Back to Basics

Well, the heavens finally opened up quite a bit towards the back end of last week. As ever, I found myself tuning into the river levels site to view the extent of the damage and I half expected to be facing a river that would be lapping over the platforms come Sunday. How wrong I was. The extra water had seemingly vanished into thin air - or more likely absorbed by the bone dry ground.

At 3C on arrival it was a tad chillier than I'd experienced recently, but it was a beautiful morning and the first task was to capture a few shots of the mist rolling across a tranquil looking Avon.

Downstream:

Upstream:

The rest of the day wasn't worth writing about! I had brought everything bar the kitchen sink with me and I proceeded to use most of it. I had promised myself a Chub session after last week, but I totally deviated from the plan and went for trying a new swim with my experimental head on.

Two Avon rods, a wand, a pike rod and a stick float set up later (not all at the same time I hasten to add!) and all I could catch was Dace. I'm actually becoming quite a Dace attractor these days and I had plenty of action from the little critters on maggots, caster and bread. Not a Chub in sight. Considering how many Dace were about, the Pike were once again conspicuous by their absence.

The only passer by I saw all day was mooching on by as I was packing up and he remarked on the amount of gear I'd got set up. I told him that it was a case of plenty of gear and no idea!

Next time I will scale things back and some of the rods are staying at home. I also think I need to step back to one rod only at a time and concentrate on getting everything right. I know I'm spending too much time fishing two rods at a time very averagely, whereas one rod fished half decently might actually see improved results.