Double-Ended *****

Wednesday 25th November, 16:15 - 20:00. Stratford Weirs. Cool and windy, occasional shower.

Please excuse the title. The missing word is 'blank', literally. It's just I get such a kick from seeing the search terms people have used to land on this blog I thought I'd ramp it up a bit. The best so far is 'dogging at Ryton pools'.

I think the post below was at the root of this;
Double-ended is also completely meaningless in the context of this trip.

Pete and I arrived at Stratford after work at about four o'clock. We fed sack-fulls of pound coins to the parking machines with the endless appetites and headed to the weirs.

The sluice on the main weir was shut but there was an energy to the river which looked about 2ft up. It was a lovely colour too, and the mist from the weirs smelled fresh.

I fished a maggot feeder filled with reds which was dipped in a pot of sweet liquor before each cast to add some aroma to the stream.

I cast just off the main flow of the weir where there was still about 6ft depth.

52.185052, -1.706414

Debris was not a real problem and my rig was coming back clean but I didn't have a bite all evening.

It now looks like the big Chub from the previous day was all my luck at once rather than an omen of things to come.

Pete fished for Barbel a bit further downstream and had a Bream and a baby Barbel about 3/4 lb which was really cute.

So cute in fact that I've had to blank Pete's face out of the photo. The contrast the two photographic elements created generated an electromagnetic charge the Large Hadron Collider could be proud of. Unedited the energy from these polar objects would have warped your PC monitor and threatened all other metallic objects within a ten mile range.


This image is now safe for humans to view;


What do you reckon, three years old?
It's the first time I've seen a fish of this size from the Avon and it is a good sign. It still has a long way to go before it becomes too large a meal for either a Pike and more probably a Zander though.

After we'd packed up and walked back to the car park we stood around and chatted for a while at the back of the cars with the boots open for light. Within ten minutes a police car turned up and pulled alongside to see what we were up to. Amazingly we convinced them we were not malcontents, ably assisted by headlamps and fishing attire. They bid us good evening and left us in peace. Whether we'd been spotted on CCTV or it was just a routine patrol I don't know but it made me feel much better about the hundred weight of pound coins I've put into the parking machines this year. I like it when I see the Police doing a good job but still felt a bit guilty even though we hadn't done anything wrong!

Cheers.