Arrow'ing About...

Living in Bards country I really am spoilt for choice, so many miles of rivers that hardly ever see an angler. I like the solitude fishing brings and the venue today was Warwickshire's River Arrow.

The stretch I was fishing is the Austin members club stretch from Salford Priors through to Broom, it's an historic club with links to the Austin Longbridge factory in Birmingham that now is home to MG / SAIC . Longbridge opened in 1905 and by the 1960's was the largest car plant in the world employing a barely believable 250,000 workers. Sadly the site is now a tiny fraction of it's former size and many of the buildings that built planes during the war are now new houses.  Employee total today, well around 300 odd engineers, 4 stray cats and lots of rats.

Many of the workers used to camp at this stretch and fish from what I've been told as there used to be train links direct to the factory, like many rivers in this country, over the years the decline of numbers of river anglers has been quite dramatic.The Broom junction signal box can still be seen on the A46 as you head back to Stratford. It was part of the Ashchurch to Barnt Green Line, opened in 1879 and closed in 1963.

Fish are more confident when the water is coloured, today was ideal as after the recent rain it was chocolate brown. The river had a decent pace to it and it was mild.

There is plenty of this river to explore but with only 3 hours fishing I decided to fish a few swims in the first meadow.

I had my 10ft TFG all-rounder rod with me and I was fishing a simple link ledgered lobworm that had freedom to bounce around the swim.  No bites for an hour or so but in each swim I tried I put in some bait and the plan was to return to the swim when I was heading back to see if any fish had moved in to the area.

There is plenty of cover for the fish in this stretch of the Arrow so the first fish that I caught was a nice Chub. I really am impressed with the TFG rod, the last ft and half or so of the tip is painted white and it really does stand out when the water would make Augustus Gloop feel at home.

The Chub was only about 3 pound or so and I caught a similar sized one from the same swim 10 minutes later. I returned to the second swim I fished and baited with double lob worm, it was an area of slack water just off the main flow, really did scream Barbel and right enough, after 20 minutes the 3oz quiver tip was whacked over and I was playing a powerful fish.

It must have been on the same excerise plan as Wasperton's College Pool Carp as when I landed it I was suprised it wasn't bigger. A welcome October Barbel though that looked like it might have been grabbed by a Pike in the past and had a distinctive anal fin , it weighed 4lb 10oz . There is still plenty to explore on the section of River and even though the traffic noise wasn't the best the scenery made up for it so I'll be back.