Warwickshire Avon Roach, the Upper Crust

Having stumbled upon a pocket of Warwickshire Avon Roach recently I decided to return to the same swim and this time give it a proper go to see if there were any half decent ones amongst the plebeians.

I started catching straight away so for an hour I decided to keep them in my landing net, a 5 hour match would certainly produce a decent bag full. I switched to worm after using small bread discs and had a dace first cast which for a small fish produced such a savage bite, a Barbel would have been proud.

The best Roach went 9oz, not huge but good sport on light tackle. Most bites resulted in banked fish; I use a size 14 wide gape micro barbed which is just the job for a large dendrobaena. No Perch weirdly but there must be Pike in the stretch as one roach proudly showed off his war wound.

After a couple or three hours I headed upstream to an area where in the height of summer must be full of reeds. It had a decent pace to it and had reasonable depth. The tip hadn’t settled for more than 5 minutes when the rod hooped over and centrepin ratchet started to sing. This wasn’t a redfin but a Chub, a decent one too, 3lb on the nose. I’m liking this new stretch of water even though I’ve barely scratched the surface.

For those stuck behind a computer like me, HERE is a link to a podcast on Roach by Prof Mark Everard