It's tough out there

Despite the showers, I spent the afternoon and evening on two rivers. First stop was a visit to the Warks Avon. With all the rain you might have expected a bit of colour and extra water. However, it was still gin clear and had risen all of a few inches. With this in mind my attack consisted of rolling meat in a fast glide. This method normally throws up a fish quickly if it's actually going to work so after 20 uneventful minutes I allowed the bait to settle and got the lure rod out the bag. There were no follows on the lure rod but the line did start peeling off my other setup. A strike hit a fish, well an eel! I then cast a pellet into a likely looking area and waited. Eventually, a chub of about 3lb rewarded my patience. I then chatted to a chap who was carrying out repairs following acts of vandalism by anglers at the weekend: broken trees, loads of litter and the remains of a fire. I wish such people would do us a favour and stay at home.

I then relocated to the lower Severn. I was still hoping I could tempt a barbel. I put a bed of bait down and was willing to sit it out until about 11pm. I had a few chucks of the lure and had a small pike hit but I failed to hook it. Then I settled into my peg. The downstream rod was placed over the bed of bait. Apart from a few taps, it remained unmolested for 5 hours. I used a groundbait feeder upstream and this at least gave me some sport with several bream of about 4lb adding to my Avon fish.

A pretty rare sighting but this is exactly what I saw

It wasn't the result I had dreamed of but it's pretty tough at the moment with low and clear rivers in these parts. Perhaps if I stayed longer into dark then a barbel may have appeared but I was knackered so had to call it quits. I did see a badger at close quarters, which makes a change from only seeing them lying at the roadside. I also had a pair of strange looking birds make their way across the sky on the far bank. They turned out to be Great White Egrets and their sighting represented a first for me. I won't be fishing for around a week so hopefully my absence will see a bit of water in our rivers and some better catches to report.