Warwickshire Avon - Scotch Eggs and Scoptophobia

Remember that COVID lockdown malarkey where a row broke out whether a scotch egg can be classed as a 'substantial meal' under rules only allowing alcohol to be served with food. Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove said two scotch eggs would be 'a starter', the 24 hours after Environment Secretary George Eustice said one is a substantial meal.

Now Mr Gove reiterated his stance in a second interview on Good Morning Britain before backtracking and then telling ITV News: 'A scotch egg is a substantial meal'. What the heck was that all that about, you would think it was all made up but we all lived through the ridiculous rules. These black pudding ones from Walter Smith are definitely a substantial meal I know that. 

Now it has been said many many times that the chub is the most catholic of fish, quite prepared to gulp down anything at any time. While it is quite true that they have a very wide feeding range, being both predatory and vegetarian, it is not correct to assume they will take any bait you care to put on your hook. Chub can be fickle creatures, and I have known times when they will look at only one bait, and can be caught on no other.

The natural food of chub varies, depending on the feed available in the different waters. It can safely be said that chub will settle in nearly all rivers or streams, at least to some extent. This is made possible by the powerful throat teeth, digestive organs and juices, which enable the species to eat a very varied selection of water creatures.

The chub will feed quite happily on any of the following: bread, maggots, worms, cheese, wasp grub, caddis grub, silkweed, minnows and other small fish; elvers, lampreys, crayfish, snails, frogs, insects, slugs, freshwater mussels, cherries, bananas, elderberries, hempseed, liver, and so on the list is really quite endless. Heck I've even caught them on Raspberry Mushrooms and Gammy Gums

From the angler's point of view the chub, as a quarry, has other advantages. It will feed at every hour of the day and night, quite often under bad conditions. The water temperature factor, so im- portant when considering other species, has less influence on chub. 

I have taken them in low, clear water, after long periods of hot, dry weather, and I have taken them in winter when the cold has been so intense that fishing for more than a couple of hours has been too much for personal comfort.

Below about 40 degrees Fahrenheit feeding becomes much reduced, but they can still be caught, although tactics must be changed, and one must be prepared to sit for long periods between bites, remaining on the alert for the slightest movement of the rod tip.

Chub inhabit all types of waters, from small streams which are little more than a collection of pools joined by a thin trickle, to full-size rivers like the Hampshire Avon and the River Severn. As a rule the fast, well-oxygenated waters, produce the biggest chub, but there are exceptions to every rule, and waters of all shapes and sizes contain truly monstrous specimens.

This season so far I've had a nice 5lber but the bigger specimens have eluded me thus far however I'll keep on plugging away and I'm sure something special will turn up. For this session it was back out with the simple tactics of a load of bread either fished on the top or slow sinking.

The water was well up for this early morning session however it was still clear but with some extra water on I was hoping it would spur them on a bit.

The banker swim seemed to be devoid of fish oddly but the next swim I had a couple of fish taking it off the top with the first drift down of the freebies. Quite a tricky swim to fish but the first chub that succumbed to the tactics was almost a swinger.

Hmmm not exactly what I was after, still at least I'd not blanked which is always a possibility using this method. Eventually the swim above produced something better when a chub came up to inspect the bread but ignored it, so I squeezed the bread to get all the water out and fished it slow sinking in the slack to the left, where it was grabbed as soon as it started to drift downstream.

Still not exactly what I was after but at least they were getting bigger. !! I lost a fish in another tricky swim to fish when it headed straight for the subsurface reeds.

Damn, felt a bigger fish to, oh well !!!

Anyway the fishing was tougher than I thought, a couple of the swims that usually always have chub laying up didn't, and unfortunately it was the swims much harder to fish that eventually through up another couple more chub.

The biggest probably not much over 2lb the bigger fish were not showing whatsoever. The river looked perfect for a static bait fished over a bed of hemp and pellets but I'll save that for another day. 

The next session is in the morning where I'll be joining Nic from Avon Angling again on the river Wye. Hopefully this time I'll get some trotting in but with the threat of a big dumping of rain that plan may well be scuppered. 

So I'll also take the ledger gear as well just in case trotting is proving difficult. Nic knows this stretch like many on the Wye like the back of his hand and one swim with a croy definitely will be so fingers crossed this will come up trumps. 

The Tiny River Alne - Submarines and Stomatology

As an accompaniment to this mood boosting Bin No.27 port the German cheese Montagnolo Affine is a surface-ripened, triple cream cheese with a soft, velvety natural rind. It is a almost a brie / stilton hybrid to try for those who may not be the biggest of strong blue cheese fans as it comes with a delicious saltiness that’s hard not to like. Voted the world’s best cheese 10 years ago take the plunge and see what all the fuss is about!. As someone who enjoys cheese and port from time to time, this is one of my favourite cheeses I must admit. 

Now Port Wine it is traditionally served and passed from right to left. This tradition is known as “passing the port,” and its origin attributed to officers in the English Navy. One of the explanations of this is that it was seen as sign of friendship and peace to the person sitting on your left. Now talking of Navy I did like this sorry on a documentary I heard a while back.

(late 1950's I think ) A small sailing boat with two fishermen aboard set out for a day in pursuit of mackerel just a mile or so off the coast. It was a bright sunny day, with a light swell and just enough wind to take their twelve-foot boat out to a mark they'd fished before with some success. But today the fish were simply not to be found. The fishermen tied on the bright feathers that normally prove so deadly with mackerel and fished hard for two hours. 

Not a single fish of any species took the bait. They moved a little further along the coast. Still nothing. They kept an eye out for flocks of gulls massing above the water - a sure sign that mackerel are about. Nothing.

 

The day wore on and, just as they were about to give up, one of the rods whipped over into a satisfying hoop. But this was no mackerel. The two fishermen were highly experienced and the man in touch with the fish quickly realised that whatever he had hooked was going to take a very long time to subdue.

Luckily he was using a massive old reel with nearly six hundred yards of strong line and a rod as thick as a man's finger. 

He was unlikely to be broken, they were in a very small boat and evening was coming on - what on earth were they to do? They hated the idea of deliberately breaking the line, but it would be dark soon and their lives would be in real danger if the weather turned. 

Time passed while they tried to make a decision and then the decision was made for them. The great orange disc of the sun vanished and the coastline was visible only as a series of faint twinkling lights. 

Two hours went by and still no sign of the fish. It kept up a dogged battle, staying close to the bottom and only now and then making a run for it. Each run was unusual, the two were later to say in that there was no sense of panic. The fish merely stepped up its pace and line would slip from the reel steadily at first but gradually increasing in speed. 

Once one of these runs had begun it could not be stopped. Eventually, exhausted by the constant loss and then regaining of line, the two fisherman began to pass the rod back and forth between them. That way at least they had time to recover from the intense arm ache that playing a heavy fish quickly induces. Another hour ticked past. By this time they were trying to follow the fish rather than trying to regain line after each run. When it made a move they sailed after it, but all the while keeping up a steady pressure.

At one stage, some three hours into the proceedings, both men began to think that they might be better off cutting their line simply because whatever was down there was probably too big for two men to handle in a small boat anyway. It was one of those rare occasions when the fisherman is actually slightly afraid of what he might find at the end of his line.

The little boat was moving through the water at quite a pace when the two men noticed that they had covered many miles from their original position. In short they had no idea where they were. As the night wore on the two men grew rather afraid. They were stuck in a small boat a mile out to sea in the dark and attached to a fish that was probably too big to get in the boat. By now they were very cold.

They tried everything they could think of to throw the fish off course or at least to get it to move in another direction or show some sign that hours of pressure were beginning to weaken it. Nothing made the slightest difference. The pattern of accelerating runs followed by a short pause continued. At last, and despite the fact that they had taken turns playing the fish, they had to give up. 

While one held the rod the other opened his pocket knife and cut the line. They sank into the well of the boat too worn out even to speak. The sea was running quickly now and it took a further two hours to reach land. Soon after pulling their boat up the beach they made an extraordinary discovery. The giant fish, combined with wind and tide had driven them more than fifty miles from home. 

Two years after their tussle with the giant, unbeatable fish one of the two men was glancing through a local newspaper when he came across a curious story. A small submarine had been detected by Royal Navy patrols a few miles off the coast. The crew had tried to identify the submarine and contact its crew but without success. 

The submarine was detected late in the evening moving along parallel with the coast, but twenty minutes after it had been detected, the submarine if that is what it was disappeared from the radar screen. The following night the Navy patrols detected a similar underwater vessel and again, having been tracked for some twenty minutes, it vanished.

A Navy spokesman told the newspaper reporter that they were baffled but would continue to investigate. The map that accompanied the story showed the probable route of the mystery submarine. It was further out from the coast than the two men had been that night but the course it had taken matched exactly that of the huge unstoppable fish. 

Had they been attached to a submarine all that time? It would certainly explain the long, fruitless battle with a fish that was bigger than anything that had ever been heard of in that region. 

The fish could have been that submarine or a giant shark that had strayed into British waters. But the mystery was never solved and the submarine was never again detected.

I'm wondering if the mystery fish that not only disturbed the surface of the river Alne on the last session but also took some bread off the top would ever be solved too. 

So I was back for another short session to try and winkle out some more chub but to also see if the mystery fish was still about. 

A chub couldn't have caused that amount of disturbance I wouldn't have thought so a carp is firmly on my suspect list. Same tackle same gear, the threat of rain again lets get fishing !!! Again I primed a few spots however this time I decided to spend a little longer in each swim. 

To cut a long story short if you'd managed to get through the first one what a different session this was wow, not only was it a one bite wonder where a primed swim came up tumps but I had a trout grab the bread on the retrieve and a chub that took bread off the top that decided that was the only piece it would like.

I should have brought the lure rod 😁 but that's fishing for you. No sign of the suspected carp either and I crept up to the waters edge having to fight my way through stingers and brambles. Oh well not a blank but the fish were either not there or just no interested. I decided to try the deep swim that always holds fish but nothing doing for 20 minutes and after I got caught up in a snag I decided to leave and come back with a bit more water on. 

The Tiny River Alne - Shirkers and Shuftiscopes

Thankfully I don't have to speak to the DWP that often, 'don't contact us, we will contact you' 'we have received your letter, you will get a response in 11 weeks' nice of them isn't it. Still none the wiser after 12 weeks, so I tried to ring, 5 times I was cut off after 10 minutes or so, then 97 minutes on hold, doing better this time, and then 'our service is temporarily unavailable please call again later' 😠😠😠 Beeeeeeeeeeeeppppppppppppp !!!!!! and it cuts off. 

I've had to renew my driving licence last week, it's anyone guess when that will turn up, at least the evening greeted us with a lovely sunset as I was losing the will. So hoping for better I tried again in the morning and after nearly another hour I finally get though 'No decision made yet!! 

Where they’re now advising 18 weeks for a response WTF !!!. Piss up in a brewery springs to mind, I don't know why I thought anything other than the contrary, good to see my hard earned tax money is being put to good use. Not just me moaning about the service though, see for yourself. 

Now talking of not turning up, the chub down the Alne, well when the heck are they going to arrive because the trout have been the only species that have fancied a grab of the lure, well apart from the odd rare perch. However the last session here from under the polarised sunglasses a decent size chub followed the lure in to the bank but sadly didn't decide to make a snatch for it. 

With a smidgen more water on, the lure rod was ditched and swapped for a link ledger rod where for this short after work session, I'd feed four or five swims with some bread slop and then fish a large piece of bread flake on the hook, to try and tempt one of them. 

Having fished this stretch for a good while now it is very random when the different species of fish turn up. Certain conditions where you would think the dace would be showing, you catch trout and then when you think trout would be up for a feed the chub turn up.

It's a lovely place to be in the summer months but the threat of a shower my lightweight waterproof jacket was donned just in-case it hammered it down.

The first primed swim I managed two small chub that were caught within 10 minutes of each other. With the bread flake suspended off the bottom within seconds I was getting plucks from small fish I presume, but there was no denying a chub bite.

Lovely fish in cracking condition that were caught in one of the deeper swims where up and till recently the swim has been static. Now with extra water on almost trottable.

Another couple of unmissable bites missed I moved downstream to the next swim where within 10 minutes I'd missed another bite, this time a drop back bite where my slow reactions the fish had felt the hook. After a massive bow wave that started close in I thought what the heck was that and decided to feed some bread where it was taken off the top just as it passed under an over hanging tree.

I was fully expecting and otter to appear but now I'm convinced it might have been a carp but despite drifting more bread down the fish never re-appeared, so I didn't get to see what it was.

The chub were still biting though and after missing another bite 🙈 I managed another two fish, the best going 2lb 8 ounces. I've caught fish approaching 4lb here in the past but they only usually show in winter when it's about the only fish that is biting.

After that swim went dead I went upstream and managed another 2 small chub from two different swims so 6 in total. I was very pleased indeed because apart from that one chub following the lure they have been suspicious in their absence.

As soon as the sun came out the river went dead, If I fished at dusk would the better fish have turned up ? A light and fragrant prawn Keralan coconut curry concocted when I got back, an enjoyable few hours indeed.