To meander after zander.

There's a distinctive hint of a smell in the air and I for one love those first whiffs I get. The sweet smell of summer has begun to fade as the plant life detects the impending season in those chilly nights. Autumn is afoot and hints of decay are happening. After a resplendent summer of unmitigated growth in the suns life giving rays, the huge maple under which I park my car is showing a streak of red and gold on its eastern exposure and the beastly thing has finally ceased spitting sap all over Doreen, my faithful Ford Focus.

If there is one thing I know, it's that if I am detecting the change of the seasons, those more in touch, i.e. fish, have long ago detected it and that ingrained instinct to stock up for winter has sparked into life. I love this time of year as everything gets moving after months of torpidity; this is the time of plenty when the predators really get focused. This is exactly the time I have waited for to begin searching for river zander, it's still a bit early to chase pike but zander, they seem to love this time of year on the Avon.

I didn't feel I did very well last year on a new section of the Avon I was targeting. Though I did pin point a few areas to focus on I don't feel I followed up on these spots quickly enough as I was distracted by the bloggers challenge. This year however, I have more time to give to this endeavour, so all I needed to do was check again that my info was good before taking aim.

Lure fishing has become my go to method for locating zander. The problem is with this bit of the Warks Avon is it all looks very zanderey and therefore given the length of the section in question, I could find myself having to fish lots of spots for a decent amount of time with baits before locating good areas. By lure fishing each area briefly and seeing which ones throw up zander to the lures, I can cross check that info with last year's similar sessions and see if any throw up multiple fish.

First trip out was perfect! The temperature had dropped and the sky was overcast. There was such a chill in the air that I had to don my hoodie for the first time since spring. This session could not have gone any better. I had some of the new Fox rage pro grubs to try out and I was very confident these large life like curly tails were the perfect zander candy to fling in the river. It turned out I was right to be confident as the lure soon tempted a couple of micro pike before any small zander struck the lure hard in an area I hoped would produce.

For the sake of continuity I continued to work the lures hard even in areas I didn't think I would catch fish from and strangely it was satisfying to find myself correct even though I caught no fish. When I did finally get into an area I was hoping to get a result from I was overjoyed to catch another better zander of maybe four pounds which was so aggressive I thought I'd been hit by a big pike as I saw a big flash when the fish struck at the edge of a weed bed.

I was of two minds after this session. On one hand I could repeat that session a few times again as time allowed to get more data or I could take the small amount of data and add it to last year's and go on that. It wasn't until I double checked the spots with last years info that I found the capture of both fish came from exactly the same spots as last year. So as not to waste a valuable session I concluded to go with it and not bother with any more prospecting, just to hit the two target areas as soon as possible.

A week long holiday to the east coast later and I was back with a whole different set up of kit. A pair two  and half pound rods, buzzers and the lightest bobbins I could find. The water was so sluggish in the section when I arrived that the brisk wind blowing upstream seemed too have stalled the Avon in her tracks. The water was still a bit clear for my liking but the over cast sky and depth of water had me confident I could garner some action and wasn't just pissing in the wind.

The still present weed proved problematic as the line of lilies emanated a good six feet from the bank and then a few feet of streamer weed lay rotting on the surface just before the water dropped away to ten or more feet in depth. All this meant I had to elevate the rods skyward to keep the line out of the weed, which I didn't want to interfere with my bite detection. Really, I would have preferred to point the rod tips at the rigs to help reduce resistance, but hopefully the zander wouldn't be that fussy at this early point in the season.

Knowing full well how snaggy the opposite side of the river was, I was careful to keep away from those awful snags which we had the local rowing club to thank for after they chopped down loads of overhanging branches last year and just dropped them directly into the river. So one bait was placed mid river and the second just off the marginal shelf. Hilariously, I had only just cast out the second rod when the first one was away. I don't mind admitting that in a bit of a flap, I managed to get the bobbin wrapped around the line somehow and for few arse twitching moments I found myself trying to untangle cord from line as something tugged hard on the end. I really thought it was something good when I was playing the fish deep down in the water and it thumped away bending the rod right over. But as it rose up in the water it seemed to get smaller and smaller until I found myself looking down at a jack pike, thinking this thing must be on steroids.

Not long after my rod had been dormant for a good few hours and my flask of tea had run dry, the grey sky began to look thin and blue patches started to show through. Before I knew it the days wall to wall cloud weather prediction had become a bit too sunny for my liking. It was about then that I suspected that the zander weren't going to play ball but with another three hours at hand to fish, I wasn't going to pack up just in case they did feel an impromptu zander dead bait picnic would be nice on a sunny day. I thought my luck was in as well, when the downstream rod indicated a slow steady run, but it turned out to be an overzealous perch with eyes bigger than his belly that had picked up my small roach dead bait.

Next was another small pike which sent the bite alarm into meltdown. After overconfidently winding it towards the net it did that thing pike occasionally do when they just open their mouth and the bait just flies out and you realise it never hooked at all but was just holding on out of hunger or sheer belligerence. The session ended on the capture of yet another small jack pike that was basically about the same size as the previous two. Instead of yet another little pike picture I took a different shot of my favorite; pike view. I love seeing them in or out of the water like this as I always intrigued by their markings on their backs for some reason.

I don't actually think I did anything wrong on this session and I have confidence that this and the other area I have pinpointed to focus on will produce zander of any size. Simply put I think with the current clear water and sunny weather I was really just a little on the wrong side of them feeding. Once we get a bit of colour in the water and some more conducive conditions hopefully I can get to see the true potential of this section of the Warks Avon.

Return to the river.

It seems like forever since I've paid the Avon any attention. I have had an odd look here and there since the season opened up, but frankly I've been a bit preoccupied with trying to catch a crucian out of Napton Reservoir. Anyway whilst away on holiday the idea to get my arse in gear and head back to the river really came to the forefront of my mind. It just happened that a bit of rain the few days before I got back had the river in tip top conditions for my return.

I have a new membership for a bit of the Avon which some of my angling buddies have been recommending for years, which this year I decided to get on. So with a couple of rods set up ready to go I decided to head down the A46 for a morning session. Normally I would have tried to be on the bank for first light, but my early morning bumbling roused BB and he discovered some presents which had been stashed in his room that were to big too transport on holiday, so my leaving was delayed a little whilst they were opened.

In the end I found myself pulling up in the car park around 9am and shockingly there was only two other cars evident. Where was everyone? I asked myself, as I had suspected everyone would be on the river given the conditions. The first angler I came across was on the first peg through the gate and a quick chat turned up that he'd already had three chub and two barbel from out in the faster water. This was good news and got me quickly heading off looking for a swim up river. I soon found a great looking swim where the fast water is deflected by a big bed of reeds and with the extra colour on the water it looked great for the barbel I so much wanted.  

Trying to be as careful as I could I gently cast into the crease with a PVA bag full of goodies attached to my rig. Although I did receive several taps of interest I was soon recasting again and again, working my way down the crease in subsequent casts towards some cover where I suspected the barbel might be lying in wait. After a few hours I was getting concerned I may have missed or messed up my shot at a barbel from this swim, but rather than just move off I opted to make one final cast a bit further out, away from the crease I'd been targeting into the faster water.

I'd been sitting on the cast for a good fifteen minutes before another angler from upstream dropped by to see how I was doing. We'd been whacking on for ten minutes as I kept an eye on the white rod tip out the corner of my eye. I clocked a slow nod of the tip which grabbed my attention then a quick sharp pull got my hand hovering over the rod and then bang, as predicted, the rod bent over as the fish tuned onto the weight of the lead.

In the fast shallow water I lent hard on the fish to stop it finding any of the weed beds which I knew lay hidden by the coloured water.  A long pause with both of us refusing to give an inch ended when the fish was pushed down stream by the flow... then all hell broke loose in the deeper clearer water under my own bank. This powerful fish worked me hard to keep it from getting back over the river into the fast water but everything held true and the soft action of my rod soon subdued the fish and a gaping mouth lined with barbules appeared on the surface before what looked a big fish slipped into the net.

After letting the fish recover in the water I lifted the net out and put it onto he mat. I lifted back the folds of the net to reveal a perfect long lean summer fish. I can truly say I was beaming with the sight of this perfect first barbel off of a new stretch of river, and my companion who had stood silent the whole fight seemed very impressed too. We both agreed it looked to be a good one though on the scales my suspicion that it was in lean condition proved true and even given its long length the fish was only 7.14lb. 

Maybe in the winter this fish could have been at least nine pounds or more. The weight though hardly mattered at all to me as I was over the moon that I should catch such an amazing fish for my first barbel off a new stretch of river.

The rain came in quickly after that and I opted to make a tactical retreat, but I was back a few days later to fish another swim aways downstream. This time the river had cleared and with that in mind I had brought a second lighter rod along to fish the maggot feeder upstream of the barbel rod, with the hope that the maggots going downstream, combined with the activity from other fish might draw up any wary barbel to have a look see what was going on. The plan actually worked, but not quite exactly as I wanted it to. The maggot line was alive with fish chasing the freebies as I dropped the feeder again and again onto the same spot at the head of the swim. Roach, dace, gudgeon and perch were queuing up waiting for the feeder to release more free maggots into the flow.

As the session went on the interest in my downstream rod increased slowly but surely. It took a while but random jags on the rod tip indicated something was afoot. Soon enough the rod bent over hard as something took the bait. After those initial moments when you lean into a fish feeling something powerful abated, the fish power dwindled and I realised the chub had turned up, attracted by all the activity. The first fish was a greedy two pounder but the second was a much longer fish just under four pounds, which like that first barbel would be much larger come winter.

The bug had really bit and another evening session was penned into my diary for a week or so later, after seeing that the long range forecast predicted another deluge of rain to bring the river into peak condition.

I arrived as quick as I could get there after work to find only one car in the car park, and after rushing over the fields to the river I scouted the whole section, baiting up a few spots as I went. The other angler was nowhere near where I wanted to fish and after a quick chat and finding out that although he was really after the silvers he had been skinned out a couple of time by big fish. This was perfect, no other anglers and feeding fish, how could I fail..?

The scene of my first barbel capture seemed the logical starting point and I was soon set-up and watching the river, trying to figure out the water in front of me as the added water and flow had seemingly changed the whole dynamic of the swim. It didn't take long to figure I'd chosen the most complicated swim to start with. There must have been seven or more areas in front of me screaming for a bait to go on them. In the end I began close in targeting a small crease right under my own bank. This produced nothing at all so I went about casting into each area I thought might hold barbel one after another for the next three hours. In the end I spent far too much time trying to logically cover the whole swim, in which time Mick had turned up and headed off upstream to fish for predators.

Having kind of shot myself in the foot time-wise, I decided to move downstream to fish one of the swims I had pre baited. With only enough time to fish one last swim I missed out a couple I had dropped bait into and went for the one I thought most likely to produce in the conditions. It was quite a simple swim I went to, with a large bed of bulrushes at the head that was creating a crease right down the centre of the river between the fast and slow water.

My first cast sent a tasty bag of morsels quickly down to the river bed just in the fast water, attached to a two ounce lead. The reaction was instant as my pre baiting already had fish nosing around on the gravel. Convinced the rod was going to bang over I had to sit on my hands as the small fish attacked the hook bait. I waited patiently and as I did, the rod soon indicated the presence of a bigger fish. A couple of nods later and the rod was nearly ripped of the rest and I was into a barbel. The initial savagery subsided and an interesting battle ensued in the slow water. It was only about four pound but this solid and fresh barbel took no prisoners as it dived into every possible place it could get snagged. In the end though the fact I was fishing gear capable of landing even the biggest fish won the fight and I netted an immaculate barbel that saved my session. 

The next cast produced the same response but this time I thought I'd hooked a small chub or something until I went to lift it out and a tiny sub pound barbel managed to shake itself off the hook, vibrating mid-lift, and dived straight back into the river. They were only small but two barbel in two casts were good numbers for me. I really wanted to get my bait right onto the bait I had put down earlier so I tried my very best to land the rig and new bag of freebies on the very centre of the crease. In doing so though I tightened up and it was more than obvious my bait was on the inside of the crease in the slow water. I decided to give it a chance and wait, letting it sit there for fifteen minutes at least, but I didn't feel in was the best place for it at all. 

The bite came out of nowhere with no warning which made it all that more shocking. One moment the rod was stationary the next it was bending double, lifting the butt out of the rests. Straight away I could feel this was a fish in another league. It powered all over the swim through both the fast and slow water with me just holding on tight and trying my best to steer it away from any hazards. After covering every bit of water in front of me, the fish dived straight into some lillies in the slow water, but its power and my power linked by the line just cut straight though the stems leaving the pad floating away downstream. A few dives later and I had what I knew was a good barbel in the net. As it rested in the water I made the call to Mick to ask for a spot of help taking a photo or two which turned out to be a brilliant decision as my camera phone, although great in day light, was useless in the half light. Luckily Mick brought his camera and I was soon proudly holding up my first double from this new stretch and beaming from behind all ten pounds and seven ounces of it.

In three close sessions this new bit of river has proved exactly how honest it is. By that I mean; it looks like it should contain barbel and chub and it does, it looks healthy and it seems it is and in the right conditions the fish should feed and they do. Which for the Warwickshire Avon, isn't that common from what I've seen in the past. A lot of the time I fished sections of the Avon and thought, this has to be a good area for this or that, and been let down. This place though seems different and I hope my theories about other different sections come to fruition over the autumn and winter. If they do, well, a few more red letter days for other species could be on the horizon.

I name thee George of Jubilee.

Hi my names Daniel and it's been over eleven days since my last cast...

(Pause for applause)

...and I am clucking!!!

clucking

To be in a state of Drug/Heroin withdrawal. From the phrase cold turkey.

I was desperate to get out fishing after life and work seemed to conspire to prevent me getting out and I was in the need for something savage. The wonderful art of trotting, to sedately, delicately float fish for a crucian couldn't scratch this itch, nor would chasing illusive Rudd in clear water salve me. I needed something savage to satiate me; I needed rods being torn from rests, bite alarms screaming and battles that would make your arms ache. It's all right people wanting to be at one with nature and appreciating being out, but I needed the precious silence of the country to be shattered by vicious runs...I needed to be hit by something hard coursing through my veins.

Really, the surprise of the three foot barbel twitch would have been best, but with only a few hours to spare and the Avon being in about as good form as the England international side, carp it seemed would have to do. Searching out rarities was a gamble I was unwilling to take, so the familiar reliability of horseshoe pool nestled away at the back of jubilee pools seemed the perfect place to get me hit

I actually love carp fishing and in another life I could make a proper commitment to it if I didn't also love a variety of other fish. I get bored campaigning and am easily distracted from grey backed monsters. These short sessions margin carping are just up my street. As always the margins were my targets and the polished clear gravel where sneaky grubbers mop up dumped bait are my target areas. As always on this session I actually try to mimic these patches of chucked out bait and what always gets lobbed away at the end of a session?..corn. It's cheap and no one can be arsed to bag it for next time, so in it goes. That yellow signal draws them in every time, mix in a bit of something smelly with a few more tasty nutritional morsels and that rod has to bend round.

With one spot to my left baited up and three others primed in other swims, I sat on the ground ten feet from my rod in the shade of a tree. Dark shapes already moved over the bait and although they were tench it was only a matter of time before something bigger was alerted to the feast that lay on the gravel.

I'd barely whistled three bars of the latest CBeebies ear worm stuck in my head when the rod tip bent round and the alarm screamed blue murder. Good thing I had the fore thought to screw some snag ears on under the alarm the rod off the alarm before I dashed the short distance and grabbed the rod. The initial violence subsided quickly as a small, wildish looking common repeatedly rolled in the margin, and with one roll and twang of a fin it was free.

After checking the rig I peered onto the spot again to check it was clear before quietly placing the rig tight to the bank under an overhanging branch. A few more boilies, a dash of pellet-filled ground bait and a fist load of corn and I was back under the tree cross legged listening to the birds BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!!!  And the same performance was under away again. The rod tip was in the water this time as fish bolted after being nailed by the hook. An unusually spirited fight from a fish, it's size revealed a real bastard koi ghost common cross thing, which was probably the biggest gold fish I have caught to date. 

After posting the picture up on a whatsapp chat the first person to mock my mighty goldfish was George Burton off of float flight and flannel so in keeping with that popular carp angling tradition of naming fish, I name this oversized gold fish George of Jubilee. Hopefully everyone will take that one on and just to make sure, I will get it sent in for the next newsletter from the club ;)

With George set free I turned my attention back to this already productive spot, re-baited once again with more goodies and positioned my rig on the closest part of the baited area to the bank so as any feeding fish wouldn't find my line. With the line positioned carefully along the bank I retreated to wait for more action. It took a while but eventually the buzzer wailed but before I got to the rod the fish managed to shake the rig off some ten feet away from the spot where it had been hooked.

This time when I peered back over the bushes to see if the coast was clear to drop the rig in again, two carp were heads down having a munch. They didn't stick around long and soon enough I was tightening the line on my trap. More bait attracted more fish and a group of small tench soon drifted around over the bait, but once they cleared off the swim seemed abandoned. After waiting a good forty five minutes, I was getting ready to head off home via the chippy. I'd just picked up my little rod bag when all hell broke loose. The alarms shrill tone sounded and the rod arched round and a huge boil erupted in the edge.

I hadn't expected to get another one before I left, but it seems turning my back for that moment was long enough for a beautiful mirror to sneak in and snaffle some freebies and with them my hook bait. This fight and subsequent selfies added fifteen minutes to my leaving time. It was worth it though as this fish and its fight were exactly what I needed on this short session and it really satisfied my cravings for a good old bit of angling excitement and vigour.

A success or not?

Really I am struggling on whether to label my most recent sessions a success or not. Time and weather conspired to limit my bank time, and with only a fleeting amount of hours fishing in what should have been ideal conditions I can't decide whether what I did was perfectly pure or just a total failure.

I had it in my mind that the river with a deluge of rain would be in good condition to try and target zander on the lure in the slacks around Warwick. In truth upon seeing the water lapping at the wooden platforms when I arrived I felt I might have got this a bit wrong. Still though I persisted and endeavoured to chuck a few dark heavily vibrating soft lures in the eddies behind several fallen trees.

Maybe I might have stood a chance if I hadn't underestimated how heavy a jig head I needed to pull a six inch shad down in a turbulent river. Even the slightest of flow would catch the under weighted rubber lure and send it five feet left or right for every foot it dropped. As an experiment I punched the lure over the flow and literally in twelve feet of water it made it back to my own bank before hitting the bottom.

Luckily the rain and wind saved me from persisting any longer than an hour and a half, because I know if it hadn't I would have stuck it out probably to no avail till God only knows when. Though I still reckon fishing lures for zander on coloured rivers on warm days has some mileage, I do now realise that waiting for the river to start dropping might be the course to take in the future.

Now that outing alone would have easily marked these sessions as a flop, but the night before I snatched an impromptu few hours back on the Oxford canal. This session too returned little by the way of fish, and after losing a small zander not long after hooking it, it too looked to be a pretty shitty out come. That was until dusk fell! Like all anglers I probably stay a bit too long and make far too many last casts when really I should have been driving home.

Somewhere in the falling light, around that point when you lose sight of the orange of a float I was retrieving my ever faithful clown cannibal shad slowly across the trench of the canal using a short lifts followed by long pauses. Not far from my own bank I lowered the lure on a tight line to the bottom and felt a hard thump. Next thing I know I've struck and the rod is bent double.

The fight on my light lure outfit was sporting, with the unseen culprit stripping line from the spool and me retrieving it. The fish made powerful runs, but declined to come thrashing open mouthed to the surface which confirmed this was no zander. Even with hardly any light I spotted a big spiky fin piercing a bit of reflection on the canals surface beyond my net, just before a big perch was engulfed in the nets folds.

This fish was immaculate from nose to tail, and it's with a hint of confidence that I say it is very unlikely that it has ever been caught before, as the stretch of canal I was fishing is really out there, overgrown and the one resident that lives there says he has never seen another angler bar myself fishing thereabouts for many years.

And this is what brings me to my quandary! For whatever effort you might apply, is one possibly never before caught, picture perfect perch around two pounds, enough to make your time a success. Because weirdly I feel right now that this was one of the purest captures I have made in a long time. Saying that, it may have felt different if I hadn't have walked away immediately after the capture due to the lack of light. I dare say I would have greedily thrashed the water to foam to probably catch one a quarter of its size if had had only another half an hour of light.

Churlish chubbing.

I am envious of people who live in countries where it actually gets cold enough for their local waters to freeze sufficiently for them to ice fish. Here in the UK when our waters ice up it's little more than a cursed inconvenience, as the ice never gets more than a few inches thick and you yourself would be thick if you even stuck so much as a foot on it. In the likes of the US, Canada and northern Europe it seems they most years freeze up with enough thickness of ice that you can actually drive trucks and some quite large trucks at that, whereas all our ice is any good for is keeping us at home doing flipping chores.

The reason I moan is as you may have guessed the general lack of liquid water after a couple of weeks of low temps. Now I know people will thinking 'well what about the rivers' and I know it might seem churlish for me to say that right now I am not really feeling the flow of the river. It sounds even more churlish when I say that for the last few years I've been not that bothered by chub fishing even though it's probably the only source of reliable winter fishing.

In truth right now all I seem to be able to think about or fancy doing is lure fishing, hence the envy levied at those lucky enough to be able to drive onto, drill a hole and fish a jig under the ice. My envy aside I did actually get out fishing once some time off work finally came round, and even though I was intending to go chub fishing using some more classical tactics I can't deny that I did have a drop shot rod residing in my quiver. 

The heavy frost was still clinging to the world when I pulled off the road, and looking across the field towards the Avon I could see nothing else had set foot in this field as yet. It wasn't this field that drew me though, but instead one down a path and across a few ditches that really seemed right for today. So after navigating two frozen mud filled ditches I found myself looking across another field from behind a barbed wire fence. It should be worth saying at this point that this particular field has caused me a few headaches before by way of its inhabitants. You see for a large part of the year it is used as grazing for a group of horses and in the past those horses have been a little too inquisitive for my liking. Don't get me wrong I am not feared of our equine friends, but when I am keeping low down close to the river the last thing I want is a few hundred pounds of pony sniffing around me or a harras of them hurtling round the field which let me say has happened in the past. Largely my problem lies with this particular group and the fact that they seem not to interact particularly well with me.

Anyway as I stood looking into the pasture it seemed I might have been in luck and not a single colt, mare or stud could be seen within the boundaries of the field. That was quite literally until I cocked my leg to step over the barbed wire fence, whereupon the ground began to rumble and the ice in the ditch cracked as two huge stallions appeared from nowhere and charged within feet of me steaming snorting and braying like the devils own steeds. Still frozen on the spot half cocked over the fence I watched as they proceeded to do tight circles in front of me before beginning to buck like broncos shot in the ass with a cattle prod. There was literally more chance of me winning the lottery than me going into that field after that kind of display. So I did the only thing I could and uncocked my leg, waded back through the ditches and went back down the path towards the certainly vacant yet all together poorer fishing field.

In the end I found myself perched rather precariously on a vertical bank fishing what I can only describe as a spasmodically productive run. It's a cracking looking spot where the main flow is pushed onto into a narrow shallow gravel run by a massive reed bed. At the end of the run which was for the record just a bit further upstream than myself the water suddenly deepens off as it collides with a overhanging tree. Between me and the flow it is just a big eddy where some of the deflected water heads back up river to be sucked back into the flow. It really is one of those swims when you have to make the right cast or it just doesn't happen. There is a hole in the overhanging branches just before the tree that's in the water and if your under arm cast doesn't get caught up on its way in, your bait ends up making bottom right under the mat of debris.

For the longest time I used to try and fish this swim on a tight line, but I soon figured that by using a weight that only just held bottom and by paying out a small bow of line, I could actually get the bait to get dragged right under the snags by the current. Once I discovered this my catches from this swim went from the odd fish to multiple catches

So, first cast I leant forward on my seat and fired the rig into the gap better than I had ever done before. I paid a bit of line and put the rod in the rests. For once I'd got the weight to flow ratio spot on first time and periodically I could see the weight hold position for a short while until the flow dislodged it. Then out of the blue my rod tip nodded twice before springing back and that where I struck into my first chub. Sadly my reel didn't feel much like paying out any line and somewhere as I fiddled with the clutch the first one got free. I thought that was the end of it in all honesty, but after giving the swim a bit of time to settle down whilst I farted around in the eddy with the drop shot rod I again chanced a cast. Lo and behold I was right to stick around as the next tootle through the rod banged over as long lean chub engulfed the bait. It was as that fish recovered in the net that I realized that I had forgotten to pack my camera and thus my only option for a photo was crappy phone snaps today.

I knew I would end up regretting forgetting my camera and I wasn't that wrong either, as even in the bright sun the chub were up for a feeding. After landing a couple of small black tail chub  I found a third and final better fish hiding right at the end of the snags which after a particularity dirty fight, found its way into the net.

All in all it ended up being a successful little outing, and even though it wasn't what I really wanted to be out doing it actually was quite satisfying to see that even though I have neglected both the river and chub of late, my skills and knowledge are as good as ever. Saying that if the temperatures stay high for a while I think I will get my actually be able to get onto a few waters I've been dying to fish that have been off the menu due to their generally frozen nature, and if not well maybe I will chance those wild horses for a cast in the other field.