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.

Sassy sargents and river crocs.

Being on a new stretch of the Warks Avon this year has been amazing so far. So many of my angling buddies recommended this club to me the over past few years, only for me to never follow their advice and truthfully I could kick myself for waiting so long to get on it. The Barbel fishing when the conditions have been right has been amazing and the few chub I've caught has me almost willing the freezing winter upon us. It's the predators I have on my mind right now, specifically the question of whether there are any big perch lingering around in the slacks of the weirs or quiet backwaters.

So the other day I headed off into a freezing morning to fish lobworms in the deep waters I hoped might hold a big perch or two. Overnight rain made me hedge my bets and take along some stinky flavored meat to fish on a barbel rod as well, just in case. After a quick cast on a deep swim on the way up to weir to see if a big old chub might be tempted to take a single offering which I rolled into a snaggy hidy hole, I went off to my main target area, the weir at the top of the stretch.

Surprisingly although I have chucked all sorts of lures into this weir I have never actually caught a single perch so far. The lobworms I had brought along though I felt sure would root out something with stripes and whilst doing that I planned to put out a big smelly bait right into the head of the weir thinking maybe a chub, barbel or even carp might find it.

The perch weren't hard to find and not long after casting the split worm hook bait into an eddy over the other side the rod tip started to rattle as small perch homed in on the bait. At least ten small perch grabbed the bait and got hooked before finally a bigger example of 1.6lb found the worm to tempting and pulled the rod tip right over.

The meat rod did one single bite all morning, which was a sitter of a bite I still can't quite believe I didn't hook up on. I am not a massive fan of upstream ledgering and I think that went against me in this case. I know you're technically meant to wait for a drop back of the rod tip. On this occasion, the rod tip jerked forward and for a moment I hesitated to hit the bite and in doing so missed it. 

Once the sun really got up into the sky the perch bites justs dried up. I had anticipated this might happen and already had plan B ready to go by way of a bag of dead baits in my rucksack. Soon enough I made my way back down towards the backwater which was almost static and looked certain to hold some predators like pike and hopefully perch.

With the banks lined with cover the swim I decided to fish had to hold a few predators and after a mooch around, I soon found a croc holding motionless near some snags...

I couldn't find any perch at all in this deeper static water, but the pike were like buses and after waiting for a little over twenty minutes, two came along one after another. The first was a small jack of maybe three pounds which I left in the net waiting for a picture whilst I recast another roach dead bait into the far margin. As I was setting up the camera the rod was away again and bigger and much more spritely pike ripped around the swim. With no choice but to try and net the fish with a fish already in the net, I went for it. The first pike though was having none of it and shot out of the net at the first opportunity and denied me a brace shot.

The next and final pike encounter of the session came as I searched the cover for a perch. After covering every bit of cover or snag in the entire swim with a popped up lobworm bait, I finally cast it to the last bit of cover on the right-hand side of my own bank. I'd barely had time to tighten down onto the lead before the rod whacked over. Lord above I wanted it to be a perch as it felt big, but I suspected I was into a chub. That was until it powerfully surged off just like a pike and I realised this was going to be one of those fights that might end badly for me with me four-pound line. I did my very best letting the fish get away with anything it wanted on a lightly set clutch. Ultimately it was on a matter of time before the fish inevitably turned onto that light line with its sharp teeth, which it did leaving my line flowing in the wind and me packing up to go home.

Not quite as easy as one, two, three.

I have often thought myself and Barbus barbus are like two positively charged ions, we seem to repel one another! After a few fruitless forays and a shove by a good friend in the right direction I think I might be becoming a bit more of a negative in this dynamic, and in doing so me and my old adversary might actually seem to be a little more attracted to each other. Not that I was never attracted to them, more that anything that could go wrong, would go wrong when I tried to catch one. 

My first session on this venue was disaster, my second was somewhat less so; on that second session I did at least come in contact with a barbel if only briefly... In an awkward swim where the best place to cast was just out of reach I persevered fishing a small mat formed around a trailing willow branch, and after numerous chub-like rattles on the rod tip I got the now sacred three foot twitch. After hitting and holding, the fish swung quickly out into the flow and then equally quickly back, ending up well and truly stuck in snag. I will go on record as saying this was the sweetest lost fish I have ever had in my life as after trying every trick I know, from slackening off, changing the angle and trying to pull through, the dull thumping on the end of my line stopped. I hate having that feeling that I have left a fish possibly tethered and would rather never catch another fish in my life than leave one caught up. With great sorrow I concluded my only option was to pull for the break and hope that my free running rig would drop off the soon to be broken line.

The one thing I did discover in this crappy situation was how good the integrity of my rig was, when the drooping willow branch soon started to move under the strain of my locked up clutch. Then low and behold, the lead appeared followed by my hook link. The joy at finding the fish had got off in the snag was what made that loss so sweet, and soon enough an ounce an half of lead flying through the air had me diving into the undergrowth.

My next session I fished a recently vacated swim down stream of the snag swim. I knew there was fish in the area as Baz had landed four from the every swim earlier in the afternoon. Knots checked, I cast out towards the opposite bank and waited. It's hard to sit on your hands when some very determined chub are plucking your pellets so hard that you're getting bites that would normally be manna in the winter. But hard as it was I waited and sure enough after a while the rod buckled over as a barbel turned off bait in mouth.

Personally I feel that in the first few moments of a barbel fight you can never know how big a barbel is, as they all go like stink on that savage first run and this one was no different. With my rod held low and maximum pressure, that first run was subdued and a sprightly spirited barbel came out into the safety of the main flow. Truthfully I could not have cared if it was three or thirteen pounds as it crossed the net because for me, getting that barbel jinx off my back is the hardest thing every year. It did turn out to only be a little one but I can truthfully say it was one of the most satisfying.

After that first one I didn't have to wait long for the next bite either, though how I turned a proper 'fish on' bite into striking into thin air I don't know. That didn't matter as my next cast again hit that sweet spot a foot off the willow leaves, and my third bite came moments later from a powerful near six pound fish which took me on a merry dance around the swim.

Whether six fish out of the same swim in one day was too much pressure or whether the fish actually came out of the snag and into open water as dark fell, I couldn't say, but weirdly the activity dropped off as the bats appeared in the night sky. I did not care at all as the monkey was well and truly off my back and I could now start enjoying my barbel fishing properly.

If I wasn't keen enough to return a few days later I nearly boiled over when a couple of decent downpours topped up the river. After watching a small spike appear on the Environment agency graph it looked like the Avon might for once be in the right condition when I arrived.

When I first saw the river in the half light I could just see the normally highly visible fronds of weed were at least half obscured by the clearing water, as I headed back to the previously highly productive area. Sadly though after an hour and a half of perseverance I had only had a few lack lustre chub nibbles. Not wanting to waste good time in a swim which I was convinced should have produced quite quickly, I upped sticks to fish another swim I had my eye on.

With my bait comfortably cast to an over hanging tree on the inside edge I thought it might take a while for a bite to emerge, so I set about knocking up a few more PVA bags of pellets. Yes and you've guessed it, the moment I began twisting that first bag ready for knotting, the rod was rammed around. I wasn't sure if it was a mad-ass chub or a barbel as the bite was so vicious, but the initial fight was not too savage. Then as the fish vibrated upstream the line fell slack. Undeterred I quickly finished making a few bags before recasting, but no others materialised.

Now I found myself in a quandary; should I stick it out in a known hot spot or take my chances upstream in the shallow but coloured water? A week prior to this I had walked all through the shallows checking out possible holes to fish, and save a few blasé chub and pike it seemed rather lifeless, but I knew some of the snags held barbel and this colour might have inclined them from there hidey holes. This might be my best opportunity to take advantage of the coloured water. So I took a chance and went off to search them out rather than wait for them to find me.

I ended up fishing a  jungle of a swim I had clocked out the previous week. The main flow of the river gets channelled into a rip right down the centre of the river by a jutting reed bed on which I was sat and a very extensive bit of cover on the opposite bank. At the start of the over hanging willow was very shallow but from what I had seen previously it deepened off under the cover and ended in a big slack behind it.

The river here is so narrow I could just about swing my rig into place and almost cushion its landing as it went in, it was that close. In a way its an awkward swim to fish with extra water in the river, as my line was cutting straight through the main flow and my bait had ended up just at the end of the cover on the crease formed by the fast water and the slack meeting. My hope was that any of the fish that I assumed normally were tight under cover might be either out in the deeper water, or may move in and out of it looking for passing food in the faster water.

There was certainly some small fish topping in the eddy behind the trees and they were even quite interested in my baits initially, but soon enough all went quiet. The rig was holding so rather than recast I held fast and waited. After about half an hour my phone rang and it turned out to be one of my little brothers calling for a chat. I automatically use my left hand to hold my phone when I am fishing and thank god I do as a few minutes into our conversation my rod jumped forward a foot as an attached barbel dived under the cover. Squealing like a little girl that I had a fish on and would call him back, I tossed my phone over my shoulder hopefully onto the ground and applied maximum pressure to try and extract the fish from under the willows.

Finally after a real tug of war, I spotted a flash of colour at the edge of the over hanging trees before I watched the vague shape of a barbel glide out into the main flow then dive back towards the cover, stripping line off my reel. This turned out to be this fishes major tactic. Three or four more times it did the same before settling deep down in the main current just holding head down. Careful patience won the day though and a big rubbery mouth soon appeared just off my waiting net.

With the fish safe and recuperating in a convenient notch in the reeds I went about looking for my abandoned phone, which I found standing straight up in the mud and still saying I was still on the line with my brother. After establishing he had long rung off I began trying to calm down and get everything in place to sort the fish out. She certainly had recovered and was a little lively to say the least. But lucky for me I had my Korum sling mat with me all wet and ready to cradle her.

I was well over the moon to catch such a lovely lump of a fish from such a tiny and intimate swim. She even acquitted her self amiably whilst I carefully did some self takes before holding her in the flow and watching her slide across the flow back under the trees into her snaggy home.