Moon Shot

I have continued to violently smash my head against the river Anker in search of a midwinter barbel of late. 

A multitude of baits have been repeatedly dangled, likely lairs identified and explored. But alas, even with the breaking strain of my hooklengths tending towards the parlous and baits and freebies parred right back I still await the bite I've been waiting for. Testing indeed but I'm not out of ideas yet. It's time before season's end which is now in shortest supply not exuberant enthusiasm.

So what does one do when in the midst of an apparently tough task and in need of a diversion? That's right listeners, strike out for the moon instead!

Obviously somewhat deliriously affected by Mick Newey's stupendous achievement of catching a grayling from the Warwickshire Avon, I followed up the merest whiff of someone sighting a grayling in the Anker at Polesworth. The river Sence, a certified grayling packer, joins in with the Anker at Atherstone upstream of Polesworth. So it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that grayling have taken up lodgings in the mother river.

This short stretch I spent an hour and a half on really is different gravy to the remainder of the Anker. Here the river shallows, rushes and burbles under a road bridge with force before it once again gathers itself to resume a walking pace downstream. A microcosm.

 Looks great doesn't it?

Armed with my pint of reds I fed by the palm-full for fifteen minutes whilst I set up my float rod. I targeted the tail of the run and the crease where the main flow met the slower water on the nearside. It was shallow at about a foot and a half depth here in such contrast to a few hundred yards downstream where finding eight foot in the main channel is the norm.

I'd love to tell you I caught one, I really would...in fact I can't bloody wait!