Thank Heavens For Rain!

Time for a long overdue catch up, but don't expect to hear tales of great success. I've suffered one hell of a lean spell since the season started. In all honesty I haven't spent that much time on the bank due to various events I've attended, most of which involved a few beers and ruled out fishing the next day for obvious reasons!

Springsteen at the Ricoh

A meeting with former Pakistani cricket star and pie eating champion Inzamam-Ul-Haq

The time I have spent fishing has all too often been short sessions at the wrong time of day. I probably haven't done myself any favours by stubbornly sticking with tactics and venues that were all wrong in the conditions - a fatal combination of blind hope, lethargy and ineptude on my part. I'm blaming it on the heat!

The Ashes has been a pleasant distraction though and I've got my stall set out properly when I combine cricket and fishing. I've found that my DAB pocket radio which can sometimes struggle to retain reception, works a treat when secured to an extendable bankstick:

The Avon has yielded precious little for me. I really want to bag myself a decent Bream from there this year, but things haven't fallen into place yet. The water has been far too low and clear, coupled with bright days.

I had a bit of fun with a rather dumb Pike during the latter part of a session. It attacked my feeder and managed to grab the hookbait, duly biting it off after a brief tussle. I reached for the telescopic rod that I keep on standby for these moments. First run through with a plug and the Pike showed itself again. Time after time it appeared to show interest but it wouldn't take the moving plug.

I slowed the plug down and eventually ground it to a halt at the end of my 8ft rod - static plug fishing! The Pike got closer and closer until its nose was practically touching the plug. The stalemate ended with the Pike snapping wildly at the plug, followed by me yanking the plug into thin air!



Pike centre, plug top centre

One more failed attempt was followed by success though - again with the plug absolutely static.

 

I had a couple of sessions on the River Wye also, but that was in blistering heat. The river was very low, clear and canoes were out in force on one of the days. Being on the bank very early and/or very late was imperative, but as often happens on these weekends a few beers turns into a gallon+ and bang goes the fishing. Just one Barbel to my name and a small one at that:

I've never seen so many swans either. At one point a continuous run of 43 came through the swim!

During the slow hours on the second day, I heard some loud snoring. I looked across at the next peg and assumed it was Brian, as it's par for the course for him. He'd heard the same noise though and just assumed it was me! After all we were the only ones fishing in that area. Eventually Brian realised that I was actually awake and went investigating. Behind his van (which he'd conveniently located behind his peg to act as a wind break), he found the answer:


Charlie doing some Chub fishing!

As I write this, the heavens have opened for the second time in a few days. The downpour in my part of the city was very intense and should see a good drop of water going into the river. It's currently a few inches up anyway, but will likely be more like 2ft up on the stretch I usually fish within 24 hours.

I'm already sensing a renewed optimism for the weekend ahead and fingers crossed I'll be fishing a river with a tinge of colour and a ravenous shoal of Bream or Roach in front of me! Hopefully the season will kick off from here...

If not, I'll just sit tight, admit defeat, enjoy us bashing the Aussies at cricket and wait for the Pike season! I'm certainly not waiting for the football season - being a Coventry City follower, it's over before the season begins this time!

Keeping Busy in Anticipation

I've remained quiet on the blogging front for the past month. In that time I only managed a brief afternoon session at Snitterfield Reservoir which didn't yield a great deal.

I haven't abandoned my fishing altogether though - I've been turning my hand to bank duties down on the river for the Alveston Village Association Angling Club (AVAAC) that I'm on the committee of.  Last year's floods had all but wiped out the ageing pegs and I wanted to rebuild things as far as possible. Around 30 hours of toil later and I've managed to rebuild the pegs I set out to restore this year. I have more plans for next year, but there's the small matter of doing plenty of fishing before then!

If anyone is interested in some quality fishing on the River Avon just above Stratford, season tickets are available for AVAAC at £20. There's a link to their Facebook page on this blog. The contact details can be found through that page. Mark Pitcher is the secretary and he issues the tickets. All of the usual Avon species are present and the section is boat free, apart from the very occasional canoe. Access is good and there are no stiles or gates to negotiate. There are no matches, which means that the water is available every day of the season for pleasure fishing.

After a quiet May, I'm eagerly anticipting what lies ahead in June/July, with plenty of things to look forward to. It kicks of this week with something not fish related. My brother (Kev) has a TV date this Thursday evening on Sky Sports in the UK Open Darts. He's what you'd class as a semi professional player and having qualified for the event through the PDC pro tour, he's landed himself the plum opening draw of current world champion Phil "The Power" Taylor! It's a round 2 tie and should be on TV some time after 9pm that night.

I have plenty of fishing lined up once we reach the glorious 16th, but I'll save the details for another time.

Changing Fortunes

I've been quiet on the blogging front recently. A couple of weeks ago I suffered another blank at Ryton and I couldn't bring myself to post about another poor session. I gave the fishing a complete miss last week and concentrated on pushing ahead with some long overdue bank work down on the river. That condemned me to a fate that I didn't see coming - a totally fishless April!

This week I decided to head back to Snitterfield Reservoir for a Saturday afternoon / evening session. I'd struggled there back in March in pretty awful conditions, but things were much better this time around. I wasn't going to kid myself that it would be easy, as it can be slow to get going each year. Once it does pick up, it can be a cracking water though.

As it turned out I was right to be cautious and the bites weren't exactly plentiful. I was in two minds whether to set up a sleeper rod, but the lack of instant action pushed me to reach for the trusty Avon Quiver rod which would plunder the margins. I dropped in 4 balls of groundbait and a couple of handfulls of hemp and caster. A large piece of bread flake was the bait.

I pressed on with the main line on the float and I wasn't having any luck with the silver fish. I turned to pick up my pocket radio to catch up with the latest sports news when my margin rod screamed into action. Luckily I'd had the sense to slacken the clutch right off and a fish had started to take plenty of line.

A lengthy battle ensued and it dawned on me that it was probably a potential personal best. I eventually got top side of it and Brian helped with the netting duties. It was a nice fully scaled mirror which weighed in at 14lb 15ozs and it beat my previous best by over a couple of pounds.

As the day wore on, it didn't get any easier on the float rod - just a few Perch to show for my efforts. The margin rod threw up a couple of other fish though.

The first was a Crucian Carp which also took a big piece of flake on a size 10 hook. Not exactly the tactics you would normally use for catching shy biting Crucians! It weighed 1lb 9oz and was also a pb as it happens.

The last fish came on my final cast and was a Bream of around 2lbs. It was as rough as sandpaper in places and was well into spawning mode.

It's nice to report some fish on the bank again and hopefully things will push on from here.

Ryton - More Blanking

After a week's break I had a brief return to "action" this weekend. I only had a small window available on Saturday afternoon, which pretty much saw the worst of the weekend weather.

With time against me I stayed local and figured on opening my Tench account at Ryton. I stopped off to renew my club book and headed off to the pool in good spirits. The wind was howling across the pool but a peg at the far end was free and quite sheltered, so I opted for that one.



3 hours into the session and it wasn't going to plan. Biteless across both rods and getting increasingly wetter and cooler. Propects were poor and time was running out. Then the float dipped and slid out of sight. I had one of those bemused moments where after a few hours of nothing and having already accepted a blank, you can't quite believe that something has happened!

I came to my senses and struck into a fish. Not heavy or insane enough to be the Tench I'd hoped for, but a fish nonetheless. It just plopped up on to the surface long enough to be identified as a Perch - at which point the hook pulled free and I was back to blanking!     

Where there's one Perch there's usually more around and I pressed on with renewed hope for the last few minutes. A pair of  Canada Geese were not exactly helping now though and at one point I thought they were going to take me clean out! They had a full on clash in the heart of my swim for a good minute or so and it scuppered any hopes of a late change in fortune.

I bumped into Barry the bailiff in the car park - another fellow blanker! He said he'd had a few fish in the week though and was just looking for the weather to settle down again.

The forecast for next weekend is looking quite promising though, so hopefully I'll open up my April account next time.

Water Water Everywhere!

I'll cut to the chase this week - Royal Blank!

College Pool was the venue and it was chilly and icy. As I mentioned in a previous post, the water level is higher than I've ever seen it and almost half of the pool is unfishable (unless of course you like to sit somewhere between knee and waist deep in water!). Ice clearing work was also needed on this visit.

 

The tree in the picture should not be in the water! The path is slowly being swallowed up also.



 

Here's an idyllic looking shot of the pool from March 2011. The peg on the far right is the end peg on that bank.

Here's the current position! The peg on the far right is just fishable from the top of bank, rather than its cut out position. The peg next to it is now partially under water, while all others on that bank are out of bounds

Here's the view from that far bank right hand end peg looking down towards the car park. You need to squelch your way to this peg with a decent pair of boots, as the water's also spilled out into the farmer's field on that far end too. 

It's going to take a very long time to get back to normal.

The fishing was dire and the only other angler (Paul the bailiff) suffered the same blank result. There will be better days ahead for sure - I just wish they'd hurry up and arrive. I'll have to go back to Pike fishing if it doesn't warm up soon!

Another White Out

No fishing this week thanks to an all too familiar problem. When will we finally get some Spring-like weather I wonder?  Probably not this month judging by the forecast and I think a huge dose of patience is going to be needed in the interim period.

Easter is nearly upon us and that usually gives me a chance to squeeze in an extra session or two. At this rate it will be a bonus if I don't have to break ice to fish! 

With little to write about this week, I took a look back through my blog to a year ago to see the difference in fortunes.

20th March 2012 - Already amongst the Tench at Ryton Pool :

23rd March 2013 !!! :

Rising Waters

College Pool was the intended starting point for my closed season tour of Leamington AA's stillwaters, accompanied by Brian on this occasion. I was taken aback by the scene we found on our arrival.

Almost the entire left hand side of the pool was out of bounds due to flooding. The water has now spilled out well into the adjacent field. A peg near the car park might be fishable, albeit a long way back from the permanent peg. The right hand side of the pool is fishable though, but pretty much from the path only for its entire length and it's all very muddy and squelchy.

We'd been beaten to the pool by 3 other anglers in the same party who had spread themselves out across the length of the pool to get the best of the pegs (those with the most space between the water line and the hedge behind!). Rather than jumping in amongst them and suffering the inevitable mudfest, we chose to head off to Snitterfield Reservoir.

I thought it would be tough and so it proved. Bites were hard to come by and the rain that dogged us for a large part of the day did little to improve our state of mind. Mick the bailiff said that it had been hard going recently (or words to that effect!) and that he hadn't expected to find any idiots anglers on site today. We'd been the only takers all week apparently.

Light gear, careful feeding and floats dotted right down to a plip were the order of the day. I worked hard for a few Roach up to 6oz, some small Perch and a Skimmer of around a pound. It was more than I thought I'd get if I'm honest and things will surely improve as the conditions warm up - it's anyone's guess when that will happen! The week ahead doesn't look great either...