has somehow survived into the modern world purely to annoy anglers and eat the fish they have spent hours trying to catch.

It was enormous.

It was also completely unconcerned by my presence, which is the sort of confidence I admire in wildlife. I stood there holding a fishing rod while the cormorant stared back at me as if I was the one who had wandered into its swim uninvited.

We stared at each other for a while.

I am fairly certain I lost.

The cormorant eventually disappeared downstream, presumably to terrorise somebody else's swim, leaving me to wonder whether it had actually been there before I arrived or whether it had simply been summoned by the scent of mashed bread and angling incompetence. I suppose it could have been worse; at least it had not asked me for a share of the bait.

A buzzard had also been keeping me company throughout the session, circling overhead and occasionally calling from somewhere beyond the trees. It was a pleasant reminder that there was considerably more going on around me than my inability to catch a decent chub.

In fact, when you think about it, I was in a fairly precarious position in the food chain. The cormorant was below me, the buzzard was above me and the fish were somewhere in between, probably discussing the easiest way of making me look stupid.

I picked up another couple of chublets as I worked my way along, but nothing remotely approaching the sort of fish I had envisaged when I left the car. The conditions were always going to make it difficult, particularly with the sun getting higher, so I was not exactly surprised.

Still, it was enjoyable to be back to my roving roots. There is something about moving along a river rather than sitting in one swim for hours that keeps you grounded as a fisherman, especially when you have spent far too much time convincing yourself that you need another rod, another reel or another box of bits.

The truth is that I need less tackle.

Unfortunately, I already own the more.

The roving approach also provides an extremely useful psychological escape route when things do not go according to plan. You have not blanked, you see; you have "explored the stretch", which is a phrase that sounds much more impressive and has the added advantage of being almost impossible to disprove.

Eventually, after a couple of hours, I decided to call time. I had caught a few chublets, seen a cormorant the size of a small Labrador, been accompanied by a buzzard and walked enough of the riverbank to justify the breakfast I would inevitably eat when I got home.

It had been tough, as expected, but I had enjoyed it. Sometimes that is enough, although it is worth noting that I generally say that immediately after catching small fish and considerably less enthusiastically after blanking.

The really important part of the day, however, was what I had done before fishing. I had baited the swim where I had recently caught the carp, and that was where I intended to fish the following evening.

The swim is a big one, too, which means I might even take two rods.

I know.

It sounds reckless.

But there is a lot of water in front of me and, in theory, two rods should allow me to cover different areas. I have watched other anglers do it and they seem perfectly capable of keeping two rods under control, so how difficult can it actually be?

This is where experience and optimism occasionally collide.

I have fished two rods before, and the second rod has a remarkable tendency to transform itself from a fishing implement into a highly sophisticated device for creating problems. The moment both rods are out, both tips apparently decide that they require my attention at exactly the same time. Meanwhile, Sam and I will be doing some lure fishing in the morning at his request. Which means that once again I will be following somebody considerably younger than me around while he casts lures at things I probably would not have thought were worth casting at.

He is pretty good at it too.

Annoyingly good.

There was a time when I was the one showing him how to cast, how to hold a float, how to present a bait and how to stalk a chub. Now he is reaching the stage where he occasionally looks at me with the quiet expression of somebody who has realised that Dad does not actually know as much as Dad claims.

I am hoping he never fully works it out.

Although, judging by the number of fish he is catching with his mates, I suspect we are rapidly approaching that point. The pupil is beginning to become the master, and I am beginning to wonder whether I should have spent more time teaching him how to catch fish badly. Still, if the younger generation wants to go fishing, I am more than happy to take him. Even if I am increasingly being relegated to transport manager, bait supplier, net carrier, photographer and general provider of sandwiches.

It is all part of the service.

And frankly, if the alternative is him sitting indoors all day on a PlayStation shouting at somebody called XxDestroyerxX, I will happily drive him to the canal at half past nine on a Saturday morning. 

Even if he comes home and tells me they caught nine.

Especially if he comes home and tells me they caught nine.

Because that is what fishing is about, really. 

It is not always about catching the biggest fish or taking the photograph that will eventually be printed at enormous size and hung above the fireplace.

Sometimes it is about getting outside, walking a river, watching a buzzard, being surprised by a prehistoric-looking cormorant, catching a chublet the size of a large sardine and then going home wondering why you did not bring more bread. Sometimes it is simply about being there.

And occasionally it is about watching your son become a better angler than you are. Which is lovely, although I am not sure I am quite ready for the day when he starts telling me which swim I should fish.

Although, if he tells me where the fish are, I suppose I will listen.

After all, he caught nine last week and a small pike this week !!.

I caught three chublets.

So perhaps, on this occasion, the pupil really has become the master.

I am just hoping he does not ask me to start paying him for guiding.

Although, given the current price of maggots, I would not be remotely surprised.