LITTLE AND LARGE....

     .....and unpredictable, that's the Warwickshire Avon for you. It was a lovely day today but bitterly cold first thing. The windscreen was frozen over and when I arrived, the field thick with frost. Like the genius that I am, I picked my usual swim that is permanently in shadow so while I stood in the gloom with cold toes and ice in the rings, the rest of the world steamed in the glorious spring (?) sunshine.

     I was quickly out of the blocks with a couple of Minnows that took my bait while I was catapulting feed into the head of the swim but it was two hours before I got my first and only bite of the morning. Fortunately I hit it and got my reward into the net in short order, a fine Chub of 3-8.

 
     This is my third or fourth season on this stretch and to be honest I have never really got to grips with it. I've caught fish, don't get me wrong, some of them large by my standards but I can never tell what is going to happen or what the river is prepared to give up. When I joined the syndicate, it was to hear stories of 12 lbs Barbel and big Chub and to be fair in that first year, I had a lot of Dace and a few nice Chub including a couple of fives.

     I do like fishing for silvers and the Dace kept me busy for a while but Roach seemed few and far between. A typical morning might yield four or five pounds of Dace with a couple of Roach thrown in and now and then the bag would be boosted by a nice Chub. One day I abandoned my hemp, tares and casters in favour of liquidised bread and caught 7lbs of quality Roach on the punch. I thought I'd cracked it but despite my best efforts, it never happened again.

                              

     Then one day I had a nice Bream and shortly after fellow member Jakub had a nice bag of them. As far as I know nobody has had one since. Then the Dace disappeared altogether and apart from the odd Chub I was struggling. This year we took on the next field and my first couple of visits produced a lot of small Chub between 4 oz and a pound but I've only had a couple of small ones since. Decent Chub, mostly around the 3-8 mark have graced my net on most visits since, so I have little to complain about but I shall anyway.

     On two consecutive visits I lost two Barbel and stupidly believing that I had found them, I turned to the feeder and heavier rods. I still caught Chub eventually getting a four but those Barbel are gone. I can't find them at all now. As with everything fishing, every trip throws up more questions than answers. To all intents and purposes, there are few if any silvers to be caught and I can only ponder on what is going on down there.

     My best bet is that other than the resident Chub everything else is transitory either passing through or perhaps reacting to predator pressure and moving away from danger areas and into or out of our stretch. I don't think it helps that there is not a lot of bait going in but at last it is seeing a bit more attention so maybe that will change. The season ends soon and I think I shall get in a couple more visits although one might be a last attempt on the Pike but I aim to pay it more attention in the summer so we shall see what it throws up then.