23rd and 24th January and a good few chub and bone fish.

I had decided (the wife really )decorating would be on the agenda for the last 10 days or so. Looking at the weather it wasn’t such a bad idea as the fishing would have been poor. At times I felt like a decorating slave! Decorating and cleaning cars are a couple of jobs that never motivates me.

Never mind I notched up a load of brownie points!

 

The wife’s back on the warpath again. She was up for making a sex movie last night, and all I did was suggest we should hold auditions for her part.

Good job she doesn’t read this blog!!!!!!!lol

So the 23rd I ventured out to a swim on the Bristol Avon that holds a good few chub to just over 4lbs. I had finished the painting and had cleared up by noon and was let out for the rest of the afternoon for good behavior. It was overcast and snow kept falling on and off for most of the day. The level reading for the height of the river had been stable for quite some time at 0.45m so that was good enough for me. The snow hadn’t melted and the frost would have cleared the river.

Arriving at 2pm I wasn’t the least bit surprised to see I was the only person out fishing as the temperature was around zero.

The swim I chose has a high bank on one side with some tree cover and a gravel run which is about 4ft deep. The chub lay up close to the vertical bank where there is less flow. It’s a great swim summer and winter swim in fact if you were Bob James you could fish it 365 days each year!

There is a comfortable shingle beach on the near bank to sit on too.

What I wanted to do was try a short hook length swimfeeder rig that I had been working on. Out went the rig with the hook link length about 2″ . After 3 casts I had a take that resulted in the chub taking me into some roots very very quickly. Unfortunately I had to pull for a break and lost the entire rig. On tying another rig I somehow had forgotten to put in a very important rig component. So that was it I couldn’t continue with the feeder rig. I had put in my 15ft Hardy Marksman float rod so all was not lost.

I started to fire out via a catapult some red maggots whilst I attached the float shot, and hooklink to the line. I used a little chubber float which runs through the swim just right. The faster flow was under the rod tip so mending the line to enable the float to run through without any drag is very important.

Well soon as the float drifted through the swim a few times it shot under and the strike was met with solid resistance and a chub pulling back. It was quite a good fight in the stronger winter river flow and using it to it’s advantage. But with few places of danger for the chub to charge off into  I could take my time.

Soon the chub of about 4lbs lay in the bottom of the net. It’s not often down the in the south west of England we get snow so it was a bonus to have some in this photo.

 

So no blanking for me I was thinking as I continued to catapult out more maggots.

I carried on fishing and catching chub of between 2-3 lbs every 20mins or so. It was wonderful to get a bend in the rod on a regular basis.

The day was drawing to an end and the wind blew a chilly blast from the east straight in my face. The wind cut through any gaps in the clothing making it feel uncomfortable at times. However who cares when you are catching.

 

So I finished the day with a warm glow of success! Combined with the fine smell of a very fishy net in the car, or as I say to the wife “The sweet smell of success” when she grumbles about the stench.

Unfortunately during the evening I had to cancel a guided trip to the D.Stour for the weekend due to the river rising very fast and bursting it’s banks.

The next day was even cooler than the previous day. I only wanted to have a short session after the chub again using the feeder method. On arriving at the river it was certainly carrying  more colour and height as the snow had continued to melt. Guess what after a couple hours nothing came along.

I then tried with the float rod again. However the response was exactly the same, something must have changed. The wind was colder than the previous day too which didn’t help things.

All was not lost as I caught a bone fish and a pb at that.

I even tried bread flake and trotting that through too but nothing. There was just about 1 hour left before dusk so I decided to move to a banker swim and try ledgering bread flake.

The sun setting in the winters late afternoon was truly spectacular. So was the speed of the temperature dropping. A family of longtailed tits flitted around the underside of branches and twigs looking for supper I guess, it must be difficult for them to survive this weather.

I had a couple of last casts like you normally do. At one I saw a slight tremble on the rod tip. So hence another last cast. Just as well I did really as a little chub of about 2lbs saved the day and no blanks.

As I walked back to the car the blood raced through my frozen body again I felt warmer. The gauge on the car told me that the temperature was -3c and it’s predicted to be the lowest of the winter so far.

I think the rivers will be in flood as heavy rain is forecast for the weekend. So it will need to be perching next week.