Warwickshire Avon - Hooligans and Holocryptics

Not happy, ones gooseberry bush ready to harvest, bowl in hand ready for picking, ready for jam making. Errrrrr where the heck have they gone, there wasn't one left they were all gone, GONE !!!.

They were all ready to burst as well so whatever nicked them braved the bush's defence and picked them off one by one. Considering I've had it for 10 years or so that has never happened before. A quick Google, the culprit could be anything from a fox, squirrel, blackbird or a pigeon. 

Anyway talking about being taken for a mug I've been done over twice by a chub in this swim. The first time a few years ago when fishing with Sam, a proper bully of a Chevin nearly took the rod out the rest when it picked up a cheesepaste offering and tried to burry itself in the far side thicket.

Sadly with me hanging on to dear life with the rod bent double trying to prevent the fish getting wedged in the subsurface branches, I had an unfortunate hook-pull !!!. I rarely have them when fishing for Chub, because once the hook has its hold they rarely come out. This one time it did though and unfortunately I didn't get to see the fish that did me over good and proper. 

Chub can be proper hard fighting fish when they want to be because the fight can vary considerably from a wet lettuce to a Chris Eubank where kidney punches reign down and forearms over the head offer no defence whatsoever. You just have to grin and bare it and wait for the chaos to let up before offering any kind of response yourself. 

More recently though a terminal tackle failure put pay to the last lost fish in the aforementioned swim though, where shortly in to the fight this hard fighting big chub shot off to my right and was trying to get in to a fallen tree stumps and its tangle of branches with seconds of being hooked. With both hands on the rod trying to pull the fish away from the snag the rod which was bent down to the cork all of a sudden the line when slack and the fish was gone.

The knotless knot has unknotted itself under the pressure and I'm wondering if the large eye on the Size 6 Specimen hook and only 5lb flouro hooklink might have been the downfall. I rarely use hooklinks for Chub preferring to tie the hook directly to the mainline but a couple of days before I was using liver as hookbait so had rigged up a micro-lead clip set-up which needed a hook-link ideally because I was using a one ounce lead to keep the bloody offering on the bottom.

So I was back, this time though with bread as bait again but I'd alternate between fishing it on the bottom and also on the top. So a couple of SSG's could be pinched on the line to fish it on the deck if required and the hook tied direct to the line as I didn't want the same thing happening again. I didn't have long for this post work session but hopefully enough time to catch a fish or two. 

The water level had dropped quite considerably since I was last here but also the sun was out so not exactly ideal, but this intimate section of the Warwickshire Avon offers quite a few swims to fish in a short roving distance so a couple of hours is all that is really needed to try and winkle out a fish.  

After a fruitless half an hour in the swim I went for a rove in all but a couple of swims I could see the bottom so the river is back to gin clear again and the chub are cautious because of that.

I manged a couple of small chub off the top in one swim but nothing big was showing I dropped a piece of bread in a sheltered swim with overhanging trees with flow in the middle of the river and almost static either side.

Out of nowhere a group of chub five or six strong came out of the far bank cover and basically looked and starred at it, I'm talking a decent amount of time too. They were just not interested in even nudging it. The slow sinking approach again was ignored.

Still the next swim the first cast of the bread upstream to drift under an overhang a chub hadn't a care in the world and within seconds hovered it up good and proper.

It didn't fight particularly well but then this warrior of a fish has probably seen it all, bless him. Battered and bruised it could certainly have told some stories. It wasn't big either maybe 3lb or so. An enjoyable short session mind you and with one half decent barbel spotted I might give it another go here despite the tough conditions where you can see the fish and the can see you.

Warwickshire Avon - Snotties and Snipocracy

So you know I like my pineapple rums well I ordered from Amazon a Spirited Union Pineapple and Spiced rum from for 32 quid and they sent Sweet Orange and Ginger, hmmmmm, so I complained and they said don't worry Mr Newey keep it and we we will send you another.

 

After receiving the package upon opening, AGAIN they sent the Sweet Orange and Ginger, so once again I complained and they said don't worry keep it and we will refund you the money this time. 

So after the refund I ordered the pineapple rum from another outlet so now have 3 bottles of rum, nearly £100 quids worth for £32 quid and lucikly the Orange is a lovely drink too in-fact maybe even nicer than the pineapple offering. 

Result !!!

For this short 2.5 hour session in to dark at the syndicate water the weather couldn't have been any better. 

The gentle breeze as soon as the sun set become non-existent and the rain that was predicted held off so for once I didn't end up soaked here. 

For a water that is very lightly fished the results haven't been startling but the low stock of Barbel every one caught thus far by myself, or other members have been doubles and above.

I can count on one hand the fish that have been caught but there is always a chance of other fish species to decent rod bending levels if there Barbel don't show.

I have had a 14lb carp, 6lb bream and >5lb Chub, some decent fish for sure. I hate sitting behind motionless rods but these short sessions are ideal especially when I only live 10 minutes away and its a hop skip and a jump to from the car to being next to the river. 

The water was flat calm and it looked good for a bite but after getting the rods out where I would fish a chunk of meat mid river and a boilie and freebies close in, those chub pulls and plucks didn't materialise like they usually do.

Dusk had been and gone and apart from the odd nibble from something small and the bats hitting the line I was starring at a blank.

Nic on the other hand was fishing the Wye and he managed a Barbel quite early on and then set his stall out later in the day after prebaiting a swim and they were crawling up his line.

This is the Warwickshire Avon though, it can be moody as hell and then moody the other times. I always give myself a packing up time and its usually an hour after dusk but this session it was 10.50pm so a tad longer. 

With 10 minutes to go and staring at a blank the boilie rod starts to receive some attention where a nod nod nod, turns in to a proper bite. I knew exactly what is was as soon as I felt the weight of fish on the line and the fact it wasn't exactly pulling back. 

Yeap one of the bream that reside here. not one of the big'uns either as this was half the size of the ones I've caught here in the past. Still not exactly what I was after but still the evening was most enjoyable and luckily my back is getting back to normal after nearly 2 weeks of pain

Warwickshire Avon - Dhansak's and Deuteragonists

I've always been a lover of home cooked curries for a start you know exactly what's gone in to it but there are also so simple to cook as well and this one a simple chicken Dhansak is Soooooooooooooo Goddamn tasty. The sweet and sour nature of the sauce and the texture of the lentils its probably up there with one of my favourites if I'm honest especially as its so easy to make. 

Anyway when I was tucking in to this latest spicy offering Chub or Barbel ?, Chub or Barbel ? Errrrrr Chub me'thinks 

Now experience teaches success can never be guaranteed, no amount of knowledge about water, fish, techniques, or baits can do that. So aim at achieving some standard of consistency throughout the season and accept some degree of failure as inevitable. Angling ability is not necessarily related to the amount of time you spend fishing. The angler who fishes perceptively can learn more in one season than the angler who spends a lifetime fishing aimlessly. 

Do not think you are a better angler than someone else merely because you have caught a bigger chub, or more chub. The best fish you catch will not necessarily be the biggest, nor will it always require greater skill to catch than chub of lesser weight. Understanding of fish and water is far more important than knowledge of methods and baits and far more difficult to acquire. 

So devote some of your time to learning all you can about the movements and feeding habits of chub in your chosen waters. Your angling will then improve in proportion to your increasing knowledge of the species. Do not assume that lack of success means that chub are not feeding. 

The fault is just as likely to lie in your choice of swim, tackle, bait or in plain bad timing. Learn to mould yourself to the ways of fish, and do not expect that they will always behave as you think they should. 

If success does not come quickly and it usually does not do not lose heart. 

Try again and keep on trying until you do succeed, or at least until you are able to establish why you are failing. 

The knowledge and understanding you acquire from personal experience will be invaluable but do not scorn the in-formation you can gain from books, which can be of immense value as the distillation of many years of experience by experts in the art. Fish always on the assumption that no matter how much you learn there will remain much that you do not know and make up your mind right from the start that you want to catch chub and only chub. 

The catching of just one chub will then mean more to you in terms of progress than the catching of a hundred-weight of other unwanted species. It is better to catch nothing than to catch fish you do not want or had not intended to. Mention of the part that instinct plays in successful angling is usually greeted with scepticism but after many years of patient perceptive fishing, swim selection, approach, choice of method and bait do all become more or less instinctive. 

You become sensitive to a river's every mood and in your mind's eye can travel over its every twist, bend and curve in its course, seeing everything as clearly as if you were actually there. 

When you have reached that stage and when the other essentials of successful angling have been mastered you can begin to feel that you have 'arrived'. Successful angling for chub or for any chosen fish, for that matter could indeed be likened to the bringing together of many different strands of coloured wool, each strand representing a vital factor for success. 

Now only when these different strands have been fused together can you fish in that confident, almost instinctive way that brings consistent success. It can be a long, even a hard road, but it is well worth treading to reach the goal of the complete chub angler. 

Am I a complete Chub angler, errrrr nope, but I really do love fishing for them and learning new techniques to try and outwit these sometimes hard to catch fish.

Bread and bread only was the order of the day and I use gobstopper sized pieces especially when the water has a nice tinge of colour like it did for this session. I was greeted to a deserted river and the colour looked spot on for a bite or two. The first swim I had a bite straight away  and it felt a decent fish too.What I didn't expect though when the rod was bend double and I was trying to bully the fish from a snag was that the knotless knot failed 😕

I think that has only happened to me once before but after losing that fish and kicking myself when looking at a piece of bedraggled line without a hook I didn't get to see what was on the end.

The next swim a pike picked up the bread and it was holding bottom til it released it from its clutches. Hmmm not a good start. There are always chub here to catch though so it didn't take long to get the next fish. Not a huge chub but so what, I love catching them when they are in this scraping mood. 

I caught 4 in the end I think, and they were all up for feeding on the bottom. I did try floating bread on a few swims but only had a rise in one of those and it ignored it when ones hooked was buried in it. 

Still an enjoyable morning despite the light rain and having to wade through nettles in many of the swims. All being well I'll be out tomorrow as well this time I will fish in to dark I think, I need something bigger because my results have been mediocre of late.