I was torn between heading to Swineford or the Jack Whites stretch, mainly due to the amount of temporary traffic lights around Keynsham and Bitton but with the satnav telling me it was a clear run, I decided Swineford was the venue for this evening. Things have been pretty busy on the river recently with a lot of anglers taking advantage of the fine weather which has forced me to try some new swims that I've not considered before. Although I did poke a nose into a couple of likely spots in the 1st field, it turned out that Houseboat Bay (the last swim before the kissing gate to the 2nd field) was free so it was hard to resist setting up before someone else nabbed it!

The swim is one of the best on the river as it's on a corner which narrows down slightly giving a lovely glide to trot a float through. It also has amazing bankside cover, a great area of slack water to the right and a houseboat on the far bank which is a fish magnet. Add the fact that it's one of the few swims you can set up a chair in, fish two rods comfortably and cast a decent distance and you've a real winner! I've had great success fishing for pike in this swim, as well as chub but as it does get a bit of a hammering I was slightly nervous it may have been overfished of late...

I needn't have worried! while setting up there were fish topping and showing all over the swim and I couldn't wait to get a bait in the water. For this session I decided to take a slightly different approach in that instead of baiting with liquidized bread and casting out straight away I was going to feed upstream with mix of cubed spam, sweet corn and pellets for a good 30 minutes before casting in. My feeling was that in previous sessions I've had early success but then the fish have backed off - this time, I wanted to get them feeding confidently and in a shoal before I cast out, the idea being that the fish would stick around for longer and the bites would keep coming throughout the session.

So while feeding upstream, I cast the feeder rod downstream and dumped the float in the margin by my feet, just on the off chance something was swimming around... Amazingly, the float dipped almost immediately! It was only a small chub, but it was followed by several more and then a couple of good fish on the feeder. In between bites I kept the feed going in upstream using the catapult and once the bites in the margin dried up, cast my float into the flow...

First few metres of the trot and bang, the float buried... A sharp strike and 1st fish on! And so it continued! Keeping a trickle of bait going in seemed to be the key, firing it a good 4 metres upstream of the float and I was so busy that I pretty much gave up on the feeder rod as the float rod was producing a fish a cast.

One change that I had made between sessions was to respool my reel with some new 4lb line. The difference this made to my casting was amazing as I was managing to land the float closer to the far bank near a overhanging bush that protrudes right out into the river. One cast in particular fell very close to the bush and it just looked like it would do a bite...

Seconds after the float hit the water it shot under and this time, the strike was met with a solid resistance. This was something far bigger but after a dogged fight where the fish charged for every available snag I finally managed to slip a prime size chub into the landing net!

It was a bit of a shock to be honest! I've had fish of a similar size from this stretch but never so early in the season. Re spooling that reel had clearly given me the extra casting distance I need to get close to the snaggy home of some truly monstrous chub.

After that excitement, things slowed down a little so I kept the float rod out of the water and went back to baiting the swim giving the fish a chance to get their confidence back. As I'd been neglecting the feeder rod I decided to make some casts downstream to see if the fish had backed off and was rewarded with a run of smaller chub. It was about 10 minutes later when I was contemplating another cast with the float rod when the tip on the feeder dragged sharply down... I picked up the rod, stuck and bam, something shot off downstream...

I genuinely thought I'd hooked one of the mythical carp that inhabit this stretch as the fish gave such a good fight! But it was of course it was another greedy chub of around the same size as the previous monster. Two in one evening, this session was really turning into something!

I really thought that would be it but over the next couple of hours, I had fish after fish on both rods. As the light began to fade the float rod continued to produce and I found if I could get a bait close to the bush, it would either disappear very soon after hitting the water or a short trot 4 or so metres later. As I began to toy with the idea of packing down, the river gave up one more epic bite as yet another massive chub hit the cube of spam!

So there you go, what a session?! Three clonkingly massive chub, a net full of smaller fish and a couple of random roach. The whole swim had produced bites consistently and it really felt like the gradual feeding, waiting and alternating methods had been successful in keeping the fish feeding in the swim throughout the whole session. I packed down a happy angler and I can't wait for the next session!

Well for one thing, the weather wasn't going to be nearly as hot as last year. In fact, the BBC weather app was predicting rain from 8am until lunch time... Not my favourite but maybe better for the fishing as chub don't tend to feed in bright conditions! I know a lot of anglers camp and cast out at midnight but as the rules don't allow for night fishing on the Bristol River Avon I decided to get up at stupid o'clock instead - 4.30am to be precise... Madness I know but I had a feeling the banks might be busy and with such limited swims due to undergrowth at the Swinford end of the river I wanted to make sure I was in the running for a decent swim.

Leaving that early meant there was no traffic on the road so I pulled into the busy looking layby outside the Swan Inn at around 5.15am - not bad going! As predicted, all the fishable swims in the first field were occupied - seems Bristol does have some keen anglers after all! Not to worry, due to the banks at Swinford I had it in my head I'd try and fish the 'fallen tree swim' in the second field (otherwise known as 'Chub Alley') and was relieved to find it empty of anglers. The plan for the day was to target chub with one rod fishing a cage feeder and the second rod fishing a float. I've had such success with good old Spam in the past, so hook bait was an easy choice although I did have sweetcorn as a back up. Before setting up the rods I primed the swim with a couple of balls of groundbait mix consisting of tinned tuna, hemp, liquidized bread and method mix groundbait.

So the rods went out, the feeder in the deep margin in front of the streamer weed to my right and the float a couple of rod lengths out into the flow. And believe it or not, the float dipped on the first run through - chub on! And while I was sorting out that chub, the feeder rod rattled off with another chub - amazing!

The have two fish on the first casts of each rod was pretty amazing. I was made up, it was definitely worth getting up so early! The next couple of hours disappeared with chub after chub falling to the float. The feeder rod was silent, although I was getting the odd pluck on the rod tip... But with the float rod producing so many fish, I wasn't worried - I was having too much fun!

There weren't too many other species showing themselves, although I did have a dace on one retrieve. But then from nowhere, I had a completely different bite where the float slid rather than dipping under the surface... the result was a perfect condition bronze bream of around 3lb. This was just getting better and better!

The bites began to dry up a bit as the rain eased off and the sky became brighter. I switched the feeder rod over to sweetcorn to see if a bait change would spark some interest and cast it out further into the flow. However the potential culprit for the sudden slow up of fish activity showed it's head on the next retrieve of the float rod: I'd had a bite higher up in the swim from what turned out to be a small chub and as it came into the bankside, a massive head erupted from the deep and a huge pike attempted to strike the fish!

Now I've never fished for pike in the summer months as they're far more active in the warmer months and tend to gobble down baits which potentially means deep hooking. However on the advice of some other anglers, I'd been told that lures were the way to go. I didn't have any lures but I did have some sprats so the plan was to fish them pure style on a small trace and see what happened...

So both rods came in, I rigged up the feeder rod with a sprat on a short wire trace and I got casting around the swim. Five or so casts later, the line pulled and the rod tip jerked and I struck into a solid resistance - summer pike on! And it absolutely tore off, they go in winter but they really, really go in summer I didn't have any scales on me but I guestimate it was around 16lb to 18lb - what an amazing result?!

Not surprisingly, the swim was wrecked after that and although I did have another couple of small chub, it really felt like the best of the days fishing had passed and I decided to call it a day. But what a start to the season?! A net full of chub, a cracking bream and a monster pike - and it wasn't even 11.30am, just amazing.

A brand new water today for our double hit of fishing this weekend. Harescombe Fisheries is a 4 lake (well, 3 lakes and a pond!) fishery in Gloucester around 30 mins outside of Bristol heading north on the M5. We knew little or nothing about the place other than the chap in the Cirencester tackle shop mentioned it last time Dad went in. He's a keen match fisherman and was singing its praises and from what I could find online, it's a well stocked, well maintained commercial - well worth a go.

After the terrible weather of the last couple of weeks and a wet and windy day on the bank on the Saturday, we were pleased to see the outlook for Sunday was sun, sun and a bit more sun! However, the draw back to lack of cloud cover was a car covered in ice... Our 7am start was put back a bit... Not to worry, scrape down the car, get on the road, pick up some bread and bacon on route and we still managed to arrive at the fishery around 7.30am.
Only to find the Field Lake we'd planned on fishing was closed due to a hosting a match! Bugger. I thought the match lake would have the, er, match on it?! The other options we're Pasture Lake (which turned out to be a small pond... but according to the bailiff, it's got the biggest, hardest fighting fish in the complex?!) or Meadow Lake (didn't fancy the match lake and I think it had a 2nd match running on it later in the day). Based on the info online, we figured Meadow would be the best bet: it looks to be around the same size as Field, only slightly smaller with less tree cover.

One of the nice features about the fishery is that you can drive to your peg. When we finally arrived, there was one fisherman on the bank for the whole lake - even with our early start knocked back by the ice and our garage stop it'd paid off as we had pick of the swims. The lake itself has a big bowl of water thinning out to the top end where it narrows out. We opted for the top end, the thinking being that the run off pipe flowed into the lake there (lots of nice oxygen fed water), there were plenty of died back water lilies and weed beds and (the main thing) the farthest swims were flooded meaning we'd have that end of the lake to ourselves if it got busy (which it did!).

A new water is always a (nice!) challenge - how do you approach it, how does it fish, what baits do they go for. Being a commercial, I figured the fish would've seen pellets, maggots, sweetcorn a plenty so opted for a maggot ball on the feeder out in open water on one rod and 2 bit's of popped up plastic corn on the 2nd rod on a light ledger cast to the far end tight to the weed beds. I've realised this is fast becoming my favourite set up!

Dad went out with the float loaded with sweetcorn and nabbed the 1st bite pretty much 5 minutes after he got a bait in the water, a decent size common. Then my ledger rod wrapped round! I managed to lean into the fish only to loose it as it came to the bank... Ah well, take a deep breath, calm down (the 1st run of the day always gets the adrenaline flowing) get the rod back out and get back to setting up!

The pace for the 1st couple of hours was nice and steady. The feeder rod produced smaller fish at a pace of around 3 an hour. The ledger however was really doing the business: a take every 10 mins or so. The fish were bigger too, they seemed to be responding to the single, smaller hook baits better than the feeder.

Then came my 'fish-of-the-day'... I'd been casting to the weed beds but switched tactics and decided to drop in near a patch of died back water lilies. I'd walked up the bank and dropped the faithful popped up plastic corn with a PVA stick and two balls of liquidized bread with a smattering of sweetcorn and maggots mixed in. The bites had backed off a bit and I wondered if the bigger fish had moved in so I decided to leave the rig out for a bit longer this time... The theory was rewarded about 25min later when the rod tip wrapped round and the bobbin smacked up to the rod!

This fish felt different to the rest: rather than making straight for the weed beds or out into open water it just started head-banging - normally a good sign that you've a bigger fish on.

A good fight later and a beautiful upper double mirror slipped into the landing net. I'd got it up onto the unhooking mat when the feeder rod went off - gotta love double hook ups ;). A bit of heckling came from Dad on the other side of the lake, 'now you're just showing off!'. Much smaller fish of around 6lb but it's always nice to see 2 fish in the landing net!

After that excitement, things began to calm down. The lake had really filled up with anglers, virtually every peg had a person on it with the exception of the flooded swims near us, good bit of planning that. The fish definitely responded to the angling pressure by backing off completely giving us a chance to have lunch and sit in the sun for a bit.
As often happens with commercial fisheries though, people started packing up around 3ish. The left over bait went in and the edge, the cars started leaving and the fish magically came back on. They've pretty good internal clocks I reckon...

The last couple of hours where great: dad switched sides of swim and started picking decent size fish after fish off near some died back lily pads (really put his new 13ft rod through it's paces, must get that out on the rivers at some point!). I fed the area near the weed with sweetcorn and the rest of my maggots and the bobbin didn't stop climbing.

With fish coming even as we we're packing up with the rods on the deck, it was with great reluctance that I finally reeled in... What a great, great days fishing! Cant wait for the return trip.