Frozen and fish-less

It had been a week since my last fishing trip and in that time the weather had gone from just plain freezing to proper freezing with a good covering of snow mixed in for good measure. I had hoped to return to Wasperton this Sunday to see if i could better last weeks result, but even though the main roads were clear i didn't fancy my cars chances on the mile long farm that leads down to the river. So opted to play it safe, stick close to home and check out a bit of the upper Avon i have fished for chub a few times over the last couple of years.


During the week i had been chatting to Jeff Hatt about some nice roach i had seen in a previous fishing session, and whilst chatting to him i asked him if he was up for a wintry chub session on the Avon.

So Sunday morning we both arrived at dawn suitably wrapped up for a very cold fishing trip.

Now catching winter chub on a bit of river you actually know anything about can be hard at times, but as i had very little knowledge of this stretch and i think it was the first time Jeff had ever laid eyes on it we were probably going to struggle.

We worked our way down leap frogging past each other trying different baits in any spots we thought might hold fish. even when i found some small fish topping on nice looking run and scaled my tackle right down, the only interest came as tiny tremble of my tip. Most likely from a comedian of a fish who thought it would be funny to lick my double maggot bait just to wind me up. Even my stinking cheese paste which is almost guaranteed to get the most wary chub salivating did nothing...

By the time we found ourselves at the bottom of the stretch at early midday we were both of the opinion that it was not going to happen today. But still even after agreeing on this we carried on for a while as we watched our motionless rod tips in the last very fishy looking swim. But it wasn't that long before we threw in the towel and trudged off back to the car fish-less.

Sometimes, i think even though as anglers we are prepared to go out and fish in the very worst conditions, and persevere when we know that most sane people are tucked up in bed, it doe's not mean that our quarry will honor our efforts by biting.