Down the hill round the corner and back up again.

I fear my finale at Napton may have been over dramatized in my mind. You see the way I kind of saw it was like the ending of some cheesy nineties movie, where upon beating all odds I had succeeded and was now walking away into the sunset having won the heart of the beautiful love interest with my dry wit and steely good looks. It was in reality me having caught the crucian after spending an inordinately large amount of time sitting next to a lake where I had over many months chucked in more sweet corn and ground bait than I feel comfortable admitting to. All that aside I had to walk away down the hill back into the valley of normality as I had practically given zero attention to the river and quite frankly risked missing an entire season on the Avon.

Honestly I don't think I had missed much by the general whining I had seen on social media about the lack of water. One thing I had read far too often, much to my chagrin, was how many top level barbel chappies were condemning other anglers for barbel fishing in the heat wave and making it very clear that barbel were unable to deal with the stresses of being caught in such conditions. Now I know these people only had fish safety in mind and good on them for sticking with their conviction, but the question that came to my mind re this was, what makes barbel special? Surely any species be it barbel, gudgeon or chub that is used to existing in highly oxygenated water is not going to appreciate getting caught in the heat. I suppose the answer to that is simple now I am reading it back and that is that they only care about barbel and all other species are merely pests to them.

Anyway on the subject of barbel I did find myself back on the river. ONCE THE HEATWAVE HAD ABATED, fishing for barbel. With the temperature down and a bit of extra water in the river I headed up to Barford to see if those hard fighting berties had come onto the feed. Joyfully they had and not long after settling into a favourite spot I got exactly the sort of bite I was after. Straight away I knew I was into a barbel but during the fight it steadily grew smaller and smaller until I landed a perfect miniature barbel of not even two pounds...

I couldn't quite believe it at first as I have rarely seen these youngsters before and the average of this area of river is generally 4-10lb in weight. Would you believe that on my second cast the PVA bag must have barely melted before bang, I was into another and then another straight after that! Things actually seem to looking good for this stretch of river with a few young healthy fish coming through the ranks for the future.

I returned to the river a few days later to search for the rumoured big preds that hide in the slack shady water on one of the sections I fish. Again and again I hear of this area producing big zander but after searching round all last winter I am none the wiser of the location of these phantom fish. Hence I wondered if I might be able to pin some locations down by mooching round with a lure rod in the summer. The cut and thrust of this endeavor was that none of the water I expected contained seemingly any predators. By chance I gave some of the faster swims a go and instantly was rewarded by a super charged little pike nearly ripping the rod out of my hand as it tore into my savage jerk bait that wobbled across the current.

I was really starting to feel the river now and I took the opportunity to search out a new section of the Upper Avon I had been tipped off about. Not wanting to go into specifics I have been told something very rare indeed swims in this secluded area high up the Avon. It's a rumour I have heard a few times from different sources, but all these rumours share a similar location and this was where I headed for a few hours one night a while ago. It turned out to be a cracking little secret gem where no one seems to fish; given its difficult access and it's that lack of attention, it could be the sanctuary of a real treasure. On this first foray though all I could catch were chub. The smallest being mere ounces and the largest maybe three-four pounds in weight.

That little bit of river has captured my attention and the possibility of what it holds make certain I will return to try again and again on its deserted banks. The weather though tells me the rivers are still way off their best and the conditions are more conducive to tench fishing, and the thought of what seemed to be big tench rolling at Napton drew me back. Really I didn't want to go back quite so soon but what I had seen was too good of an opportunity to turn down. Over my many hours lingering on the banks staring at floats bobbing in the edge I have watched some of the carp lads baiting their little hearts out. I have witnessed this so much in fact that I can now distinguish between brands of spods/spobs just from the sound they make flying through the air. But one spot that two or three of the syndicate members are baiting has become very obvious to me and time and time again I have watched big tench rolling over this spot. So armed with a couple of one and three quarter pound Avon style rods, as it is quite a chuck, and a marker rod, I went to have a lookie loo at what was attracting all this attention.

All it took was a bit of walking out on the banks and few casts and I found a large clear spot in about ten feet of water. This was obviously what the carp lads were aiming for and it was more than likely that all the bait was not just attracting carp. For me though I didn't have time on this occasion to spend two hours filling it in with bait, so I instead went for a more opportunist approach and clipped up two method feeders at the distance and cast them onto the spot laden with fishy ground bait full of chopped 10mm boilies. Casting every fifteen minutes soon rang the dinner bell whilst tainting the swim with enough bait to interest fish whilst not pre occupying them with large amounts of food. I'd only made three casts before one of the buzzers sprang to life as a small tench made off with the bait.

A few casts later I got a big drop back which brought the left hand alarm stuttering to life. This wasn't a tench given by the lack of fight and I kind of hoped it was a huge roach. When it eventually surfaced I saw much to my suprise my first ever Napton bream. Literally in ten years plus I have never caught a single bream and here I was with very young looking four pounder.

Where there's one bream there's others and few casts later I second received a big drop back which saw me hooked into a much larger fish, and the dull heavy fight told me another bigger bream was on its way in. As per, the fight was nothing to write home about but once in the net this fish was special for a whole other reason. Literally this fish looked a hundred years old with nobbles front to back. It was lumpy and bumpy and very calm, like an OAP fish. In its hey day this must have been some fish and it certainly had to have been a double figure fish. Now though it had gone past its prime maybe ten years ago and was probably lingering on undisturbed in the depths waiting out its life munching softened boilies moaning to the skimmers about the war.

Although extremely happy to have firstly located some big bream in Napton for future reference I now find myself thinking are those big fish I have seen rolling on this spot the big tench I thought or a shoal of bream that I think is massive tench. I suppose it's just a case of fish and find out, mind that might have to wait as I broke one of my rod tips putting it back in the car after this session and replacing these rods is not a high priority right now so it will have to wait until funds dictate.