There is nothing more satisfying when the weather is cold than a good old curry. This one is a simple recipe that had ground pistachio nuts as one of the ingredients and me being a tight git, everyone of those pistachios that are eventually ground up were deshelled by your truly.
A labour of love most certainly but this is one of the richest tasting curries I have in my homemade curry armoury. I don't make it that often but the wife prefers mildier conconctions and this is right up her street. There is a small amount of Kashmiri chilli in there but I pep mine up with a couple of chopped up birds eye chillies and a sprinkling of coriander.
Will it feature on the Newey's curry night we host a few days after Christmas ? probably not because it does take quite a long time to prep and make, but this rich and mildly spiced dish is fit for a maharajah. Now walking about Kings, the mighty chub is right up there for me out of all river fish.
A fish you can rely on when the conditions are tough and challenging, when many of the other species are just not up for feeding.
For this session at the river Arrow it was out with pungent cheesepaste on the balanced chub gear to try and winkle out a fish or two.
I started off in the weir where after missing 2 unmissable pull rounds of the 1oz quiver tip the 3rd bite I felt some resistance and the hook came back with a scale. Only a small scale at that so I can only assume using a large piece of paste on a hair set-up the fish was too small to get it in its gob and it was snatching at the bait.
At least I knew the fish were up for a feed though so it gave me a bit of a spring in my step.
The beginnings of storm Bert could be felt throughout the session and the rod was being blown all over the shop which to be honest didn't really help in trying to register those bites.
Chub can be funny buggers from messing around with the bait to full on barbel'esk three foot twitches.
The next swim I fished is pretty deep for a small river it being over 6 foot I know that and the next bite was no denying it was a chub.
The tip after a couple of plucks had a full on meltdown and I struck in to a solid lump that was putting up one hell of a fight.
I thought I was going to lose it at one point because it was trying to get right under the staging I was stood on and there was scaffolding and all manner of bad stuff under there.
Thankfully with the rod showing just how much of a battle this chub was putting up eventually I managed to tease it in the net.
Certainly a good fish and judging my the length of it when rested in the net I thought it would go bigger than the 4lb 4oz it weighed.
It certainly didn't have its winter belly on it just yet but wow what a scrap that was. I rested it in the landing net to allow it to recover and fished for another bite in the same swim but sadly it never came.
A battle scarred warrior this fish definitely has seen some action over its lifetime that's for sure. With a bite in the first two swims I was fully expecting to catch some more but swim after swim apart from the odd rattle it was oddly quiet.
I returned to the weir but again nothing doing there and also a swim above which is much slower and deeper. There wasn't any other anglers on the opposite side of the river which is on another club book, so I had the river to myself again so I'm not complaining.
As I type this Storm Bert is in full force with rain lashing against the window and the wind making a right racket. The local rivers are motoring up with I suspect a few of those going to be over their banks. I watching the Avon though because with that milder rain and temperatures I'm hoping to try for a barbel possibly if I can get to the river that is.
I'm just hoping
Barbara got the memo this time !!
0 comments:
Post a Comment