Nothin' Doing at Waspo

It's been a bit busy of late. All of a sudden all the little things that can keep a man from his fishing have occurred simultaneously, I even wasted good money on a pint of maggots in expectation of a normal fishing agenda and now they are a pint of rudd food...



I did manage to get out with Keith a week back; to the Avon at Wasperton. This was a new stretch to me; deep and slow along the entire stretch and according to Keith, clearer than he'd ever seen before. I started out trotting maggots and eventually found the fish a good two feet off bottom where I caught a steady run of perch, gudgeon, chublets and a single roach though it must be said that bites were not at all easy to find.



Keith had elected to spend the evening predator fishing, spinning for the first half and deadbaiting the second. He'd had a single jack and a few follows from perch by the time I caught up with him a couple of hours later. By then I was knackered by the effort of struggling with wallis casting a light float off a reel loaded with line just slightly too thick for ease and was ready to just sit and watch rod tops for the rest of the day.


When we got there, these willows were a'swaying in a light zephyr...


...later in the day I caught them all having a crafty kip!

It was hot and the air heavy, the clouds dragging themselves across the sky...



...and the only wet fish eating my luncheon meat, was your's truly ~



For hours and hours the tips stood still until around nine I had my first tremble. I very nearly fell in the water, shocked. A little later I finally had a one pound chub and then almost expected the swim to come to life, but, no such luck I'm afraid, that was it for me.

Keith, on the other hand, was getting a fair bit of attention for his quartered roach and managed to land a small jack ~



...and then an eight pound proper pike, through a raft of nearbank lilies and floating water weed ~



We packed up when Keith finally ran out of bait, by which time I was absolutely knackered out through lack of action. I should have piled in the fishmeal groundbait that Keith had kindly donated and forced the bream into compliance, but ...

Somedays, nothing on this earth will get fish doing what they don't wanna do, and you know it...

Thankfully, it rained heavily last night in the Midlands and again this morning, so the local rivers will be getting a bit of water pushing through, right about now. In a day or two the fishing will be on song.