8-9th November Hampshire Avon

I’m staying down in Hampshire for a family holiday and unfortunately the fishing gear seems to have jumped into the back of the car. To be fair I normally fish for a few hours at dusk on some of the area’s that I intend to fish during the winter, as this gives me some idea on the situation in each swim. If you remember I visited a few places in the summer and found a few chub that might just beat my 7lb target for the river.

The river is at the lowest level that I’ve ever seen it. The level is down a good foot or so.

I fished one of these swims on the 8th for a few hours and had practically no action other than a few tugs from an eel or two. Even though there were some chub in the swim. I had baited the swim with hemp and a pike was crashing through it taking advantage of the gathering of fish and easy feeding.

The next late afternoon session was on a swim where there are always a good few chub with a few fish that might just meet my target. Again I baited with hemp and a few free offerings of the boilie I’ve been using via the dropper and left the swim for the chub to get their heads down.

Whilst this was going on I wandered off down stream to feed a few chub lazily swimming in the crease by some slack water. I tried feeding them with some bread flake, however they were really spooky and took a few pieces and then took off to safer places. The low water didn’t help I’m sure.

Soon returning to the original swim I could see a few chub feeding on the bait I had put in.

I had altered the end tackle just a little and put a 3ft length of ESP braid and a size 10 hook. These chub are fished for quite a bit and I wanted to give them a little more line before they felt the weight and bolted.

At about 4pm the sun was very low in the sky I had that sharp pull on the tip then it wrapped around and I lifted into a good chub. The fight was not spectacular, because I think in most due to the low flow of the river. Soon I had the chub in the net.

It looked big and by this I mean it has a good girth right down to the vent. Normally these deep fish are the bigger ones. I know it sounds stupid to say this but often the chub on the Bristol Avon don’t have this girth going down most of it’s body.

So on the scales it went 6lbs 3oz and another 6lber from the H.Avon.

I fished on for a 1.5 hrs but nothing else came along other than the welcome rain. Well it wasn’t welcomed at the present time as I didn’t have my umbrella.

Going to fish a different swim tomorrow evening one where a 8lb chub has come out this season a few times. Just keeping my fingers crosssed.