The bite on the H.Avon that caused me so much pain.

Andy had been fishing the H.Avon a little over the last few weeks and we agreed that I would speed up his learning process by showing him a few swims that I’ve had some success. We arrived not early as we wanted to walk a few stretches and feed a few swims to see what fish were at home.

The river was very low and perhaps the lowest I had seen it for a while. The weed growth is minimal this year and we know that weed in the water does help hold up the flow and increase the depth.

We baited one swim with hemp and then moved upstream 400m to another swim. Here we saw a couple of chub in a small near bank pool. Normally there are 10 chub or so up to 6lbs, however with little weed to hide when running for cover I wasn’t surprised.

I baited with a couple of droppers of hemp and pellets. We wandered upstream to look at a couple of other chub. Nothing of any size though.

On our return the chub were feeding on the bait. I said to Andy it would be rude not to have a fish for them. I cast out with a pellet back leaded to keep the line on the river bed. The chub moved back in and I stood back from the rod with the reel in bait runner mode as there was no cover to hide my silhouette. As I stood there like a “coiled spring” the rod bent around and the free spool was running. As I jumped to get to the rod I heard a ripping noise and felt my calf muscle give away. I limped to the rod “spring broken” and landed a small chub of a couple of pounds.

Andy was laughing at my predicament and said about my face telling a story. The last laugh was on me as he had to carry all the tackle back to the car. I was walking like an old bloke, suppose I am really…….

I still fished and showed him some swims for the rest of the day. We didn’t catch anything much because I just couldn’t walk very far. By 8pm the pain was such that I couldn’t fish any longer. What would take me 5 minutes to walk back to the car it took the best part of 30 minutes. Ouch!

Andy did some of the driving and leaving him with about 14 miles to drive home every time I used the clutch the pain was so severe it was unbelievable. I came home using 2nd and 6th gear.

I didn’t tell Mrs P. until I arrived home. She had to pretty much carry me into the house once I had got out the car.

So not the best of sessions.