Warwickshire Avon - Knots and Knickerbockers

Now knots are very useful for tying things to other things. The full range of anglers' knots can be learned by anybody with an IQ of 140, a Magic Circle Diploma in Prestidigitation and three years to spare. It is best to practise at home, using an old piece of clothes line. 

This does you no good at all when you are using invisible nylon in failing light in a snowstorm, but at least you tried. And it does stop you worrying about what you can do with an old piece of clothes line.

Knots have one disadvantage: they are always weaker than the lines they are tied in, so that when you do eventually cast out, the whole of the terminal tackle drops off. But they're fun to do. If you like doing pointless, boring things.

However with it being over 27 degrees today I did wonder whether to bother going fishing at all but needs must to get the fishing fix , so I decided to head down to the Avon to try and catch a chub off the top with bread in the gin clear water.

Certainly not a boring pursuit but the problem is with the conditions the way they are I could be staring at a blank !!! Maybe the evening in to dusk would have been better, but sadly I didn't have that window at my disposal so it was like it or lump it. 

Simple tactics though and I love this kind of fishing because you don't need much preparation, grab a few bits and you're off, just make sure you check the knot on the end of your line, because it had been the downfall and lost fish for me in the past.

The fish were proper cagey but in the end I managed 3 chub, 2 small'uns and this one which put up a decent fight trying to take me through all the reeds, I managed to keep on top of it though and it was landed pretty quickly.

I baited one swim with pellets and hemp and returned after half an hour to see just small fish milling around. The bigger fish as expected were just now showing however not entirely unexpected. Still a blog post as short as the session, maybe next time I might fish in to dusk and beyond, you're not missing much at the moment. 

The Tiny River Alne - Pigs Breakfasts and Pigmentocracy

If I look back at my blog some of the biggest dace I have caught has been when targeting the small streams and tiny rivers. The little streams especially when the water has been chocolate brown and nearly over their banks really do throw up some nice fish and the Alne well, it's a bigger version of those really.

These are relatively untapped waters and ok it would be nice to trot a float in clearer waters but for some reason, when it's coloured the fish start to show up all of a sudden and the bigger fish make an appearance and often a ledger set-up is the way to go. Trust me a decent dace can pull a 1 ounce tip like a chub can. They don't mess around. 

So whilst the waters were good enough for Augustus Gloop I was back to see if the 12 ounce dace was a lucky capture. Now it was the missed bites on the last session and sessions before that got me scaling down the rig where the culprit revealed itself. I wanted to fish similar conditions albeit the river had dropped slightly and the wind was non existent. 

So for this trip out 48 hours later I changed to a 14 hook with a 2.5 lb hook length because there are still chub here after all and also bigger trout fight like nothing I've ever experienced really. They really turn in the Tasmanian Devil where just hanging on for dear life is the only option at the proceeding seconds following the hook-up. 

A brown trout's heartbeat is slow and regular, approaching its maximum rate only 1 per cent of the time. Because x square metre of river bottom contains enough food to keep a trout for a week, the fish spends most of the time stationary. How they go from idlers to full on Chuck Norris is something to behold. 

Apparently from what I have read if a trout is removed from its regular swim and put back in the strange part of the river, it gets into a state of anxiety and its heart races until it finds way 'home' again. Sometimes a trout's heart will miss a beat when a shadow passes over the water or when a fly is cast above it. 

I had bread, maggots and a few casters and would concentrate on this one swim. Very unusual for me but I've always had bites in this swim, had a dace drop off, and it just so happens chatting to the other angler that was down there last time one of the rare matches was won of this peg, an yes, he had some nice dace ironically.

Dace Utopia ? or Pigs Breakfast ?

Well what a difference a couple of days made, because the water had changed colour dramatically no longer was it Taylor Hot Java Lava Coffee coloured (strength 6 btw) but a washed out teal colour. There was literally no big fish showing whatsoever. Minnow were on to the maggots straight away and after 5 or so hooked themselves I switched to bread which was the downfall of the specimen dace.

But nothing strikable where assume the mass of minnows were trying to nibble their way through it. I changed swims after an hour and a half rather frustrated but to the same result sadly, so I was quite thankful when the church bells sounded end of play. I'll be back !!! 

The Tiny River Alne - Gazebos and Gastrophilanthropists (PB Content)

Yesterday afternoon somehow we were roped in to helping my father-in-law and his friends erect a couple of gazebos for a 'lodge do' the following day where hopefully it was going to be dry, because as soon as the first poles came together the heavens opened and it lashed it down, sods law and all that. 

The main gazebo is something like 35-40 foot long or maybe more, a huge great thing nothing like the ones Argos peddle anyway. 

Still some brownie points earned I suppose, but it took good while to put together with a couple of ladders, lump hammers and some long nose plyers, because the springy metal buttons kept on getting stuck in the end of the tubes and wouldn't budge even with a good whack.

I sort of lost some enthusiasm to go fishing when I got back where as the evening went on the rain eased and it wouldn't have been that bad to had been on the bank. In the end a trip to the pub instead 😀

So I decided to go to the Alne in the morning to fish bread only to try a catch a chub or two. The water had risen nicely after all that rain however not as much as I thought but still some nice clear fresh water where hopefully the fish would be up for a feed.

It didn't take long to get the first bite either when a chub must have hooked itself because after a drop back bite when I struck the fish was already halfway in the next swim !!!

A near 3lber was the next culprit and then a trout took the flake on the drop and went on one of the fastest and maddest fights I've even experienced I think.

It took me all round the swim taking line and eventually the hook pulled as it was nearing the net leaving me with a tangled mess and having to set-up again. Damn it !! not the biggest I've hooked on the Alne but it would have been the biggest I'd landed for sure. So probably heading towards the 3lb mark I'd imagine. 

In one of the swims I returned to I scaled down a nadger after getting loads of fast bites I couldn't hit. They came from a deeper swim near some cover and I had suspicion they were dace mullering the bread.

The first fish was a small trout, they like bread too because it's a visual bait and when fluttering down the water column or suspended just off the bottom it can often trigger their predatory reaction. Anyway what I didn't expect was the next bite I'd was hooked in to the biggest dace I'd ever seen 😎and after a spirited fight was safely in the landing net.

It had hovered the thumbnail piece of bread no problem at all. My previous best dace was 8 ounces from a small Warwickshire Brook - 31.01.21. this was a scale above though, and really plump so was amazed to see the scales indicating 12 ounces !!.

A cracking dace from this small river, but then it's no surprise to me really, they often can hold fish of this statue. Got me thinking of a new challenge though, would a 1lb dace be achievable ? it would need me changing my approach a little and scaling down from my crude norm but definitely with a go me thinks.

"A 12 once fish doesn't sound big" (The Wife) but having caught plenty of dace over the years to me it was massive !!

There was another angler on the stretch today which is rare, but with fish of this stamp showing up down there and only 5 minutes down the road, the quiet banks of solitude will certainly see me more I know that for a fact. So 3 chub in the end fishing 6 or 7 swims, one trout, one lost trout and this dace. Not exactly prolific but when these gems turn up certainly worth the often slim returns.