This stretch was on the grounds of Charlecote Park now in National Trust hands which is a rather grand 16th-century country house, surrounded by its own deer park, on the banks of the River Avon in Charlecote near Wellesbourne.
A lovely place and convenient place for me to fish however that was short lived when they decided to stop the fishing within the park and like me, the other anglers, had to take their maggots and luncheon meat elsewhere.
Dusk came and went without much action and the temperature had dropped considerably and I was getting a little chilly. I gave myself a curfew then out of the blue a whacking bite on the huge pellet rod that didn't develop, damn it !!
It was a shame as I got to know the patrolling ground staff quite well and I was on first named terms, mainly because my watch was slow 😉 and they had to remind me that I should have been off by now, it was dark after all.
"Mick, you again !!"
Anyway a rather extreme rig I suppose but it served its purpose rather well and banked me some barbel over the time I was fishing it, and as the crow flies its not far from these pastures new down at the Untrodden.
So with my barbel rut as deep as the mariana trench I decided to have another got at these hallowed banks, you see not only do we think that Sean 'we assume' has caught Barbara but Eric caught his first Warwickshire Avon barbel recently (watchout for the blog report) and ok, it was only half the size of Sean's net buster, but it looks like there is more barbel to caught on this lightly fished stretch.
Could there be bigger ? well James Denison thinks so and that's good enough for me.
However I need a change up !! My conventional tactics haven't been working whatsoever and my luck could well need a change of approach, so ok we had a hard frost overnight but I fancied trying something a little different, and with only two more days to go of the fishing season, bugger it, out with Dinky David and Giant Goliath, to at least appease my desperation.
Two rigs of completely different scales, one a size 12 hook with bronze maggots, the other an overly large 30mm pellet from Dynamite, which is a belachan Fermented Shrimp concoction that has a 3 day breakdown apparently where I think I would need a few years due to my recent form 😜 but fishing is fishing, we don't want it easy now do we.
(well sometimes we do, and I'd like luck thrown my way, shovel loads of it, if that's ok)
If you're an avid reader of the blog you know I like experimenting, so if nothing is producing the goods, there is no harm in trying something else, fishing could become monotonous and we don't want that now do we.
Like I said not ideal conditions for a last gasp barbel before the drawbridge goes up, but at least fishing maggots one of those rather large chub that also frequent this stretch might slip up even though the gobstopper would likely be too much of a mouthful.
But then these are chub we are talking about they are the next species of fish after the mud sifters (carp) that might need to be prescribed Mounjaro and Wegovy (weight loss meds apparently) with their gluttonous habits. Anyway enough of this waffle better get fishing !!
Let's catch a barbel !!! (in my dreams)
Anyway two swims to be fished and I put a small amount of freebies in both and got fishing. Dusk was around an hour away and after putting out the maggot rod within 10 minutes I had a bite. I struck and something decent was on but the way it was wriggling about it was only one culprit, yeah a pike !!
It looked around 6 or 7lb so I would have liked to have landed it but the inevitable happened sadly. I can only assume it grabbed a small maggot muncher on the strike or it's got a taste of maggots.
It was most likely a chub that grabbed it, but that was my lot sadly. I stopped a good hour in to dark and that was good enough for me, those restless legs got the better of me and walked back to the car with one's tail between my legs again.
One day left, one last hurrah ? Errr very unlikely with my current form 😀
Hope today went well Mick
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