Different river but another double.

The River Teme has been treating me very well with no blanks suffered so far this season.  On the other hand the Warwickshire Avon has given me a kick where it hurts on the last two trips to try for one of her gems, that pain has gone so time to try yet again, therefore plans for an afternoon into evening session were made.

With the pellet and open-ended feeder method working well on the Teme I saw no reason to change from that since it has given me so much success.  Caster over hemp is a better method where there are a number of barbel to catch, but I feel the days where you have numbers of barbel in front of you are few and far between on the Avon today.

I arrived about 2:00pm, and found that as usual that I was the only angler on the banks, again a sign of the new era of recession, high fuel cost, and harder fishing on the rivers.  The swim was a fast water glide flashing past my position over luscious beds of streamer weed.  With the good clarity of water I could easily see the clear channels running through these beds, and the two baits were cast to land in one of these on either side of the river.  Now it was just a case of occasionally recasting to put out more pellet mix in the feeder, and to ensure the ever present chub had not pinched the pellets off the size 8 hook in use.

When Keith arrived about 5:30pm following his day at work, I was still waiting for my first barbel bite, there had been a number of knocks, but I was convinced these were from chub, the real thing still was yet to come.   Thirty minutes later it did, but not the usual wrap round that I expect, just a good positive sign that the fish was there, then nothing?   I waited a moment but then thought I should check what was going on and sure enough the barbel had just gone to ground in the nearby weedbed.  Now he got angry and went off on the expected run.  I had become use to the fight given by those Teme fish, so when this one came to the net following a very moderate fight I was quite surprised at its size, it was big!   It really did show, at least to me, just how much harder those Teme Tigers fight, this Avon barbel had been landed with far less effort, but did that matter, not in the slightest.  A lot deeper in the body and on first inspection looking imaculate, I watched as Keith agreed a weight of 12lb-1oz, very pleasing and the biggest so far this season.

                                                       12lb-1oz Warwickshire Avon beauty.

Following that, I just had further knocks from chub and a surprising rudd of over 1lb with a large hole in its back, evidence I imagine of a recent cormorant attack.  As previously mentioned, no fish of whatever size is safe in our waters today, and I fear the immediate future does not look good.  Still, there are big fish to be caught so I'll try again this afternoon!