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...!
I'd willingly take an extension till mid April and give away the whole of June and July, neither of which are worth terribly much as river fishing months, in exchange.
My Sunday excursion to the Avon at the Saxon Mill was approached with two things in mind, to fish for the dace once more if they were still in residence at the usual place and willing to bite, and if not, to gain another fishing challenge point with a haul of fat chevins from the wilderness above the mill.
In a fit of optimism, I set up shop for a long trotting session, laying out my tackle so that I could stand with everything to hand and confidently feeding a couple of handfuls of maggots to kickstart the swim, but after an hour I knew I was wasting my time with float fishing, I'd had not had a single bite, so I set up a feeder rod and began to cast midstream to build a little bit of a swim in the deepest water. A few minor indications after ten minutes or so signaled the interest of fish but I had to wait a full hour before getting into contact with the first - a chub of a pound or so. I sank the keepnet and decided to try for a chub haul now, rather than later, but after this first fish all I got was an escalating frequency of bites that were quite impossible to hit. From prior experience of this particular swim I knew that I'd suffered an influx of very tiny roach. So much for my chub point...
I moved down to the weir, just for a change, hoping to fish off the small island just off the sill but on arrival was confronted with a 'No Fishing' sign. I checked the details in the club book and sure enough, fishing was not allowed there. How odd, and what a shame, because it would be a great peg - one of the best on the stretch in fact.
I wandered downstream and came across a guy pole fishing in the backwater of the original river course, now long silted up due to the diversion of waters to the mill along the reveted stretch above the mill. He looked too busy to talk to. I pitched down in a swim nearby on the main river and directly opposite the ruins of Guys Cliffe House, where in quick succession I had a good roach first cast, then another, followed by a very nice dace and yet another roach.
And then, well .......
.....nothing at all....
After an hour of this nothingness, during which time I calmly ate my lunch, took some pictures of the clouds and scenery and exchanged pleasantries with a couple of passing canoeists, the female half of which drove a pastel pink vessel and was by a long chalk the most diverting canoeist I have ever witnessed, it was time for another move.
Upstream, and far upstream, deep into the wilderness and big chub country.
By the time I arrived at the chosen swim, one earmarked some time back as 'chub central' due to it containing a large variety of chubby looking spots, but not actually fished as yet, the sun was falling rapidly toward the horizon. I decided to fish simple breadflake and cage feeder tactics, casting the bait out to the crease between main flow and eddy just upstream of a thicket of overhanging bushes and associated rafts. A bite came immediately but I missed it. A recast saw a few nudges and then a firm pull - I stuck into a solid kicking resistance, a good fish. It just had to be a chub and felt to be a five pounder, boring hard toward the bushes and under the bankside, but when I eventually tired the fish sufficiently enough to net it, saw only a thick set three pounder in the mesh.
I thought that I might just get lucky and extract enough further chub from the peg to earn that challenge point, but after another biteless half hour it was clear that no other chub were falling for it, so I set up the camera for a self timer shot, upped the keepnet, extracted the fish and clicked the shutter. I released the fish back to the water before checking the quality of the picture...
The camera, an unusually trusty workhorse for a cheapish point and shoot, had managed to do not one single thing of those things required of it correctly. Perhaps a mote of dust, or a gnat, a bird or drop of rain passed by just as it was composing itself because not one plane of the whole picture was in focus, and to make things worse, it had failed to decide on whether it was looking at night or day, choosing sometime betwixt both and wildly overexposing as an upshot. Luckily I have a few Photoshop tricks up my sleeve from my pro graphics days and was able to rescue something from it. The fish was no great shakes so not really any great matter - but if it had been a personal best......
I moved again, back to the first swim of the day and fished into the dark for dace, of which I hooked four, landed three and lost the best (of course) and also a single chub at last knockings that en route to the net I hoped might be a huge dace, but it weren't, and that was that. I do hope the river picks up for at least a week or two before the end of the season. It has fished badly since before Christmas and shows no sign of improving soon, does it? We need another month...!
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