The Sun is in the Sky, Oh Why Oh Why Would I Wanna be Anywhere Else?

At long last I have been able to say good morning to people with some real conviction, the awful Winter we have all endured seemingly loosening its icy grip, flowering bluebells and snowdrops adorn the countryside with the Daffodils sure to follow suit soon and the earliest lambs are in the fields. While it may be premature to suggest that Spring has sprung it is certainly in the process of springing.

Fields of white greeted me when I drew back the curtains on Sunday morning, a real disappointment given that we had dodged a frost the previous night, and hopes of giant barbel evaporated immediately while the likelihood of catching anything seemed slim.

Phil picked me up at noon and pointed his van in the direction of the river Avon where we knew Denny was already fishing. On arrival Phil set up at the weir to fish meat and lobworms some thirty yards above Denny who had two meat rods, below him I was tackling up to fish a float with maggots on the big deep bend.


Overnight temperatures of a reported minus six meant for little initial action, Denny moved into the weir peg, Phil moved downstream to fish a long shallow glide and I put my float rod aside in order to fish a feeder in the nearside slack water.


At almost exactly 3pm (with the day at it's warmest) it was as if someone had thrown a switch, having missed a good pull the cast before I suddenly found myself attached to a deep bodied chub which fought well having got into the fast water before succumbing to the net. At more or less the same time Phil was landing a chub of about a pound and Denny missed a wrap round on meat.


From this point on I was getting a bite of some sort on each cast and was fishing three maggots on the hook in an attempt to sort out the bigger fish, soon I was into another hard fighting fish which, happily, turned out to be a perch. It has been too long since I last encountered a decent perch they are extremely handsome fish.

Super Job !

I weighed and photographed the two fish while we still had some sunlight the chub went three and a half and the perch was one and a half, then I got back to the fishing and was soon rewarded with a bream of about two and a half pounds which would have made a nice addition to the photo had it put in an appearance sooner.

As darkness started to descend the off switch was apparently thrown as the bites ceased as suddenly as they had begun and we packed with the air quickly becoming icy cold again. Phil had to make do with the one fish although he did get a few bites late on when changing to maggot and Denny had missed a further two bites on meat.

Footnote: Having finally shown my fishing camera a bit of tlc and treated it to a set of new batteries I am once again able to adorn these pages with a selection of badly taken photographs.