Been fairly busy over the last week or so and angling has taken a bit of a back seat. However yesterday late afternoon I decided to venture out onto the Bristol Avon in search of chub. I have found a swim that contains some better size chub probably close to 6lbs. I arrived in the pouring rain to find that the swim was free. I fed one part of the swim and could see the chub coming out and feeding on the pellets. Then the river started to colour up from the rain we had earlier in the day so my favourite method of sight fishing literally faded away.

Nothing came along so I decided to rest the swim for a while. I spotted Paddy in the distance and decided to have a natter to him as I hadn’t seen him since June. We spent a good 30 minutes talking and catching up on what has been happening on the Bristol Avon.

Then I bumped into the bailiff whom I hadn’t met for quite some time. Then I had several phone calls and business to take care of so it took ages before I recast.

It didn’t take long before the tip whipped around and I landed a nice chub of just over 4lbs. From the markings on it was one I had caught last week.

So all in all I probably fished for about 1 hr, however it was good to be back out again.

My mate Andy Cowley has been out shark fishing last week after many cancellations. Well he had a super result. This is what he said.

Had an amazing shark trip with 33 blues in the boat, about 8 of 100lbs and over, although none measured this time and all estimated by the skipper. I had 40, 80, 80, 90, 100, 140lbs -ish. The 140 was the biggest of the day and a new PB for me.
Stunning weather all day and flat calm, I think even you would have been ok! Saw several sunfish including one, probably 80lbs or so, right next to the boat. I should have some fantastic video of it so hopefully can pull some good stills off it. Also shark around the boat, chasing baits, dolphins etc so looking forward to seeing it later.

Sun fish

Great white..... not quite

Nice shark

A great photo

So he had an amazing day out. I wish I had sea legs!!!!!!

I’m a lucky birthday boy today, so no fishing for me.

My next session on Thursday is guiding on the Wye. It’s low and clear at the moment so I’m hoping for a little rain to colour the river up a little.

Well it was time to get back on the river again, this time with a friend John. I know he was really looking forward to the trip. However I got the call from him on Sunday morning to say that he had done his back in……Where……..in the pub. Now this is the second time this […]

I hadn’t been fishing the Bristol Avon too much recently. Since the start of the season the river has been up and down like a Weston Super Mare donkey as we say around here. However with the sun of the previous week and the important dry spell the river was still pushing through but the […]

What is it about fishing. One session you can fill your boots and have a a couple of “red letter days” then the sun comes out for a few days and things go completely downhill. Paul and his son Alex had wanted to catch a few tench and a good few weeks ago we agreed […]

Andy and Paul had contacted me back in early spring asking whether it was possible if I could arrange a few days barbel fishing on the Wye. They had been fishing the Severn recently without much success, well not exactly true Andy had been struggling. Paul is a very accomplished carp fisherman and had seldom […]

The difficulty in fishing the Courtfield stretch of the river Wye is getting a place on the beat. The quality of the fishing is superb and therefore people book well in advance such is the popularity. The only problem with this is that you cannot predict what condition the river will be in. Last week […]

I had almost given up on the tench fishing for the year. Everything seemed to be conspiring against me in catching some good fish. Dave Rogerson our Regional Organiser had booked the north shore on Bradley’s for us Tench Fishers. Last year we arrived to find the tench spawning and not at all interested in […]

I only had time for a very short session on the upper Bristol Avon. I had wanted to return to where Archie and Trevor had seen that 9lb barbel. Sure enough the large barbel was there in the shallow water. I couldn’t see the other two smaller barbel that accompany it. The water had increased […]

Trevor and his lad Archie had booked a session with me to fish for chub and barbel on the Bristol Avon. So Sunday saw us meet up on the upper end of the river close to where they live. First we looked at the river and decided that it was worth putting in some hemp […]