Hampshire Avon with Andy (should have been here yesterday Andy)

I’m so far behind with my blog’s as I’ve been on holiday for two weeks to Gran Canaria which was excellent. I was pushing the boat out by fishing Blagdon on the Thursday and then fishing with Andy on the H.Avon the day before flying out.

The Blagdon trip went well and I was hoping this trip would too. I arrived a little later than Andy, and i found him ledgering with a feeder. There were plenty of chub taking the maggots but not the ones on the hook. I wasn’t surprised as the river was about the lowest and clearest I had seen it before. The sun was still blazing down in mid September.

I started by fishing a swim where I could see a few barbel however it was the chub that I was really interested in. Out went red maggots and hemp via a bait dropper. It wasn’t long before the chub were lining up taking the bait. I even had barbel feeding a little further downstream.

John McGough was looking around on the far bank and it was great to catch up with what was happening on the river as I hadn’t seen him for some time. He didn’t spy any barbel but saw a huge salmon in a pool in front of me. However he was on a high bank and my position did allow me to peer into the water.

I was fishing the feeder and cast out while John was on the phone and bingo first cast saw a chub take the bait two red maggots on 3lb line and size 18 hook. The chub fought very well and tried to get into cover on the far bank a few times however the line held well and soon a good chub lay in the net. It looked a good size so I got Andy to come down to photo it for me.

On the scales just under 5lbs

So in the end it went 4lbs 14oz still a nice fish.

4lbs 14oz

John had told us of a place downstream that had produced some good chub so Andy and I thought we would give it another 30 mins or so and then go down to have a look.

In that 30 minutes Andy landed a nice chub around 4lbs and a grayling. For me the chub didn’t come back into the swim which is a surprise really as normally you can extract a few from this swim.

One of about 4lbs

We arrived at the spot which John had told us about and someone was fishing there. So we headed downstream again to another spot John had suggested and sure enough we found 6 chub on a gravel patch with one of them being quite large certainly over 6lbs. We put some bait out and watched them start to feed, however there was too much weed around for us to use our light tackle approach and they would need to be left for another day.

We wandered back up and fished a couple of swims that had chub in them however nothing came along. With the river being low and clear it’s very difficult to tempt them until darkness.

So that was me done I needed to be back home to pack ready for the holiday.