Warwickshire Avon - Hydrology and Highbinders

Mars is at its biggest and brightest right now as the Red Planet lines up with Earth on the same side of the Sun. Every 26 months, the pair take up this arrangement, moving close together, before then diverging again on their separate orbits around our star.

You can't miss it, it's the brightest star-like object the sky and easy to spot if you spend anytime out in the dark like I do. A separation of 38,568,243 miles, that's the narrowest gap now until 2035.

Now having a sort through some of the junk in the office I stumbled upon the little Samsung MV800 that I bought maybe 10 years ago. Before the replacement iPhone turns up it could offer a self take with a flash without the need of secondary light source which is what I need to do at the minute hence the last Barbel picture was pretty dire.

After fully charging the battery I forgot how easy it is to operate. It's a touchscreen you see and the flip screen offers easy self takes. I suppose with modern phones these days and how the lenses have come on big time, was the reason it was confined to the junk box a good while ago.

After a mess around in the garage with the light off (yes really) and various settings the Timer Shot seemed to work pretty well and despite the garage being pitch black the flash kicked it really well and to be fair did a decent job, far better than the iPhone 7 could do anyway.

It could be the answer to ones prayers, because I've never been entirely happy with the pictures I take in low light and in the dark.

If I catch something decent anytime soon I want at least to be confident I can take a decent trophy shot, and I hate carrying a load of camera gear around when I'm fishing especially with the travel light roving I tend to do.

So a short session this one down at the syndicate section of the Warwickshire Avon to try and catch something to test this forgotten device. Was it confined to the junk box for a good reason ? The river was starting to fall and with more rain on the way I rocked up half an hour before dusk and would be on the way again at 8.00pm to get the risotto on.

I probably peaked to soon here, catching a double figure carp, a double figure barbel and also a decent slab but since then I've not caught anything of note. For a specimen wanting some peace and quiet though this area is ideal so I'm sure when it all clicks in to place, something special will turn up. The problem is banktime and ok, I've been fishing quite a bit of late but rarely do my sessions exceed 5 hours and decent fish don't give up easily so I just need to keep plugging away.

There were chub feeding well past dusk here so if the Barbel were not playing ball I'd hopefully have a bite from on of those. There are some >5lb fish here but as of yet I've not managed to catch one. 

So same tactics as yesterday evening, a Hinder Ramiz Dumbell and a PVA bag of freebies. The lead goes down with a satisfying donk in the swim I decided to fish and it's around 5 or 6 foot deep.

Now usually I have this stretch to myself but fellow syndicate member Dave was already bankside and hadn't had any bites for a couple of hours but with dusk approaching anything can happen here. 

So after a quick natter I got set-up and the bait out. Now in complete contrast to the session a couple of days earlier an hour in no fish topping, no chub pulls, hmmmm.

Then downstream I could see the faint movement of Dave's head torch and a few splashes in the water, he had a fish on. 

"You got something Dave ?"

"Yeah, a decent Barbel Mick !!!"

So I went for a nose and yes, Dave had a lovely Barbel in the net, not quite a double but just over 9lb and another good fish from this stretch. Rested and watched it return a very encouraging sign for this small water that sees little pressure for sure. Me well, another hour in, it was time for the off and I didn't even have a bite. Sadly another blank to add to the list. 

So camera, sorted, just need a fish to show off now !!!!