We only had an hour or so early in the morning and although the action wasn't nearly as frantic as the day before I did manage this fine looking jack after 10 minutes or so of casting around. Unusually, Jim blanked - a bit of a first, he always catches!

The weather had completely changed, going back to cold and grey and although it wasn't raining the day felt very different. After spending some time at the lock I headed onto Saltford where I spied a huge otter fishing under the bridge which may have explained the lack of bites... I also headed onto Conham River Park for a looksee but it was dead as a doornail...

It was always going to be tough following on from yesterday's epic session but today I couldn't help feel a little deflated, even though I bagged a jack. Praps it was the weather than got me down?! That hit of vitamin D sure did seem to make all the difference, both to the fishing and my mental state ;)

Jim (of Jim's Lure Challenge fame) and I have been hitting the Bristol River Avon at Keynsham and Saltford pretty hard over the last couple of months trying to get pike on lures. While Jim has been doing very well, netting a pike on pretty much every session, I've really struggled with only one follow and a lost hook up to show for my efforts (although I had snagged a couple on deadbaits along the way!).

The weather has been really bad recently with a couple of days of snow followed by some heavy rain and although there'd been a run of clear days we knew that the river near Bristol was either going to be flooded or a chocolatey soup. I dropped in at Keynsham for a while but the lock was such a mess so I headed up river. The flow was super fast and with bright, bright sunlight burning off the mist over the fields I knew I was wasting my time...

The next spot was over at Saltford but I could see from the car park that there were two chaps under the bridge and with the water still hacking through it wasn't really worth casting out in the shallows. Jim arrived at around 11ish though and mentioned that he'd spied a stretch of canal over in Bath whilst he'd been working on a job. It was really a 'cut' with a lock gate at the end but he had a feeling it would be worth a shot as the water would at least be calmer.

So we headed to the 'Western Cut' and spent 30 minutes or so casting around the canal and lock but there wasn't a sniff of interest. However our luck really changed when we headed down the steep steps onto the mooring walkway below the lock gates...

And within 5 minutes Jim had a fish on the bank!

I quickly joined him on the walkway and over the next hour or so we managed 6 bites - amazing! Somehow we'd managed to locate some fish and they were very, very hungry. Unluckily for me, only 1 of the 4 bites I had resulted in a fish on the bank but Jim got 3 hungry jacks in the net before we decided to call it a day.

On paper, the day should've been terrible: high coloured water, bright sunlight, really warm for the time of year... It should've been a blank. But luckily for us we managed to find a slack area just off the main flow of the river where a group of pike had decided to hold up until the river level dropped.

So that's it, challenge complete! I've well and truly got the lure bug now and I've a feeling we'll be heading back to Weston Lock for another go in the not to distant future...

And it turned out to be a complete perch fest! These are some of the bigger ones, in total I think I must've had around 6 decent fish and numerous missed hits in the space of about 10 minutes.

It was so much fun, and with the light rod and small lures even these small fish gave a great fight.

So there you go, you can catch fish on lures - now all I need to do is catch one of those illusive pike on one...

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!