Warwickshire Avon - Pokémon GO, nothing to see here.

I hadn’t a clue what the Wife was on about the other day when she mentioned the recent worldwide obsession with the Pokémon GO app but after she showed me the app on her iphone and the Pokémon’s you have to find over that weekend I discovered (like always) she was right.

We had a journey in to Stratford-Upon-Avon with the kids with the great unwashed and when upstairs on a Johnsons’ double decker if you look hard enough you can spot those playing it.

Yes really….is it only me that cannot see what all the fuss is about.

Sam the youngest thinks it’s brilliant.

The authorities not so….

Japan is asking for the Fukushima nuclear exclusion zone to be classified as a no go area for Pokémon after the discovery of at least one of the game’s characters on a power station site.

South Koreans are flocking to a remote regions holocaust museum, naive New Zealanders led to Hell’s Angels clubs and police stations filled with players. It has also caused car accidents, impromptu flash-mobs in the middle of New York streets and people to walk into the sea in pursuit of some of the more rare creatures.

You really cannot make it up….

As someone apart from this blog doesn’t engage in social media if it wasn’t for the wife I’d still be immune to this recent phenomenon.

But I was wrong, unpacking the tackle from the car….

“Excuse me”

“Hiya”

“Any Pokémon’s round here” “Apparently there is a couple of Squirtle’s”

“Sorry, not got a clue what you are on about”

So coming soon to a river bank near you….FFS

So for this quick evening session I settled in to a swim that I’d fished before where I’d seen a Barbel roll, it’s also one of the quickest accessed pegs on the stretch which is handy when I’m usually on the clock for most of my sessions.

This stretch is relatively shallow but this swim under a overhang it’s usually deep, well nothing like above the weir where some appear bottomless, but it’s all relative.

I had some caster I had to use up so I dropped some with some added hemp and small pellets, had a natter to some passing swim and bank keepers, re-dropped and then let the swim settle for a good half an hour. I also added a handful of boilies to the swim as the fake casters on the hair was swapped for a couple of them.

Again the banks were deserted, as was the carpark, all to myself again.

With the rod now in and just over an hour from dusk it was sit back and wait….

The first bite came quick, tap, snatch, grab, great a Chub in the swim and eventually it hooked itself, not the biggest but welcome all the same.

Re-baited and back in the swim….

10 minutes later, tap, tap, whammmm !!!!! the centrepins ratchet working overtime.

That ain’t not Chub, a Barbel was on.

It must have shot off downstream quick because when I picked the rod up the fish was 5metres to my right. They do fight well these Barbel but I knew It wasn’t anything of size. Most welcome though considering they have be elusive up to now on this new club water. It was quickly landed, rested in the net, photographed and returned.

I didn’t bother weighing it but felt something like 5lb, maybe a nadger over. Pristine condition too.

With dusk approaching I started to pack up and again a similar bite on the rod and a fish taking line, this time though it was a Chub imitating a Barbel, a little larger this one but as it wrecked the swim and the light fading I called it a day.

An enjoyable short session, I should do more of these.