Warwickshire Avon - Jingle Bains and Jockum Cloys

With the Avon low and back to clear again fishing at the minute can be very tough indeed, however there are still fish to be caught if you want to get bankside.

For this session Sam and myself headed down to a section of the Avon where predators are in numbers. Perch and particularly Pike make their presence felt here because the bait fish biomass is very large indeed.

If a trot through of a float using maggot remains unhindered on the first chuck a trickle of maggots every couple of minutes will eventually attract the small fish.

It is then a bite a chuck, dace, chublets, chunky roach and some of the biggest bleak you are ever likely to catch keeps the littles ones happy. If match fishing is your thing I bet with a whip you could amass a decent bag full over the 5 hour period.

After a good hour or so eventually a pike moved in to the swim chasing a bleak on the retrieve but the fish still fed despite the big thing with teeth hanging around to hopefully gatecrash the party.

A move to a large open swim meant Sam could use a Frog popper on the surface whilst I enjoyed the sun. His casting is much improved now and providing there are no trees to get snagged up on on the whole he can be left to his own devices.

His boredom threshold can be tested if he isn't getting bites but as he was giving a good account of himself chucking the lure here and there that didn't seem to factor in to the equation.

Maybe the novelty of being able to skim the lure over the lily pads without getting snagged added to the enjoyment.

After what seemed like a hundred casts and his arm starting to ache a fish grabbed the lure quite close in and his first fish on the popper was on.

He'd seen how good surface fishing can be for predators when we used an insect replicant for summer Chub but I think he was shocked how violent the grab from the Pike can be. Now this jack was taking line on the relatively like lure set-up and apart from having to take over for a split second to steer it away from some reeds he did a cracking job of playing it.

It weighed 4lb 8oz and that was big enough to recall the story to his Mum as soon as he got home.

The final hour we returned to the first swim and fished close to an overhanging tree where a trickle of maggots again meant some small fish were caught but a change of depth and a larger shot on the line to sink the bait a little fast a chunky Perch of just over a pound in weight brought the session to a conclusion.

A really enjoyable morning, lots of fish caught despite the unfavourable conditions.