Warwickshire Avon - Meatfeasts and Macrobiotes

The thing about pumpkins is that they are seriously underrated. they are also a superfood and an important agricultural commodity that has been used for thousands of years. 

Pumpkins are also one of the last crops to be harvested every year, hence their long celebrated association with autumn, and like the Newey family this afternoon the kids got involved with what will be a damn squib halloween, there will be many doing the same in Britain today. 

It was also a welcome break to get the mind away from the news of a potential lockdown AGAIN after last week insisting the Tier system in England was the way to go to tackle it. (Press conference in a few hours time apparently ) 

The wellbeing for many because there is no smoke without fire given a rather large kick in the gonads again. I'm beginning to feel a little overwhelmed with it all and I've dealt with it ok thus far, I dread to think some of the mental health issues many are having that are being amplified tenfold at the minute for a virus that hospitalises a tiny percentage of those that catch it, anyway better stop typing, so back to the pumpkins. 

Now pumpkins are high in fibre, have excellent anti-inflammatory qualities, and they are thought to be useful in lowering cholesterol and possibly in helping to fight cancer due to their alkalising properties. 

They are also one of the best-known sources of beta carotene (which the body uses to make vitamin A). Between the flesh and the seeds, pumpkins are also a good source of potassium and vitamin C, zinc, magnesium, protein and omega-3 fatty acids.

But the sad reality is that pumpkins are also an epic and unnecessary source of food waste. Each year,  farmers produce tens of thousands of metric tonnes of pumpkins. 

Apparently about two-thirds of these are sold fresh to customers most of which are used to make jack-o’-lanterns and subsequently thrown out. While carving pumpkins are perfectly edible, they are bred for size rather than for sweetness, flavour and texture.

Pumpkins don’t break down well in landfill sites, and they also create damaging methane — a.k.a. greenhouse gas. So, if you’re chucking out a Halloween pumpkin, make sure it is placed in your green bin. Better yet, donate your pumpkins (preferably freshly carved and still in good shape) to a local farmer looking for pumpkins for livestock feed. Do what we do and make a few tubs of soup. 

Once that was ticked off the list in preparation for a chub session the following morning I wanted to make sure I could fish one swim that I had previously made good, but not actually fished properly. 

Since the first initial perilous pruning the once head high stinging nettles had reclaimed some of the path back that leads to it you see. I wanted to get up and running straight away in the morning and it also gave me a couple of hours to try and winkle out a Barbel. 

Now the wind and rain had been battering the local area throughout the day however there was a break in the weather headed in to dusk so it sort of all fell in to place. 

I'd not really tried a meat feast down here yet (not the rubbish Dominos serve up, who the heck buys that junk !!!), but many of the double figure Barbel I've caught have been on simple spam tactics. My largest a 12lb 14oz specimen taking a huge piece, a 1/4 of a standard garlic spam tin. 

Now I had a few tubs of frozen lumps stashed away in the bait fridge so after being defrosted some decent hookbaits were sorted, and the remaining was chopped in to smaller pieces which would be bait dropped in to the swim just before dusk. 

I gave myself two hours in to dark which hopefully should bring a barbel up to the scent trail if there was one in the area.

Barbel are not exactly hard to catch but obviously you need them in front of you to be able to catch them. 

But I always give myself a time to pack up otherwise I could get carried away. I do enjoy fishing in the dark now but with 'His House' to watch with some Wine with the Wife later, fish can wait if they weren't biting, family life is a balance after all, I don't want everything my own way. 

The swim I intended to fish was downstream from the bankside metal shed which is spooky in itself so it was a nice sweetener for the main event later on. I'm sure it has some stories to tell as it's stood the test of time, surviving flood after flood, year after year. The corrugated shed still largely intact despite showing its age is still provides shelter from any unforeseen storm or heavy shower.  

Now to cut a long story short I blanked, but still the fish would have been fed sometime and that's not a bad thing here because it's very lightly fished. I also fed some bread in one swim for a pre-bait in the morning so hopefully I can winkle something out in the morning. 

I had one chub pull but that was it, but hey, the difference to my wellbeing is unmeasurable, that couple or three hours of solitude from a noisy house is a Godsend. Let's just hope we can continue with fishing, as I type this the month long lockdown in England was announced.

Warwickshire Avon - Gobbies and Gigantomachy

A return to the gudgeon utopia for this short session. Sam you see, like his Dad loves fishing for gudgeon because for such a diminutive fish they have bundles of character, and despite their size really can give the 1oz quiver tip a good pull round. 

Last time here you see we struggled to track them down but this time armed with a link ledger set-up this time we could drop the maggots in to some deeper holes to hopefully track a few of them down.

The river is still up and not all the swims we usually fish for them were fishable but still there are in numbers here most of the time. In certain conditions if you found the shoal fish after fish can be caught and a dozen or so landed in as many minutes such the biomass sometimes.

"Gudgeon, Gudgeon, Gonk, Gonk, Gudgeon, Gudgeon then another Gonk"

The sport can be frantic as time, it was an odd morning mind you, because the usual banker swim was devoid of them altogether and it took the fourth swim to actually get to see our chosen species.

Perch and small roach seemed to be the order of the day however bites seemed to be at a premium, usually here is a bite a chuck as soon as the maggot drifts down the water column.

The bleak had all but disappeared too, and it just goes to show how quickly a stretch can change and the fish can appear and re-appear in different times and circumstances.

The perch provided some decent sport luckily but they were not our intended target. The first one we tracked down seemed to be on its lonesome because the only other fish we could catch were minnows. 

So a rove was in order and we doubled backed upon ourselves and headed to the very bottom end of the stretch where there is some extra cover. The river when it's in flood also carves out the bank here too and over the years it has made a nice deep pool.

The first cast was a maggot sucking roach but then when the maggot went back out after a 5 minute wait the tip rattles a couple of times and then pulls round properly.

Considering how small they are give a great battle gudgeon and I knew exactly what it was before it surfaced. It carted off the left to try and get to freedom but was under control despite its heroic efforts. 

"Dad, DAD DAD it's a GONK, it's a decent GONK "We need to weigh this one, could be a PB"

And Sam was correct in his observations, it really was a GONK and the PB had been bettered again to one of 32 grams or 1 1/8 ounce. The maggots then seemed to just turn on the minnows and sadly no more gudgeon came our way. 

Cannot complain though, it was an enjoyable morning. Brian from Pike Blog needs to design a T-Shirt, money at the ready.

"Size doesn't matter ..."

Warwickshire Avon - Fiddlededee and Featherweights

Now Cerbera, an apocynaceous genus of small trees, consisting of four maritime species of Madagascar, Tropical Asia, and the Pacific, is not what the post is about. It was the TVR Cerbera I bought when I was in my middle 20's nearly 22 years ago where I could buy a house with a years salary. 

In-fact where did it go wrong, as an automotive jobber, my earnings in the industry have basically flatlined, the trade not lucrative like it once was. 

Now to be honest the dream turned in to a bit of a nightmare, it was great when it worked, 4.2 V8, 360hp no abs or traction control and because it was a featherweight compared to modern cars, very quick too. 9 secs to 100mph and >180mph it was a brute of a car and you needed a couple of weeks just to get used to it's weighty controls. 

It all started off well but as it was my only car driven in all weather and conditions the heavy use began to show. Things started to break and the list of jobs to do grew and grew. 

Little things in the main but when the solenoid operated door locks use to play up, and the only way to enter the car was to remove the rear numberplate, twiddle a screwdriver in the 'secret hole' to pop the boot lock which would give you access to the manual release for the doors. 

It didn't like being driven from cold either otherwise it would stall so the neighbours used to love me when I started it up at 5.30am to allow the flat plane crank engine to warm up. The biggest issue came when after oil starvation at the crank, the engine exploded in dramatic fashion and it dumped a load of oil and bits of the engine on the A45 in Birmingham. 

Now it took 17 weeks to be fixed by the factory which had a backlog of customer engines to rebuild and then eventually when I got it back, the first journey out in it after stopping to get a newspaper the starter motor jammed and couldn't be freed. So againnnnnnnn on the back of an AA wagon, back to TVR Team Central for them to get it working again. 

I had basically lost all confidence in the car at this point, so after running it in locally for 200 miles it was put up for sale and hopefully went to someone who had more luck with it than I did. 

Still despite the bad memories, it led to one of my most memorable moments in my life, sadly not for this blog, it's something that being merry between friends may well reveal.

Now a static motionless rod like ones TVR Cerbera can all of a sudden explode in dramatic fashion when a Barbel decides it wants to take the bait. Some of the bites I've had have really been utterly ridiculous when the Barbel realises something is wrong after picking up the bait and it bolts off in dramatic fashion almost taking the rod with it. 

If you don't know what you're doing, you may well have a lost rod and a tethered fish. Even with a centrepin I like to anchor the rod middle and bottom as even the ratchet can be taken off guard the odd time with a savage bite and the rod can be pulled off the rest.

It's one of the reasons why I tend to only fish one rod for Barbel now, I've got in to a few palavers you see and especially when fishing in the dark, I'd rather not have to worry about things like that. I prefer to play it safe these days. With the river conditions good, water mild and the tackle still in the car from yesterday evenings session, I was back bankside again for another quick session to try and winkle one out.

The weather was very different indeed, milder and very blustery but still the Barbel don't know that anyway do they. The conditions really did look spot on again but after three swims with half an hour in each there was nothing doing at all. The final swim I decided to fish was the same I fished the other day for the 5lber and gave me an hour before the club rules dictate I needed to be off. Meat was untouched so I switched to paste and boilie.

Now normally here the chub bite if the barbel don't but no, but not this session. The only action the rod top received was from the wind which picked up big time whilst I was there. Strange how in conditions which look absolutely perfect, the fish were just not interested, but then that's fishing for you, don't want it too easy now do we, I had the banks to myself again, maybe the other anglers know something I don't.