Small Brook Fishing Pt.12 – Crumble Alleys and Costard Mongers

A perfect 10 the little stream we HAD been fishing, it was Sam's favourite bit of flowing water and a certain length of it we had grown to love, had put us in good stead on the bloggers challenge. Wild brown trout, big Dace, some chunky roach and in one particular swim it was known to us as the 'bullhead banker'.

Bullheads coming up aggressively to snatch the maggots on the trot down in water you could wade across.

There are not many swims like that I can tell you !!!!

A BIG spanner in the works though, after a quick reccy to the River Alne the fish seemed to be off from feeding after the recent floods and high water, so a short drive to the stream it was.

Now no signs to show there is no fishing or private fishing, even the farmer didn't seem to mind but as Sam was negotiating the fence to get swim side, a big Black Chelsea tractor draws alongside as I was getting the tackle from the car. I thought to myself, does he realise he's getting his tyres dirty.

"You cannot fish here !!!!"

To be fair what ensued was a civilised conversation but the stretch is leased from the landowner for the purposes of wild brownies. A wealthy fluffchucker has it for himself more or less. A bag of sand handed over to the farmer who must be rubbing his hands.

So yeah to cut a long story short, we had been poaching !!!

The trout may well be wild but they are not in numbers from what we know but a short(ish) drive away you can fish for trout on the River Stour all for less that £40.

It's convenient though, being a stones throw away from the big pocket payers residence. A lovely house it is too and to be fair he offered that we could fish the lake in his garden. An offer that we may well take up, but then I cannot remember last time we fish a lake, just not our thing.

Sam was gutted, it's the stretch he talks about the most. Oh well we will have to try and seek out other stream like this to fish. So we got back in the car and managed to winkle out a minnow and a tiny dace before we both agreed, we are not feeling it today.

Gutted !!!