Avon Roach and Dace - Madness, or Method?

The Warwickshire Avon is a moody river. An hour spent in last weeks 'barren' swim brought no bites, yet again. Though conditions once again seemed on the perfect side of ideal, it was a no show. I tried three or four alternative swims nearby but the result was the same, the river was sleeping. I thought about staying, and thought about going downstream below the millpool, where, in my prior experience of this place, the fishing is good when the upstream stretches fish poorly. In the end I thought I'd try the millpool itself before moving to known roach swims further down...

The spanking new solid oak bridge across the Avon at the Saxon Mill. It's heartening to see something built to last more than a decade in this day and age...

I've dropped into the millpool only once or twice in all the time I've fished these waters so it was almost an unknown quantity. I've seen other anglers catch a few bits and pieces there, a nice perch on a spinner springs to mind. There was once a carp angler who had some success by fishing luncheon meat right under the wall in a place where you'd think carp would never be, and I once saw him land a bream of at least six or seven pounds, a species I have never caught, or even heard of being caught, in the very 'breamy' looking deep waters available above and below the weir. I once had three river carp on consecutive trips whilst fishing for chub. As for chub themselves, the largest I have ever caught around these parts was a fish of just under four pounds -- excepting its large population of chublets, large chub are a rarity there. Eels, I've had two. Amazingly, perch, though they do exist, and I once saw dead fish of at least three pounds, I have had not one.

The roach hotpot is along the edge of the white foam at the junction of the flow and the back eddy. Left or right, too near, too far, and the bites tail away to nothing. It seems to be the rule for roach in weirpools...

I like fishing weirpools and millpools for roach. I love the technical nature of it. There's a spot just off the edge of the fast and turbulent main flow and near the tail end where they seem to like to lie in wait for morsels of food. My first cast was made to that area. A bite was got almost immediately and it was a roach bite for sure, only the result was somewhat smaller than I anticipated. A roach of perhaps two ounces, but no more. This was not what I was hoping for!

It's almost a truism that the first roach of the day from any given river swim, surely predicts the rest of the day, the larger that first fish, the better things are likely to pan out by close of play. Down at Lucy's Mill in Stratford upon Avon, whenever my first roach has been a 'pounder', the rest of the fish to follow have always been, more or less, in the same bracket with the smallest fish in the keep net at the end of the day, a half pounder, the largest approaching a pound and a half. Conversely, whenever the first fish has been under the half-pound, I have never managed to top the pound, or even get within four ounces of that target, with any subsequent fish. Not surprisingly, with river roach, I consider the one-pound mark to be the most important indicator of swim potential, fish falling around that weight, inside limits say three or four ounces under or over, are what I'm looking for. On a much better roach river than the Wark's Avon (shame they are so far distant!) I'd consider a pound and a half the target weight, but here, one this river, a pound roach is a very good one indeed.

Unseasonably warm, my jacket was redundant

Of course freak lucky fish can turn up out of the blue, a big one pound plus fish or even a two pounder amongst a netful of small bits, but roach fishing is not about freak accidents, it's about consistency. Find the right kinds of roach shoal and you will certainly catch the best any river has to offer, find the wrong kinds of roach shoals and you will expend an awful lot of energy catching tiddlers and merely hoping for improvement, which in my experience never comes along.

I think this wall was built in the late nineteenth century. If I'd caught a two pounder I would have etched my own name into this rock with the end of a bankstick!

The trick is in finding the exact location of those shoals of big fish. They might conceivably move up later into a weir pool swim, where water condition are never static one moment to the next, and today I was hoping to catch some surprises, or at least establish if surprises in the form of big roach were to be got at a later date, but as that first small roach predicted, they never were to get above the half-pound mark. Nevertheless, it was a worthwhile operation, and over three or four hours, I managed to winkle out a few pounds of mixed fish (best bait out of bread and maggots was undoubtedly bread) including a few dace, best a six ouncer, which was carefully measured for my new dace length/weight curve at 8.5 inches, and chublets, which considering the river was apparently dead above the weir, was better than sitting up there all afternoon doing nothing.

Bits and pieces. 

In the evening I returned upstream, finding that the fish there had switched on to feed hard, landing three or four dace and a brace of half pound roach (best bait out of bread and maggots was undoubtedly maggots!) in an hour, but none were any larger than those caught in the millpool, so I might have well stayed put there and seen what the evening hours would bring. 

I suppose the problem with such densely populated stretches of rivers as this is that getting to big fish is a matter of wading through hoard of small ones, so perhaps we should not complain when either the river is packed solid, bank to bank, or apparently devoid of fish across large expanses. The former is either a match anglers paradise or for a specimen angler, a fantastic practice ground for honing technique and laying the foundations for later success, the latter the exclusive haunt of the specimen angler prepared to wait, or more productively, search for those desired larger specimens, armed, or at least the wisest are, with the priceless experience of the former.

What would you rather do, try to find a big fish needle in a haystack of small fish stalks (and without the aid of a metal detector!) or try to find a big fish haystack, on a moonless night, in the middle of a large field, blindfold?

The first is always going to be a matter of slog, or luck, the second a matter of method, and luck.

Which is it to be? Method in madness, or madness in method?

Avon Roach and Dace - Methinks Methinks

Saturday may have been bitterly cold but Sunday would be a completely different prospect with the mercury expected to rocket overnight and top out at the balmy heights by noon, of five degrees above melting point, an ambient increase of seven or eight degrees. It would be overcast and later it might rain, with mists and fogs by evening, conditions that would seem perfect for roach, the best possible in fact, if only that is, conditions have been stable for some time.  Not surprisingly, with violent change on the way Saturday night, I'd expected very little from either Saturday's cold and expected even less from Sunday's warmth, despite the apparently perfect weather following on, and was to be proved (almost!) completely right.

On arrival at the Saxon Mill I crossed the footbridge and made my way up the path through the woods only to be confronted with Keith Jobling, Danny Everitt, Andy Lewis and Baz Peck all fishing in a row in the first few pegs! Danny and Andy had arrived early, Keith a little later, Baz a little later still, and now I'd turned up. Five of the Cov bloggers accidentally creating a moot on the river because there was no communication beforehand, we'd all had the same idea independently, and at the same time - dace!

It's that time of year though when the female dace pack on the ounces before their March spawning and the Mill is the most reliable place on this river for the species, it being crammed with them, though you'd never have known that by the morning's results, Danny and Andy taking a few around dawn, Keith having had two bites but no fish, but Baz experiencing his first ever Saxon Mill blank.

Andy had had a pike or two, so at least something was feeding, but prospects looked very dire for my bread and maggot attack further upstream. The rest were about to depart for home, so Keith and I went up to fish two consecutive swims where I was sure there was at least a chance of a few fish later on having had so many bites there in previous sessions. I cast, Keith cast, but we sat the first hour out without so much as a tremble between us to indicate interested fish. It seemed we'd have it hard. Two hours later, three hours later, the result was the same -- not a single bite of any kind. It was hard. The fish were simply not in the mood though I knew full well that out baits were landing smack in the middle of plenty of them. Keith believed they would turn on as darkness fell and I believed that they would too. We sat and waited for that time to arrive.

I took a walk upstream, and found what I thought were topping fish. They turned out to be a large population of at least ten dabchicks working the shallows for small fry.

Meanwhile, I spent my time in a theoretical frame of mind, there being little else to occupy it, and fell into deep cogitation ~

Fish are cold-blooded, so any rapid temperature change in their environment, be it upwards or downwards, is for them, a pressing matter of survival. They must always have their blood temperature exactly match that of the water in which they swim and adjust it rapidly to any change. An increase or decrease of two degrees is a lot to cope with. It's the same effect one experiences when stepping off a plane into an ambient temperature markedly different to the environment experienced at home before the trip. At home you tolerated the difference between sub-zero temperature out of doors and sub-tropical temperatures indoors by eating food, drinking water, adjusting your clothing, and the heating system too, to keep your temperature constant at the optimal 98.6 degrees, but as soon as you experience that large change in ambient temperature, you don't know how to adjust your environment to suit, either over or under compensating with the result that your metabolism boils or chills, and you experience debilitating fatigue.

I used to get this problem even when making the one-hour high-speed rail journey from London to Coventry when I was dating Judy. I'd step off the train shocked by the two degree ambient difference between the two cities in normal weather conditions. I formed an opinion that Coventry was a cold place, and these past three winters that has proven to be a correct assumption, the West Midlands always seeming to get the very worst of the cold -- minus one in London, always minus three or four here. The only thing that saved me from fatigue was the sure prospect that I'd be in Judy's bed well within the hour...

Fish don't experience our fatigue, I'm sure (it might cost them their lives if they did...) because they instinctively shut down operations such as feeding, which requires an expenditure of energy in both sourcing and digesting, and simply exist on reserves and resume normal life only when the environmental changes have stabilised and their metabolisms have acclimatised to them. They also anticipate these changes long before we do, because they must rely upon their natural instincts where we simply consult the weather report, so they begin to slow down and enter a state of torpidity long before the change arrives.

I think, though I don't actually know this for sure, that cold-blooded creatures cannot eat during acclimatisation periods because the expenditure of energy caused by the body working on digestion might have the effect of cooling them down and delaying their necessary adjustment, whereas warm-blooded creatures such as ourselves must eat regularly (cows, constantly!) to fuel the furnace that keeps the body at the optimum temperature. Put simply, we need to eat food whatever the conditions because our metabolism requires a constant high grade fuel supply, but fish don't because they only require miniscule amounts of even low grade fuel to keep them going.

Also, adult warm-blooded creatures eat lots of food not to grow, unless that is we overeat to gain weight, but cold-blooded fish eat lots of food when it is available only to grow, and they'll grow all their lives long given sufficient food supply but given the choice between growth and survival, fish elect to survive despite the fact that your feed is laying all around them. They'll simply ignore it for the time being, and clear it up when the time is right. I suppose their very lives depend on obeying this instinct...

Could conditions look any better for a spot of winter roach fishing?

What suddenly snapped me clean out of this frame of mind was a bite. The rod tip trembled once. I called out to Keith, 'bite!' and we both then expected what we'd waited all afternoon for -- for the long awaited feeding spell to commence. Ten seconds later the tip trembled and bounced and the strike met with the solid weight of a good fish, one too forceful to be a roach or a dace, but powerful and heavy enough to be a three or four pound chub...

Only it wasn't a chub at all, but something else, because the fight was most peculiar. Then it came to the surface and I saw an eel, and only a small one too! A midwinter eel, who'd have thought it? It was a bugger to net, climbing over the frame backwards three or four times before I got it in properly. On the bank it proceeded to cause absolute mayhem finding the one small ripped hole in the mesh and exiting tail first, then wriggling about all over the place while I tried to calm it. Luckily, it was completely slime free!

By a miracle of judgement I'd managed to keep the fish from wrapping itself up in the line, unhooked it, whereupon it made straight for the river, snaking its way rapidly through the undergrowth toward the smell of water. I snatched it up and put it in a plastic bag to weigh it, another testing thing to do with a fish that moves backwards. It weighed just a pound and an ounce, yellow-bronze in overall colour, but pretty though it was, it was so lively and troublesome that I returned it without even attempting to take its picture, which would have been an operation too far under the circumstances.

Needless to say, that bite did not signal the beginning of a feeding spell, as no dace roach or chub were seen before darkness fell and we returned to the Mill without much to show for the day except theory and conjecture and an out of season slippery customer, the only cold-blooded creature that was in need of a meal that day, to throw a spanner in the works...

Then again, eels are so unlike other fish, so mysterious and unpredictable, who knows what metabolic laws might apply to them?

Avon Chub and Roach - Jacking the Stream

I rarely get the chance to fish twice in the same weekend and even less often on the same river, but Saturday and Sunday both threw up opportunities to get out and put in some serious swim caning. I knew it would be hard, expected the worst, but hadn't bargained on granite hard...

Saturday morning was preceded by a hard overnight frost and the daytime temperature would never climb above zero even in the sunnier spots under a clear blue sky, so I expected the fish to be somewhat sluggish, if not comatose, with perhaps a brief feeding spell some time in the afternoon, and for the roach I was hoping to find, if my prior experience fishing for them under these kinds of conditions is anything to go by, between two and four O'clock if it occurred at all.

Martin Roberts and I set off early morning for the Avon at Stratford, intending to fish very different stretches over the day. The Lido, which is a natural meandering stretch, the town waters opposite the theatre, which is a very wide man-made stretch of quite even sluggish water kept back by the third option, the weirs at Lucys Mill.

The Lido was new a one to me. Never having fished it before we relied upon Martin's knowledge and he took us to the S-bend, a place renowned as a banker for roach. It certainly looked good for them in the swims on the first part of the bend, and so we set up there. Because the river was wide enough, I elected to 'jack the stream' by casting discs of bread unaccompanied by any feed, repeatedly, to every conceivable quarter and along every conceivable line of a Union Jack flag pattern, to find the shoal, that if around at all, would certainly be tightly packed in the cold water and would give their presence, and exact location away, by even a single tremble of the quivertip.

The first problem was ice packing in the small rings of the quivertip, a problem that isn't easily overcome. The second problem was that there weren't, or didn't seem to be, any roach in residence, because we got no bites of any kind in the first hour and a half. Having explored every place a bait could be cast downstream and across stream but without result, I now began to cast upstream, pulling the quivertip around in a tight arc to the lead to show the inevitable drop backs experienced fishing in that awkward direction.

A cast was made just a third of the way from the near bank and twenty yards upstream. The lead settled, the rod was carefully adjusted in the rest, the tip twitched and then dropped back a few inches only to curve around hard as a fish bolted upstream with the bait. I thought it was a small barbel the way it fought, taking yards of line and generally playing hard to get, but it turned out to be a feisty chub of perhaps three pounds. I put her in the keepnet, not wishing to risk a spooked shoal.

The next ten casts were made to all other quarters of the upstream half of the swim but nothing occurred in any of them, so all the casts from thereon in, were made to the exact spot where the first chub had shown. Half an hour later the tip twitched and bounced back and forth as a fish made off downstream with the bait, jagging the line through the eye of the running paternoster as it went. There's no need to strike such bites, the fish has hooked itself against the weight, so the rod was pulled back smoothly to take up the slack and a second fish was on. Clearly another chub this, but not nearly so difficult a customer as the first.

By now I was casting three or four times over just to get the bait to land bang on the money -- it's worth it when the fish won't move very far off line, I find. Interestingly, this tiny hotspot was only a few feet deep half way down the incline of a clearly visible, near-bank shelf of clean gravel, whereas the unproductive parts of the swim were anything up to six or seven feet deep over a silt bed flecked with the remnants of rotting weed. The chub, on the day, were not where you might expect them to be. They were biting only just out of bankside visibility and not in the safety of the murky deeps.

Top fish, three pounds something, bottom fish, three-pounds-fourteen, though they look almost same size in this picture. 

The third bite came an hour later and also from the same two square yards of water. I fluffed it though. Nevertheless, I was sure that if we had stayed all day in that place, I would have landed seven or eight chub by evening, but we had to move because in all that time, Martin, who had chopped between ledgered bread, maggot feeder and waggler all morning, had not a single pluck to show for his efforts and it was clear that the way things were panning out, he would thrash his swim to foam all day long but with the same result.

The town waters were hopeless. Up at the Lido we'd seen no less than five pike anglers catch nothing whatsoever on either deadbaits or spinner. Here, we met with four more equally despondent disciples of  Esox lucious, and two of them, fully badged-up members of the PAC -- true, dyed-in-the-wool, single-species fanatics. We both cast out a sleeper rod for pike, just in case, and proceeded with bread for the roach.

Covering such a large expanse of water in a Union Jack pattern is quite a task. I'd only covered half of the available water downstream, and that the first quarter, near bank, before we'd both conceded defeat to the boat traffic, the idiotic swans, noisy stupid geese (I do like birds, but Stratford birds are a hoard of unruly chavs!) and the distinct lack of anything remotely like a bite.

I was glad to get to the Mill. My swim of choice, the first weir pool, looked in fine fettle with plenty of water pushing through and a nice looking oily flat spot the size of a billiard table in the turbulence at the tail of the wash, where from prior experience I knew the roach population would be. There, and not too far from it...

And they certainly were, because first cast slap in the middle of that spot brought a firm bite and a thumping fish to net that weighed in at exactly a pound. In the keep-net with her, and I'm fully expecting a bumper haul before last light. A few bites later, Martin came along from his swim at the second weir to enquire about the fish. As he stood there the rod tip trembled, ducked and a strike was made.

It connected, to something, but then the line went slack having inexplicably parted somewhere close above the stop. Had I hooked a fish? Been bitten off by a pike who'd attacked the feeder? Or simply hit a sharp snag? I don't know, but this has happened quite a few times since I've adopted this constant casting strategy of mine, having the 12lb line of the paternoster link bitten clean through on enough occasions for me to be considering stepping up to stranded wire for the job, using six-pound mainline above the two pound hooklink to take the strain at the stop, and avoid breakages (and swallowed feeders!) if pike are indeed the culprit.

Whatever it was, after this the bites became very hard to hit indeed. What had been nice confident pulls had now turned into impossible trembles and with an increasing period between them till the bites simply stopped altogether. The shoal was clearly spooked, either by a hooked and lost fish, or by interested predators. Or, the brief feeding spell had simply ended at four O'clock, as predicted, for that was exactly the time now.

It was so cold by the time the net was pulled that neither Martin nor I were fully functional. My teeth are chattering in my head, which is a hard thing to convey in a picture, but I think this one pulls it off! 

A further brace of half-pound roach were caught before dark when bites finally recommenced, but they were very hard won, even though it was clear I was still casting straight amongst plenty of fish. By then I was frozen half way to death as the frost descended, the last fish landed in a net frozen flat as a pancake and stuck fast to the ground, requiring a strong jerk (no puns please!) to free it. Martin ended his entire day with just two small raps on the tip to maggot feeder tactics, but no fish at all ...

As I've said, it was 'rock hard', my total of five fish and all the associated bites, hit or missed, coming from areas of water no larger than just a few square yards amongst acres of what may as well have been dead river. Outside of those hotspots, there was nothing doing at all. 'Jacking the stream' had worked at The Lido, locating a chub hotspot where chub were thought most unlikely to be, and as for the roach hotspot in the weir, well that was only found, and clearly defined, by using the same method there last February, so I'll be continuing with it in future.

It works in the desperate cold and it's cheap too, requiring as it does, absolutely no groundbait! But perhaps that's its trick -- just the one little morsel may be all they'll want and no more, and they'll want it exactly where they want it, and not a foot outside...



Tomorrow, things go from bad to worse... but with an unseasonal surprise at the last.

Ice Trees

River Chub - The Thick and Thin of it...

Forecast: snow by four. Action: there by one.

I love fishing in snow more than I do in any other kinds of weather, so I just had to get out to take advantage of it coming through, and the venue of choice, that was the River Blythe at Coleshill, a place familiar to me, or so I thought...

On route down the motorway, we passed over the river upstream of my destination but glancing out the window what I saw filled me with some trepidation. Not because a bit of ice covering a river puts me off fishing, but because I couldn't make out quite how extensive this covering was at 70mph. As I was being dropped off for the next five hours whilst Judy and Zena went out on their own quest seeking baubles and trinkets in Birmingham, once they'd departed, I'd be stuck with whatever river conditions I'd got for the rest of afternoon, and with no way out!

Off they went, and off went I. Crossing the footbridge to the stile at the entrance to the series of swampy water meadows through which the river flows here, first sight was less than encouraging. The very shallow and fast flowing water below the bridge was clear but the shallow margins were six or seven feet deep with a shelf of ice, and looking downstream I could see that all the deeper, slower areas of water, the very places where the fish were bound to be, were completely capped over...

A walk of three quarters of a mile to the very end of the stretch found no place deeper than two feet in which to fish excepting one technical swim inside a small copse of crack willow where the flow is such that a pool has been scoured and there ice had not been able to form over its three or four feet of turbulent water. However, the margins were covered in ice and so I set to work clearing a channel through it with a handy railway sleeper found in lodged firm in the trees. It was cold, wet work!

This swim, once prepared, was left till later because railway sleepers weigh about a quarter ton, and make splash enough to frighten off all fish within earshot for at least a couple of hours. Nevertheless, there was no other way to extract even a half-opportunity from the conditions, and anyhow, the swim was sheltered from the bitter wind that blew up just as soon as the first of the snow started falling, so even if it proved fish-less later it would be far preferable then to a fish-less swim out in the exposed open, and besides, this swim had pedigree. Once, I'd dropped into this swim late evening after a grueling blank elsewhere, and taken a five pound (and a bit!) chub at last gasp. Perhaps it would come good once again?

It was really very, very cold out in the sharp wind, but I love that in dry weather when snow is on the way in. The first of it was that ultra-fine granular snow taking an age to first-lick the landscape, as with over-painted patterned paper, to smother the green and the ochre. By hour, the atmosphere about altered from normal to magical by subtle degree. I barely noticed the changes, only having the thought in mind of how to turn this disaster of my own making, about ...




To be frank, getting something from it now seemed very important indeed!

Inner-cave-man knew that 'we' were indeed enduring survival conditions right now. Things could only get worse in the near future (far worse, I hoped!) and such demands demand, Jeff catch food, or Jeff die. That I was trying to catch chub, the most tasteless bone-filled fish ever cooked (I've heard enough to stop me trying it for myself...) was neither here nor there... I'd begun to fish as if my life depended on it, which was no small thing when I then considered that I'd only set out that morning to catch a fish bigger than some ridiculous target. Bynow, any fish would do, any size...

A fine old oak, one that'd stood firm on the banks of the Blythe from the time of James I, and was standing just last year when I saw it last, had finally crashed alive and healthy, but now dead and forlorn, across the stream and blocked the flow bank-to-bank with its massive corpse.

I thought it might prove a chubby kind of place, but a little experimenting with rod and line proved it to be a bit young for that. Given three or four years of river in flood and on its bones, it might get a bit of character, if only the agencies that control rivers as merely drains, don't hoik it out first...

The 'sleeper swim' was dropped into for half an hour where I departed fish-less, but not before depositing a couple of handfuls of mashed bread to the mixing bowl in the hope of attracting a couple or three of chub by dusk, when I meant to return. In the meantime other options were explored, and lots of them, but I found only shallow, hopeless places. The return to the only real hope on my agenda was made as the light turned blue.

As I set up there, I spied a large swirl caused by a fish beneath the tangled alder roots and shoots on the far bank, and exactly over where the majority of the feed introduced earlier would have accumulated. I had fish, perhaps two or three, in the swim, they were clearly chub and chub rooting around for particles of bread.

Isn't it so, that at times like these, things either go one way, or 'tother?

The sure knowledge that fish are feeding right there gets the blood up. The blood being up, creates ripe conditions for disaster, and disaster visits. Sure enough, the first cast hits the overhanging twigs and snags fast. Tugged back successfully the long hook-length has tangled, and upon untangling, has acquired a wind-knot. The wind-knot cannot be picked out and so the hook is nipped off between the teeth and the hook retied to a much shortened hook length, which is, actually, more suited to conditions. The hook is re-baited and cast perfectly under the arching shoots, and well into the roots.

By the time this has all been accomplished, the light has almost gone and I need light assistance to see the rod tip. It knocks. It trembles. I crouch over the butt. I know fish are rooting around as I flick compressed discs of bread into the turbulent water where they spiral downwards out of sight to do their work. Ten seconds onwards, the rod tip performs a slow inching downward, twangs back suddenly as a fish moves against the line, and then, just seconds later, trembles, and flies...

It could a five pounder, even a six pounder, because the fish takes line and then makes much trouble in the tight confines between roots, shoots and the tangled branches overhead. But it tires quickly and its weight is slighter. The cleared channel is now full of slush but the fish comes easily through to net and is plucked from the icy water. It's only a reasonable fish, not the dog- headed daddy-chub I'd first imagined, but nevertheless, it's a fish, and by now that's all that matters.

The snow is heavy now. In two hours time it will sit inches thick, but far deeper by midnight. The trudge back through the meadows is satisfyingly wearying, the headlamp beam making the whirring, wind-driven flakes, glisten and shimmer like falling spangles.

Inner caveman is self-satisfied.

Jeff catch fish, Jeff live!

It's been good to get out in it. The thick and thin of it...

River Chub - Natural law

Saturday last, Martin and I fished what looked to be a choice stretch of the Warwickshire Avon. Locally famous for its big chub and double-figure barbel I had high hopes of contacting one of the former and it certainly looked every inch of the kind of river stretch that could turn out a real whopper of a chevin, what with its numerous holts and lairs, undercut banks, rafts, reeds and tangled scrub lined banks. Where the river passes through marshland, there the classic chub swims were so numerous that we were spoiled for choice, I imagined a bite or two in each and over the course of the day, a chance of a fish to finally break through the six pound barrier, a realistic target I have set my mind to achieving this coming year as my personal best for the species, a five-pound nine-ounce fish from the Severn caught three years ago now, is getting a bit long in the tooth. It has to go!

Roach Length/Weight Curve - A New Record is out There, Somewhere...

In the last post I made a video of a roach trip to a local stream where a fish was banked, that on capture and before weighing, I really thought would make at least a pound and four ounces, if not slightly more. I thought it would be the largest roach I had ever caught from the river but the scales gave only a pound and one ounce, which was much less than I would have thought.  Luckily, I measured the fish and took a reading of 12 inches from fork in tail to snout...

Small Stream Adventures - Urban Redfins - Jewels in the Grime

After such a grueling session on the Wark's Avon just last weekend I was beginning to doubt the efficacy of my bread disc technique described a few blogs back, but I needn't have worried, it still works a dream, as you will see. Here's a video of an astonishing hour spent chasing roach on a local small stream. The day was perfect for roach, the kind of day roach anglers pray for -- a grim, blank grey sky, a constant westerly breeze, not too cold, looks like it might drizzle with fine rain any moment and the water tinted that perfect green-grey that on occasion, might well mean that the fish will be in the mood to be reckless...

If you've ever watched a Bob James or John Wilson video about roach fishing take a look at the sky. It's no accident that their roach videos suffers from bad lighting!

This was a trip to the only pool I have never tried for roach in all the time I have been fishing this stretch of river, and why? Well, I don't honestly know. Other prospects elsewhere always pulled my attention their way, I suppose, but the following illustrates perfectly why I should never have ignored it. I only fished an hour, and half of that was spent farting about with the camera, but it was worth it as this truly was one of the most enjoyable (and easily the shortest!) roach fishing sessions I have ever had in my entire life. A sudden change in one of the perfect combination of conditions brought an abrupt close to proceedings, but before it did, the sport was hectic and productive, which just goes to show how fickle roach can be when things aren't, just so...

Enjoy!

Widget Floats - An Update

A number of people have enquired recently about how I make my widget floats, the ones I use for fishing for pike and zander at night. The original article doesn't go into great detail so I thought perhaps I'd create a new one...

Forty - Seventy Percenter

It's about that time of the year when I begin to make serious plans and set objectives for the fishing I intend to do over the course of the rest of it. Completing the book has pushed away the recent past, where I relearned how to fish for coarse fish after decades of neglect, and opened a door to a new phase of my fishing career. Uppermost in my mind is the British obsession with the breaking of old personal bests (isn't it uppermost in yours?) and especially those that have been hanging around unbroken for far too long.

River Roach - Repetitive Strain

Up in The Wilds beyond the woods and well beyond the reach of watching eyes is a swim where I've fished three times lately and with mixed results. The first time I dropped in there a few nice roach and a single dace were caught in a couple of hours. Bites, they came every cast but there was a bit of a wait involved before they materialised. The second was an hour spent there, a desperate last minute river switch at the end of a long biteless morning spent on the Leam with Phil Mattock. The bites? Well there were none at all, not even the slightest tremor, which for this stretch of the Avon is almost unheard of it being so full of fish.

My Way with Bread

I've done a great deal of bread fishing over the last few years and through hundreds of hours of various failures and successes have learned a great deal about this apparently simple bait, so I thought I might fess up about my hard-earned fluffy stuff methodology.

As you might have gathered reading this blog I am a roach nut. It's not that I don't love to catch chub, bream and dace, the other three worthwhile river species with a proper love for bread, but I find that fishing and searching for roach with bread invariably finds me those fish if they are present but without negating a chance of roach if they are present too. It's the only bait that I know that will select roach consistently, maggots and worms having their day but finding too many small fish in the first case and the second being rather inconsistent on rivers where roach are concerned.

Pike Head Study

One thing leads to another. Limbering up for a possible upcoming painting of a pike. A preliminary study in pencil ... 

And the cat looks as if it's staying put.

Gets up to all kinds of mischief that would never occur to a dog. Can't keep food out on the side, climbs curtains, scratches furniture, explores places impossible to extract it from but it craps in its tray after just a few days, and that can't be a bad thing! I guess it's ours for good...

River Roach - A Royal Leamington Blank

It's hard to write about a blank if nothing happens, fortunately something happened just as soon as Phil Mattock pulled his motor into the car park of the Leamington AA stretch of the Leam at Newbold Comyn. We found a tiny grey tabby Kitty Kat transfixed in the beam of the car's headlamps... I couldn't just leave it there to fend for itself as an easy meal for one of the foxes we later saw prowling about in the predawn light so I stashed her ( I checked its rear end!) in the car and we made our way down to the river.

Big Pit Pike - Caught, in the Minds Eye...

What I want to know is this. Is it possible for a pike well in excess of twenty pounds to leap clear of the water and perform the twist I have attempted to depict in the sketch below, a drawing derived completely from the lightning-strike, shooting-star, split-second mental imprint I was lucky enough to have seared into my memory as just such a pike performed just such an act, and just as I brought a lure past its nose?

Big Perch Quest - Big Cat Caught on Perch Livebait

Monday morning saw Keith and I visit a hot new tip off in search of a monstrous great perch. Keith is seeking a four pounder now that he's had a few three pounders while for myself, still stuck in sub-two pound land despite having broken three pounds with that fluke capture of mine from Blenheim palace, just wanting to get a decent string of fish to back it up, if not beat it and put it to bed.

River Chub - Saturday Night & Sunday Morning

The annual Coventry/Warwickshire bloggers meet at the Whitefriars Inn in Coventry last Saturday night was a beery affair. They always are for me, and I seem to become unstable unseemly rapidly every time the event occurs. Perhaps it's the atmosphere or the company or the strong ales or all three but two hours in and I'm there in the back garden having a fag standing on legs that feel like a couple of flexing willow shoots rooted to the ground with the eight stone of my upper body (legs must be 3 stone, surely?) balancing precariously above them trying not to fall backwards into the piles of empty kegs behind.

My 2011 in Pictures

Publishing a Fishing Book - Harsh, but Fair! (Pt5)

The manuscript was sent off to Bob Roberts a week or so before Christmas for his immediate perusal and what I thought would be his eventual edit but Bob was quick off the mark and had one half of the book done and dusted and back in the post before I could blink. It arrived back the day before Christmas Eve inked all over with his sterling work.

A vErY HaPPy ChRiStMaS! to you All!

A very happy Christmas to you all from Jeff, Judy, Molly, Zena & Ben!

We're off down the pub in our Santa outfits later...

Tight lines and wet nets in the New Year!