Autumnal Avon

Another couple of weeks have rolled by and things are gradually turning more Autumnal. Having said that, the temperature reading from my car was 15C at 6pm tonight, which is still well above the seasonal average.

At least we had a bit of welcome rain last week and although it wasn't the deluge I'd been hoping for, I did see a bit of upwards movement on the Warwick based Environment Agency gauge I use as my reference point. At its peak around Thursday morning there was around 5-6 inches of extra water which was better than nothing.

I headed down to the Avon at Alveston on Saturday, by which time the extra water had all but passed through. The river looked in good nick and I decided to take the easy access option of the road section. It was a gorgeous morning with a touch of mist.

Having suffered some poor sessions on the river this year, I didn't expect a lot. Bites were plentiful as it happened, but it was mostly from Dace. There were certainly no clonkers amongst them - maybe 3oz at best - but I was just happy to find plenty of willing fish. The bread rig failed to produce the Chub I was hoping for and in the end I enjoyed trotting maggots through the swim on the centre pin set up. I'm still relatively new to the pin, so I'm enjoying practising becoming less clumsy!

The best fish of the session was Perch that was probably a shade under a pound.

I briefly flashed some lures through the swim towards the end of the session - just in case a bonus Pike was lurking beneath my feet at the edge of the weed. Nothing doing though.

I feel there's a Chub session on the cards next time out, as I've largely neglected them so far this season.