A very minor success

Waiting for the screamer

Sunday was the last day of January, and with doubles in Oct, Nov and December, I was sort of hoping I could make it four months with doubles. With the Severn up to the rim, I decided to do a repeat Avon trip, hoping for the same peg as two days previously.

Heavy rain had swelled the river to almost three feet on, loads of colour, and it looked very inviting, but the water temp had dropped to 8.3c, so more than a degree down. I had the pleasure of bumping into Lee Poultney, author of the excellent 'Fishy Business' blog, who lives nearby, and we had an interesting chat about the river. He settled a few swims downstream, with another angler visiting the venue for the first time further up.

The only fish of the day

I opted for my usual boilie and meat approach, this time employing a feeder on the boilie rod, following a few drops of hemp when I arrived at the swim. Things proved very slow though, as I thought they might, and Lee downstream had already moved swims. I had my only bite of the session at around 4.30pm, on the meat rod....a barbel, but not big by any means, probably about the five pound mark. I switched both rods to meat after the fish, with meat seeming to be the only bait that would work, but it was in vain, and I ended the session with just that single barbel. Lee, downstream, suffered a blank, but the young chap upstream managed two, including a lovely 12lb fish, which broke his PB.....at least one of us had a memorable day!

Blankety blanks

a good looking WA, but threw me a blank

I managed to fit two short(ish) sessions in last weekend, my first trips for a couple of weeks due to the cold snap. Both on the Warks Avon, with the temperature slowly rising, and by Monday evening, the water temperature was back up to an impressive 8.1c, which was a rise of a whole degree on the previous days session.

Unfortunately, no one told the barbel that they were supposed to be feeding, and both sessions proved fruitless.

The second session, on Monday, was on a section of the Lower river that has produced good fish for me before, the one interesting thing about the session though was that the angler at the downstream end of the stretch hooked a catfish, which he had on for more than an hour. I stood behind him for a while, and the guy just simply couldn't do anything with the fish at all, it certainly wasn't a barbel, nor a carp, so a big moggy was all it could be. I knew they were there, but that's the first time I've ever seen one hooked!

It's bloody freezing!

Been a while since my last post on here now, and this is a very quick update. At present, there's snow on the ground, and the temperature is around 2c, with water temps on our rivers somewhere between 4-5c, so not conducive to barbel fishing at all. I'm not sure when my next trip will be, but it won't be until we have a marked rise in temperatures.

A fine 11.15

The last two months, and December in particular, have been good to me however, and my seasons tally of doubles now stand at six! All of these fish have been Warks Avon specimens, the Severn is still not keen to offer me any of her doubles. The best of these was an 11.15 I took on a boilie at Fladbury, but I also had a 10.15, and a 10.3 from the same venue. The temps in December were quite incredible, some days touching 15c, with water temps up in double figures, quite something. Since then though, things have settled to more normal winter temps, but I'm hoping February will have something more to offer.

Ive got the last two weeks of the season off work, so hopefully some big fat backend barbel will grace my landing net. At least, that's the plan.