Avon Roach — Bloody Peculiar

Finally, I have my license to fish and with a trip down the Avon planned for Friday evening I think I'll rack up a few scores on the Blogger's Challenge board and begin to give the lads a run for their money. My approach will be ledgered bread, an art form I am overly familiar with, and to be honest, finally tiring of. But it does tell me a lot about a new stretch of river that other approaches cannot.

It usually works well at getting bites and pretty much instantly. If bread loving fish are there to catch then you'll know within five minutes and usually less. And the beauty if it is that with enough experience under the belt you can tell with certainty which species of fish they come from before you hook and land one to prove it.

It's raining now and will rain all evening long by the look of it. Setting up first in a complicated pool with hundreds of options to choose from is not great where roach are concerned should they be the target. I don't even think roach like pools very much. I don't think they enjoy complexity, you see. But I cast about for bites, here and there, and everywhere, when I soon find a spot with fish in it. But they are not roach — too bouncy. I think either gudgeon or dace. Sure enough it's dace but very small ones. Nevertheless, three ounces of dace earns 14 points...

After half an hour or so I try a plume of faster water exiting the willow occupying almost the entire width of river upstream that has made this pool more complex than it ever would have been before it fell. There I get a roach bite. So I sit on my hands and wait out the initial quarter inch twangs for a more progressive and confident one inch take. In comes the first roach of the evening followed soon after by a half-pounder worth 12 points. Hoping I have a shoal at my disposal and possibly fish of decent size I find two is all I'll likely get because no more bites come.

On retrieve there's a jolt and a tug and a strong response deep down. A good chub perhaps, or even a big river bream with any luck?

No such luck. It's a bloody jack pike! But it's worth five bloody points...

It snaps the line in the net so I try to extract the hook lodged in its jaw. Of course it flips at just the wrong moment and punctures my thumb. Great. My reading glasses are at home and now I have to tie up another spade-end without the aid of focus. And the blood will likely flow for the next hour or more knowing something of the anticoagulant properties of the slather on pike teeth...

I think one more cast back to the spot will suffice and then I'll move along. I'm packing down for the move when in one brief second the rod lurches toward the water, springs back hard and then swings straight and level toward where the fish is headed, which is under the willow. There's nothing there. The hook is gone...

Damnation. Another tie up to perform...

Of course I'd failed to take the precaution of washing the blood off my thumb before baiting the hook, turning innocent bread devilish. Should have remembered that other strange day at Saxon Mill when on consecutive casts I caught both pike and perch on bread with the scent of my blood on it. I make a mental note to prick my thumb on a pike tooth next time I go piking proper and rig up a great dollop of bread as bait, because I'm sure it'll be the pike bait nonpareil.

Enough is enough and so I trot downstream in search of chub passing Martin and Joe on the way. Both are after barbel but they've had a small chub apiece, so maybe I'll join their club with one of my own? Settling into a new swim, and this time one that really does look very roachy in it's dull simplicity, I cast out and get roach bites straight off the bat. Another half-pounder flops into the net but then the bites stop.

On the retrieve there's a jolt and a tug and a strong response deep down. Yep, it's another tie up for me.

Just how powerful is the attraction of the scent of human blood to pike, eh? And how very little do you need to taint bread with to bring them to it? The flow abated half an hour ago, I've washed my hands, and had them covered in roach slime since, but still they seem to be able to detect it.

River score board 24/07/15

One more move and I'm done. I want a chub and will have one. A cast down the inside line finds me  chub bites. Unmistakable ones. A second cast nails it, though till I see the fish I'm not that sure it ain't another jack. But it heads under the raft of weed under the staging and gets stuck fast, when I'm certain it's a chub and certain to get a few more points should I extract it.

Just under two-pounds in weight it may be, but is worth 20 points...

Martin and Joe both go home without improvement though both catch more chub and Martin has a barbel too. But that's barbel fishing for you. When it comes to strategic scorings and tactical time management, once you have a scrawny summer eight or nine-pounder under the belt, you may as well leave them till early next springtime when points will be very hard to acquire across the board and then fish all out for a big double when they're fittest and they're fattest.

We plod across the field each weighed down with a stone of extra water about us and go home soaked and freezing, but I've a grand total of 51 points for four species to tally which pushes me one notch up the leader board and into 8th place on the river board.

Now, 51 points in an evening may not sound so great an achievement (think 4:12 chub) but small pike, roach, dace and chub combined trump by one point the barbel of ten-eight that might have taken me a whole week's worth of work to nail this time of the year but might weigh 12lb or more come February...

A bloody peculiar day, for sure, but not without its reward!

Leader board 24/07/15

Avon Chub & Dace — 360 Degrees of Play

I've never been much of a wader. Except when bass fishing on the estuaries of the Essex coast where it was pretty much obligatory that I'd have to get in up to my waist to fish the flood tide and getting back to dry land requiring a quarter-mile walk through thigh high water, it has never appealed, the bank being my domain. This coarse fishery though, has so little access to so many great swims that I think I'm soon going to have to invest in my own set of rubbers but meanwhile I'll borrow Martin's.

The swim chosen was an interesting one. A bank-to-bank shallow and rapid riffle falls toward the confluence with a mill outlet where the waters of both combined have created a 45 degree bend in the main river with a scoured pool where the two forces meet. It can be accessed in low water conditions and fished from a cut off spit of bank but it's one of those places where waders are ideal because they allow all kinds of lies to be explored otherwise out of reach.

Working a lump of meat under the cover of an overhanging stand of mature bushes growing out the far bank and covering much of the pool, it went in the head OK, but then stopped half way where it had to be teased and plucked until it began moving out the other end. It didn't feel effective and wasn't because I didn't get a touch in an hour. Nevertheless, it was a lesson in how I might approach the swim next time around for the barbel and chub who likely live beneath the bush. 

Fetching out the bread and roach gear,  I made a searching cast downstream where the waters exit the pool then flow along a fringe of club rush by the far bank, where I had bites immediately. It was 'interesting' ledgering from within the river rather than its bank, but keeping the tip still something of a problem as was keeping the landing net from escaping, the hollow handle too buoyant and wanting to float away. A fish was hooked and though I was hoping for my first roach from the stretch it turned out to be just as good. A dace and a good stamp too at six-ounces.

Of course chub just had to put in an appearance too and what was great about that was the light tackle was tested well, the chub got to display itself admirably as a sporting fish, and I could just go stand wherever I wanted to create great angles for control. 

With 360 degrees of play it was a spiffing fight!

Martin came down to visit announcing a 5lb 4oz chub he'd caught whilst fishing for barbel in the weir pool. The stretch holds a very good stamp of chub it has to be said, and now they're showing up more often than not I think it might do better and better in time. 

The dace though, they were my discovery for the day and my entire attention turned to them alone. 

They were hard to hook. Bread is loved by dace but the bites shown on a quivertip are even harder to hit than with roach, who are difficult enough at the best of times. 

I needed maggots and a maggot feeder when the dace would simply hook themselves and I could find out just how far above the average stamp they'll go, because every one I did manage was 5-6 ounces, none were below and that's a good sign of better to come in my book. They ain't at all easy to find in decent shoals either, but when they are decent and this one seems to be, who knows what's possible on a warm summer's evening?

Next time I'll take along a float rod, a couple of pints of reds and a pint of hemp too and then get up to my waist at the head of the swim, set up my sub-aquatic stall mid-river and trot the swim all evening long. Then I'll know whether or not my new found cache is going to throw up something special.

If that is, Martin lends me his neoprene, sticks with his quest for a 14lb barbel, doesn't decide to try out his brand new and as yet unused twenty-footer, and oust me from it...

Avon Roach — It's a Jungle Out There!

It was a crazy scheme. Insane really considering what we both suspected we'd find out there in the wilderness. Nevertheless, enthusiasm got the better and us thinking that low, clear water would afford the best chance of spotting fish over clean gravels in country so remote and inaccessible that the populations hardly ever see an angler's bait, off we trotted armed with very little gear, and even less idea...

Over the stile and into the woods it looked bad. And, it just got worse and worse and worse until we finally exited the woods and made our way into the meadow where worse became worst. Nettles up to  your neck, cow parsley over your head and at the fertile soil of the river bank a continuous unbroken strip of the tallest, toughest and most impenetrable vegetation of all.

It was why came to be fair. Because we knew no-one else had. Now it was abundantly clear only a madman would...

Having to strike a new path almost the whole way we reached the top of the stretch about an hour after setting off from the car park — about a 3/4 mile walk so you can calculate our average speed without even thinking! It was, to make matters worse, really hot and humid in the trapped air between the stalks and we were sweating our guts out!

Tramping a slot across the bankside strip of most rampant growth we came to the edge of the water and peered over. It looked fabulous — to a naturalist that is. It was beautiful to us too, but to anglers the sight of thick cabbages over shallows and lilies lining the banks ten feet deep is not good. Can't fish in that!

Plan 1 — choose a nice spot and fish how you wanted was abandoned at first sight. Plan 2 — beat a peg out wherever possible and fish however you could — was put into operation.

It's over there somewhere!

Baz Peck decided to try a couple of possible swims up from the railway bridge while I went downstream a little way and attempted to find one down there. I failed and had to resort to prior knowledge gained in wintertime, beating a path to a place where I knew the bank had a gentle slope to the water rather than a vertical 4 foot drop.

Well, almost nothing could be seen of that bank but it felt familiar underfoot, a nice comfortable niche was soon made and fishing commenced at last. Bait was bread because from prior experiences of  wintertime fishing along the stretch at our disposal today, having never caught a single roach or dace who are by far the predominant species further downstream, I believed that chub and large ones too, were the the predominant species here because that's all I'd ever caught then.

Those experiences were clearly flawed because roach were what I caught now and when I managed to locate a small promontory upstream and fished off it awhile, the story was the same there. Roach and more roach.

It was good to see them even though they were the average stamp and no more. The larger fish are very hard to find in these middle stretches of the Warwickshire Avon. I've plugged away at it every summer and winter for years but never yet had a single fish above a pound, but Baz fishing during the winter of 2011 managed to locate a shoal, took a number at that watershed weight and topped his catch with a two-pounder. They are there, but this particular area is so densely packed with small fish that it's almost impossible to wade through them all.

The top half of this fishery holds curious populations. Down in the millrace there's one of the best dace fishing spots in the entire country and through the season large numbers are easily possible with big weights late February and March. Dace are found throughout but dominate that particular area whilst roach come into their own further upstream where 20lb catches are feasible. Amongst them are lots of small chub with large fish relatively rare.

So far as anyone knows it holds no perch whatsoever and no bream either because none have ever been seen on the bank but with plenty of deep slow water you'd think both would be commonplace but they seem entirely absent. It does have its carp and is supposed to hold barbel too but as far as I know none have ever been caught. Eels, occasional gudgeon and pike pretty much round the thing off.

When I finally stumbled across Baz by following his tracks back down through the nettles, frightened a basking adder on the way who zipped off into the overgrowth in alarm, the story was the same. Small roach, a few chublets but nothing exactly exciting. Pitching upstream of him a little way I then fished faster shallower water than I had thus far hoping that it would improve matters. Just a few feet deep it seemed to offer a chance of something better just out of difference.

Looking upstream toward the shallowest water in miles

First cast the bread settled, the tip twitched and slowly inched down — the perfect roach bite. A fish was on and it felt a really good one but it got stuck in trailing weed. Then I saw the big broad back, silver flanks and impressive length of what would be easily the largest roach I'd ever hooked here. All I had to do now was bank it!

It came out of the weed under sustained pressure and with racing heart and trembling legs I readied the net. It was easily over a pound, well over half a pound more and possibly that two!

Quite how it turned into a 2lb chub I don't quite know... There's never usually any confusion but I swear, viewed in clear water beneath the weeds it looked just like a giant roach in every respect. I suppose refraction warped its apparent shape and the sun gave it a silvery glint. A beautiful perfect uncaught fish it was, though not what I wanted in my net with the adrenalin rush I'd hoped to sustain through the after-catch rituals, in rapid decay!

Then the real roach began to show but as usual, they were the usual. A disk of bread might be a small but powerful magnet to roach but casting one into these shoals and hoping for a specimen seems like attracting a very small needle in a vast haystack. Possible, but unlikely. I don't know what's to be done except abandon ledgering bread altogether here and begin a serious campaign of trotting through a constant downpour of hemp and maggots. That might be best — feed the small fish off over the first hours and give the specimens a chance to show in the last...

At least the day had shown the bones of the river and I now knew things that aren't easily appreciated in winter — the subtleties of its various deeps, shallows and pace. All useful stuff to any angler and often the kind of knowledge that leads to future success so as with all reconnaissance, never was it wasted time.

All we had to do now was get back to civilisation!

And that truly was a waste of time when it should have taken ten minutes but took three-quarters of an hour!

Avon Dace — Sweet & Sour Fish Balls

The best dace fishing the Midlands has to offer had all the appearance of health and vigour and surely must have been a far better choice today than the Thames (where I was supposed to be...) could ever be with all that water that fell in the catchment Thursday not racing through quite yet...

Best?

Yep!

On a good day it's a bite a chuck. On a fabulous day it's a bite before the feeder plunges 3 feet down to fourteen foot depths or float fishing you'll shorten up progressively to a two foot drop and I kid you not — 30 bites a chuck. But when it's bad.... As Danny Everitt has more less said and he's good reason to say it 'cause he's a man who through experience knows...

Avon Roach — Technical

With the thought of those roach I saw last time out in my head, and no doubt the 'barbel-with-my-name on-it' in Martin's, we set off for another crack. The river was different. That's the trouble with rivers though, isn't it?  Where we'd had clear water and easy fishing, now we'd coloured water and technical fishing and I just knew my roach weren't going to be as easy as I'd hoped.

River Roach & Silver Bream - God's Own Billiard Table

An exploratory mission this. To Oxford, and Old Father Thames. Judy went shopping, but I of course forwent the attractions of Bicester Shopping Village, and with a heavy heart denied the spurious pleasures of burning cash at the Altar of Mammon, went off light-stepping to a spot of fishing with half a loaf of Warburtons Blue instead.

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...

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.

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!

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.

A Glorious Waste of Time...!

The Great British Fish-in is a national institution. A load of blokes who may or may not even know each other but who are bound loosely together in piscatorial brotherhood by dint of a shared interest in all things fishy get together on a stretch of bank along some stream or around some puddle to ostensibly, apparently and purportedly but not necessarily or even actually, catch fish.

Dace, But No Ace

Monday afternoon Keith & I went dace fishing down at the Saxon Mill on the Wark's Avon, a place renowned for its large head of said fish, shoals so vast that they have to be seen to be believed — in summer they inhabit the top layers of water and a low flying coot can cause a massive surface eruption of spooked fish. They can get respectably large too, eleven or twelve ounces being the target with half pounders a likelihood.

Commercial Sense: Sunday Evening Feeding Frenzy

I didn't intend to fish casters at all but I'd managed to successfully turn 2 pints of red maggots into casters by accident. The two pints were in separate tins; one full of old maggots and one of freshly bought, but the old maggots had got wet so I left the top off overnight so that they'd dry out.

I forgot all about them...

And it rained the next day...!

Dace Decider Picture Post

Kev has kindly sent over a few pics of our day out at the Saxon Mill

The Not Exactly Magnificent, but Under Prevailing Conditions of Weed Growth, Weather and River Levels, Quite Satisfactory Seven, Including 'Bullheads by Design.'

Sunday dawned bright and clear and with not only an utterly cloudless sky but one also minus the ubiquitous Coventry contrail display that so mars virtually every bolt of clear blue we get up here in the dead centre of England. It was promising to be a fine day, if not a proper hotty.

Dace Decider

Kev invited me out for a days fishing for Wednesday. I found out about the arrangement on Tuesday night on arrival home from Compton Verney when Judy announced I was, "going fishing tomorrow with Kev, he'll be round at nine for you."

Cool. Not arguing!

Off We Jolly Well Trot! - Sunday

Chub and roach on the stick...

Day 2 saw us traipsing off to the Saxon Mill for a spot of roach and dace fishing. On the way we noticed a gathering throng of photographers and joe public held back by police cordons around the Courtaulds factory site

Scratching Around

Hard work on the Avon...
You do know that we river anglers miss the very, very best part of the fishing year because of the coarse fishing close season, don't you? Just at the the time of year when a decisive and permanent upturn in the ambient temperatures throws all the fish in the stream into joyous raptures and unabashed availability, we cannot fish for them. If only the season lasted one more month...!

Pale Imposter

In anticipation of a weekend session on the Avon after a fat dace or two, early Friday morning I took a stroll to Tusses Tackle for a pint of maggots. This walk takes me across a set-aside arable field whose ruts and ditches were now full of standing water; evidently the overnight rain was far heavier than I'd thought it to be.

Off the Blocks

T'other night I made the grave error of going out for a booze up with Keith, Danny and Pete. I got fairly plastered it has to be said; unfortunately I'd been on the vino for most of the day and because wine and beer is decidedly queer in my (honestly) vast experience, every single inch of ale imbibed from thereon in was to result in a country mile of fucked upness. I never learn...