Warwickshire Avon - Nodders and Nychthemerons

This McEwans Champion ain't a bad drop, for a dark beer it's a strong'un too at 7.3% but without the overly sweet taste that others of this ilk can possess. With all these 'craft' type beers that are appearing on the supermarket shelfs these days this 500ml bottle can be bought from your local Tesco for the pricey sum of £1.49. 

Apparently brewed specifically as a competition entry, then going on to take first place, Champion was the obvious name for this outstanding premium beer that to be honest is hard to fault. 

Pours a clear caramel reddish brown, with a finger plus of tan head. Good retention, sheets of lacing. The aroma is toasty and a touch sharp, caramel malts, some light fruitiness.

I had a couple the evening before this fishing session with a glass or two of red wine where a nice log fire and some binge watching of the New BBC series 'The Terror' with the Wife, really was very enjoyable indeed.

The amount of recognisable actors in this new series is frankly quite staggering, jobs for the boys for sure.

Frozen and isolated at the end of the earth it's a chilling tale based on one of polar exploration’s deepest mysteries, with a crew stalked by a murderous presence. 

With 4 episodes down already it won't take us time to get through it, but still, I don't watch a huge amount of TV if I'm honest, but this was certainly palatable to ones viewing pleasure.

There was no obvious sign on how this fox died but I discovered it when I was on route to one of my favourite swims on the river Alne.

Half an hour in without a bite all I could think about was this unfortunate fox and decided to up-sticks altogether and switch river to the Warwickshire Avon. I only had my light trotting gear with me but with the Alne a rather lifeless widdle in this cold March morning I needed some bites.

This stretch of the Warwickshire Avon has been good to me in the past where I've caught some decent Perch, Pike and Chub but there are decent shoals of roach here and also bream so they were my target.

The Avon had lost some colour in 24 hours and it was a nice tinge of green with around 6 inches of visibility, but feed maggot you will get the fish feeding and when you do there are plenty of them.

I chose a swim with decent depth where I spotted some topping fish and the float was running through rather lovely indeed.

A cormorant had already been enjoying himself further upstream and I don't think it liked that I was there to spoil the party. Still I was here to catch fish as well so I'm sure he had his quota looking at the size of it, it really was massive and I was surprised how easily it took to flight.

This little selection of roach caught in around 40 minutes, the bites coming thick and fast and the maggots were depleting at a rate of knots.

2 Pike strikes from jacks I presume because they didn't feel particularly big but enough to bite through ones 3.5lb hook length. Shame I had geared up for the Alne as I'm sure I would have caught one by design. I was catching the roach by feeding maggots but I also fed some groundbait at the tail end of the swim where the river lost some of its pace.

As I said there are bream here and het them feeding you will know soon enough. I manage to catch 2 rod tip nodders and usually they put up a fight but not this morning, a rather lame affair if I'm honest. Still unlike many anglers I don't mind catching bream especially when the strain they reside here are very distinctive with the bronze, almost golden glow.

A session that was required I think having found it tough recently but with the season coming to an end next weekend hopefully I will manage a few more sessions on running water before I switch to fishing the canals for Zander.