Warwickshire Avon - Gate Swingers and Gastrophilanthropists

With Sam off because of a teacher training day I persuaded him with some newly purchased handwarmers' to come fishing with me. Only a few hours sadly but enough time to try and winkle out a fish before the cold set in and Sam wanted to go home. 

Here he could take sanctuary in the car if need be but it wasn't 'that' cold, but Sam like his mother does seem to feel it more than most. She suffers with Raynaud's mind you, which doesn't seem very pleasant but for her modern electronic hand warmers are a Godsend. !!

"So Sam what do you fancy catching ?"

"Can we have a go for a pike ?"  

"yeah if you want"

With the river still pretty high I decided to drive up to an area which is much wider and deeper than the river below the weir which you can just make out in the picture. 

In the colder months the silver fish congregate up here and if you look a the catch reports in the matches, they are often won with decent sized nets of snackets for pike and zander for that matter. I've not been up in here for ages so it was good to have a nose I suppose and get Sam back to fishing again. 

He'd not been since November where he blanked on the LRF gear at Westward Ho! so I was keen to get him back fishing as I have missed my fishing buddy I must admit, not so much the fishing, but the conversations are very random, let's leave it at that, what happens at fishing, stays at fishing 😁

So a roving session this where we would leapfrog likely looking predator holding swim to try and drop a bait on a fishes noggin. The water was still pretty coloured but the baits were pungent so I was hoping they would be easily findable if there were fish up for a feed.

There were some rowers on the river and one of them was accompanied by a little powered boat which to be fair did slow down when he saw us in various sections of the river, however beyond us, that right hand was cranked right over and easily exceeded the river speed limit. 

Some of the swims were fished looked perfect for a bite with both float away from the main flow holding no problem. The fish seemed to be having other ideas mind you and as we ticked those swims off I did wonder if a blank was on the cards.

I promised Sam he had the rod when we got a bite however he replied you mean "if we get a bite Daddy !! " and to be fair he wasn't wrong. 

As we continued along the stretch fishing those likely fish holding areas some of the deep too, easily >10ft deep and that was directly under the platform., those floats just didn't budge. I did think about fishing with some maggots to keep Sam occupied but the reality is moving from swim to swim isn't conducive to that really now is it. 

I was getting as bored as Sam a couple of hours in, so after fishing one last deep swim for fifteen minutes where I'd had zander and pike from before it was time to call it a day. 7 or 8 swims, nothing, zilch, bobbleless !!!. Another session where I wished I had fished for something else, maybe a small stream or something, oh well, lesson learnt. 

To be honest I did think we'd struggle however it's only ten minutes away by car so at least we didn't travel far to get there. Also because the rowing club were out it also meant we didn't need to negotiate the two locked gates there and back so got to look on the positives, for yes, another blank.