We had a fishing challenge moot on the banks of the Avon at Stratford Town on Tuesday night, the four members of the challenge league all fishing at one and the same time, and for the first time ever. Something just had to happen...
As it transpired it didn't happen to me. After hours of effort I managed a single blank saving roach on wagglered maggot from below the small weir at Lucy's Mill after a couple of hours spent enduring a nagging north-easterly and almost complete inactivity on the bread above the weir in the Town waters opposite Holy Trinity Church and its infernal bells. Pete was downstream of me at the weir and at dusk I fancied he was up to something, but at a distance of a hundred yards or more I couldn't tell what...
I returned to the town waters when the bites dried up in the weir; I wasn't concentrating enough to care what I caught and because all my thermal layers were in the wash at the same time for some reason, I was freezing my nads off, so wanted to walk about a bit. Keith had had a couple of small chub and Danny, a good roach apparently, then Keith got a phone call from Pete who'd just landed a bream and was in the process of fighting another...
Only a bream allows the angler to make phone calls mid fight...
Then Keith had another call - the fish had been landed and it was not a bream after all, but a big barbel ...
Keith went off downstream to take the photo's, returning ten minutes later with the good news - Pete had broken his personal best with a fish of thirteen pounds two ounces...!
Blimey
We packed up soon after this event, Keith hooking a biteless chub on the last cast, and decided that we all deserved a pint in a warm pub. Danny pulled in his net and unpacked a roach of what I guessed to be a pound and a quarter, an estimate that proved to right on the button. This is by far the largest roach I have yet to witness from the Avon proper and as with all pound plus roach, cause for optimism.
I was intending go out for a last crack at the brook roach today and had plans to fish tomorrow too and see the river season out in style with a grayling from the Sence, but last night cruel fate intervened, rendering me a hobbling raspberry with the infliction of a twisted knee and quite unfit for purpose. I'm frantically kneading the point of sheerest pain in the hope that my amateur physiotherapy will allow me, by evening, to take a few steps without wincing.
Never say never. Maybe there's a chance that by tomorrow morning I will get to the river for a last cast...
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