18lb Pike caught from the Bristol River Avon at Swineford

Rain Stops Play At The Holiday Inn Lake

Saturday 16 June 2018

It's the 16th June and that means one thing: the rivers are open for fishing again! With the season closing in March with an amazing monster pike, I've been itching to get back on the Bristol River Avon to chase down some of it's excellent chub. The question is, would it be a repeat of last years heat-wave, snapped-rod, boats-playing-reggae, virtual-blank disaster?!

True to form, the weather was predicted to be grim with a cold start and drizzly rain all day... Far out spring, what happened?!

Amazingly there were two other anglers on the lake so by usual standards, it was rammed! I decided to hedge my bets and set up at the far bowl end and fish the died back lily pads with a feeder rod. My first bite came pretty quickly and turned out to be one of the biggest fish I've caught from the lake - result!

Over the next couple of hours I had another three fish but as the rain settled in the bites completely dried up.

In the end I packed down around 2pm as it was freezing cold, chucking it down with rain and with nothing to show for a swim move I was just plain fed up!

Looking at the weather forecast shows that there's no change on the far side of the Easter break...