Barbel, Warks Avon

A successful overnight session on the Avon for both me and our lad with a total of five fish caught, all different species! I was fishing mainly for Barbel and the boy was after Zander and Pike. There is a huge amount of weed in the river this year and trying to find a couple of pegs where we could land fish if we hooked them but also had a reasonable chance of hooking them wasn't easy. We eventually settled into adjacent pegs and with the land rover parked behind us, we left the bivvy in it's bag. At 9.30pm the tip of my rod did a 3 foot twitch and then danced around as I tried to steer a 7lb 8oz Barbel to the waiting net. A couple of hairy moments with weed and eventually it was in the net.

It just turned midnight and my rod bucked over but this time it was a chub and having put up a really good account of itself I landed and put it straight back, probably about 3lb 8oz. 

2pm and it was our lads turn and after a weedy battle he landed this 5lb 11oz Zander taken on a Roach dead bait. 

A celebratory can of Carling and I was falling asleep in my chair so I reeled in and climbed into the back of the Landy. The wind and the rain were now really noisy and I thought to myself my brother has either fallen in or must be crazy to still be out I this. I was just thinking about checking on him when the passenger door went and he got in the front. His snoring woke me at about 5am and as it was light I got up and started fishing again.

I put a dead bait out and landed a near double Pike and also had a skimmer Bream took a size 9 hook. 

At 9am my wife rang to tell me that she was ill and I would be looking after the kids for the rest of the day. Should be fun after only three hours sleep.