An afternoon on the Avon.

fullcreel · #1 02-28-2010, 07:07 PM

With foul weather forcast, we were a little concerned about this session, we had to go ahead, as the Lady Claudia had purchased out tickets for the Avon at Lords walk, so we had to honour our commitment.
The forcast heavy rain and hurricane force winds chose to miss out on us, which were grateful for, but as there was rain in the air when we left, we had both left our beloved cane at home, due to line sticking to cane, and fished with carbon instead. Not the same sensation when playing a fish but good enough, also there are plenty of dog walkers and other creatures on the bank, although there was an extremely attractive raven haired lady walking a silly dog thing towards the end of the day.
On to the fishing.
I set myself up on one of thebends, with a sluice almost opposite, this was intentional as the roaring of the sluice helped to mute the sound of traffic along the a303.

With the river carrying some extra water, first rod I set up was a feeder rod, to whcih I added some extra weight. The wind and light rain made things awkward to begin with, so I set up my trrusted brolly, I was screened but it would make float fishing difficult.
First cast was not so good, but others improved and I was soon getting my feeders in a nice spot just upstream of the brances of the tree in the pic. I had a nice rattling bite and for a moment had something quite nice on, but sadly it threw the hook. A few moments later I had a nice drop back, and to my dismay, a few moments later the hook also came out, new hooks, very sharp, just not my day.
This happened once more, then I finally I got the thrid in, a nice brown trout, so no blank. I lost another fish, before setting up a float rod. The rain had ceased and there was some very thin sunshine, and the wind also dropped, although it never quite went away.
I managed another trought on the float, this was in close, probably the result of a couple of bait droppers of maggies. Heres the trout, very nice markings and a good scrapper.

A little while later, I had a gentle bite, and a firm strike got me into the Lady of the Stream, my main reason for comming here. I failed to catch a grayling last year and was chuffed to catch one, a hard fighting specimen too.

I managed a couple of smaller grayling and another trout, but the wind was quite biting, and I wandered downstream to trot a pleasant glide, which had a small amount of shelter, and I was rewarded with a dace, another fish I did not land last year. so more points.
My dace, the light was fading so apologies for the poor camera work.

JP also had a dace, which he thought was a PB, so we both left with a Pb, 2 for JP, (grayling, for both and dace for JP. Shame we don't get bonus points.
JP's PB dace.