Thursday, January 19, 2012

Little River Avon

It's not often I get a chance to sneak away from work to go fishing but when I had an invite to join Peter Anderson on the Charfield AA waters Little River Avon I just couldn't say no.

The Little River Avon is a small tributary to the River Severn and is situated in South Gloucestershire, we had arranged to meet at 10am but I couldn't resist getting there a little early a taking a quick stroll down to have a look.



This stretch of river is full of bends, riffles, tree roots and deep pockets of water, in places it gets narrow enough to almost jump across and today it was carrying a little extra rain water from the night before and a tinge of colour. It reminded me of the River Clun...a similar sized river I have fished many times in Shropshire.

When my host and guide for the day Peter arrived we chatted for a while then set off downstream where Peter highlighted the potential target areas which were noted for our return upstream.



I had decided to start with a short rod with a duo set up, whilst Peter opted for short line nymphing. We started at a lovely looking pool which I was informed held some grayling, so as I set my rig up Peter dropped his nymphs into the flow and within minutes was into his first fish, unfortunately this slipped the hook and a couple of casts later saw another on the hook and quickly into his hand.

 
This was the sort of start we had hoped for and when I got in and fished up through the pool with my duo rig I was also fortunate to connect quickly with a couple of nice grayling. Early signs were good and we progressed upstream through some nice looking water but finding more feeding fish proved very difficult, a switch to a short line nymph set up brought a few smaller grayling but it became evident that our good start was not going to continue through the day.




We finished around 3.30pm with a few more smaller grayling knowing that today the river had fished hard but nevertheless it was a lovely place to spend a winter's day where temperatures were close to double figures.