Having just spent a few hours in Avoncliff today, I can happily answer my own question - YES there are most definitely pike along that stretch!
Never caught pike before - never really tried - 1st swim I went to near the confluence with the Chew I chucked out half a lampray and within a few minutes the float went under and this little fella came out -
![Image](http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s257/davey_pants/Photo0050.jpg)
(flapped out of the net as I was photographing her)
5.5lb on the nose. Not a monster, but it had me grinning from ear to ear like a loon. Unhooking wasn't too scary and it swam off strongly.
Found a pot of lobs in my bag so I set up another rod. But there was only 1 worm in there! Cut it in half and chucked it out. The rod went over almost on the drop and a perch of just over 2lb came out. Lip hooked. Sweet:)
Reeling in the lamprey for another cast, a pike went for it and I landed that. Only just over 3lb but a beautiful fish. Then another slightly smaller perch on the other half of the worm.
Pity I had no more worms as I would have bagged up on good perch today I feel. 2 casts and 2 good fish.
Moved down to another swim still near the confluence and saw a pike sitting in the shallows at my feet. If my first was a 5.5 then this one must be close to being a double. It was trailing a trace with some bait still attached! I tried to get it to go for my lamprey so I could land it and hopefully free it of the trace but it wasn't having any of it. So I tried foulhooking it but missed. Then it moved even closer in and I was able to almost get it in my landing net but it spooked and scarpered. Poor thing, hope it gets caught by someone soon
Hooked another nice pike of probably 6 - 8lb momentarily but lost it.
Then I lost a couple of traces of my own in weed. Really hope some poor unsuspecting pike doesn't happen on them:/
With my last trace and last lamprey, I hooked something even bigger again. It was easily half again as big as the injured one I saw and gave me a hell of a fight for about a minute or two and then shed the hooks and the lamprey went floating off downstream so I packed up and headed back for the train home to Bristol.
Only fished about 4 hours and had 2 pike, 2 good perch and lost 2 more pike, 1 of them a bloody good fish.
So yeah, sorry for majorly long post, but I'm still buzzing on cloud 9! Hell of a good day, just wished I had more tackle, deadbait, worm, and someone with me to take photos:)
Definitely going out again as soon as I can scrape together the pennies