Warwickshire Avon - Blanks and Borborology

The half-arsed rainbow should have made me think twice about fishing this recently polluted stretch but I decided to give it a go. To be honest I had intended to fish another stretch for barbel but the river hadn't risen anywhere near like it was reported to, so I decided on a chub session instead.

I had the banks to myself on this stretch because well, since the incident those that have tried have failed to catch anything of note and probably why the banks were deserted. 

It's such a lovely stretch this and you can even access the banks in your car (if capable) if you wanted to but for me I wanted to rove the stretch and try and drop in to every likely looking spot to try and drop on to a fish. Plenty of walking but with a light roving set-up not an issue at all. 

I pre-baited a few spots initially and then went about dropping in to each swim to try and winkle a chub out. 7 or 8 swims down without a nibble it wasn't looking good at all. 

I kept at it though and despite a cold wind I actually enjoyed being out but despite the lack of action I made the right decision to go fishing. There was some fry in the margins and they were jumping out occasionally so that was encouraging I suppose.

It's one of the biggest and widest stretches of the Warwickshire Avon I've fished and you can see why the bigger fish used to like it here because there is a heck of a lot of room to hide up if they wanted to and plenty of new areas to explore if they fancied a holiday away from the norm.

The river was just about trottable I'd say (2 ft of visibility) and maybe that was the better way to search out the fish rather than fishing static. I stuck to my guns though and stuck to my plan where in one swim after a foot pull that didn't develop in to a bite I returned to the swim where after 30 seconds or so, a few plucks and a full on bite that I struck in to prematurely. 

My own fault and sadly the fish felt the point of the hook so not unexpected it didn't return to have another go at the cheesepaste. The other day the same thing happened and a fish after the 5th time was hook due to my incompetence !!

At least I had a bite and a proper one too. Lets hope that the fish start to migrate here from other parts of the river because it really is a nice stretch of the Warwickshire Avon. I stuck it out in that swim far longer than intended and decided to move upstream 20 yards or so where next to a tree within 5 minutes of the cheesepaste being out I was getting small plucks and pulls which was obviously from small fish.

That was the only swim that had happened in and I was expect fishing some maggots on a small hook would get to know what the culprit was. 

So a blank in the end after about 3.5 hours but it didn't deter me from giving it another go. Just that one proper bite that I missed was good enough for that. I probably fished the wrong time of the day as well I suppose and next time I might pre-bait a few more swims with some bread slop and try bread instead rather than cheesepaste.

The clarity wasn't as bad as I thought and a I'm sure bread would have been the better option, so to summarise I'm not disheartened just yet, it's a convenient stretch and that certainly helps.

On a more positive note, the Sunday dinner was enjoyed without worrying about my waistline too much considering how much walking I did. A lovely bit of pork indeed, especially the cracking which was 👌

The local rivers will hopefully settle in to a more stable level going forward and a quick look at the weather report the temperatures are going to drop which hopefully will mean the fish will start to get hungry and bites will come forthcoming. !!