Avon at Cleeve Prior 27.10.10

Took myself off to Cleeve Prior again to try a peg which I referred to earlier. (Should really be "to which I referred" - just watched BBC Breakfast going on about correct pronunciation etc!) The whole stretch was empty so I had no problem in settling in. As with most of this stretch, the inside line was about 5', deepening out to the boat channel where I intended to fish a 3' flouro hook length with a couple of elipses for barbel. Rather than a straight lead, I tried a 30g feeder filled with a mixture of sizes of pellets plugged with some hemp and hali crush. With the recent rain we had I thought the river may have been a bit more coloured and higher.

I put my trusty (not) float ledgered sprat under the willow to my left - you can just see the red tip of the small cigar float.

After 2 hours of no interest on the pellets, I switched to a large piece of luncheon meat. I started to get sharp twitches on the rod and thought they might not be barbel so I replaced the solid top on my Duo Lite with a quiver tip and reduced the length of the hook link to 12".  This had the desired result and I started to latch on to some chub. The largest went 4lbs 2oz on my new Berkley scales.

It was a nice plump one and was in pristine condition.

I'm afraid my attempts to smash the Avon Zander record failed miserably, yet again. Still I've just received a missive from Keith with some comments about the Oxford canal so I'll persevere. Watch this space!