The Tiny River Alne - Litterbugs and Lickspittles

The Alne after a good dumping of rain really does rise and fall like a stone, in 24 hours it can be over its banks, covering the road and the locals using an alternative and much longer route to get to Dermot's Aladdin's Cave, but then a day later providing there is no more rain it's fishable. 

It give me an option to fish when other local rivers are out of bounds and it helps it's only 3 miles away so I can fish 'locally'. 

The problem is it may well be fishable but he colour of the water can really make a big difference to how the fishing will go, and what quarry to target. 

When it's strong tea coloured fishing for the Chub is a waste of time but fish maggot and worm there is always a bend in the quiver to be had.

This is where the womery was well worth the investment because once lifting the lid of their home amongst the potato peeling, swede shavings and cabbage strips there are some fat worms ready to be sacrificed to the fish Gods. 

They are breeding quite successfully too, the tiny worms all there to see.  

It's quite incredible just how quickly the fish can find the bait too, but then worms and maggots do stink to high heaven, there are a good bait for the fish to home in on.

I got there at dawn and settled in to the first swim below the beam of battlement. It was 3 degrees so this was negotiated without issue.

The first fish was a greedy minnow that was determined to hook itself looking at the noise on the 0.25ounce quiver tip so I upped the bait size which I'd use for the rest of the session.

A bisected worm and maggot cocktail to try and get something bigger, the size 14 B993 just about big enough for the aforementioned.

Sure enough the bait went out and 5 minutes later a proper bite from a proper fish and the change of bait was justified.

A fat proper dace providing some nice rest bite from ones cold hands. Catch one dace and you'll catch more and that was the case here, a few more fish banked till it went quiet.

Yeap it was time for a rove so I went upstream and fished some swims where I knew I could get a bait in. The river can vary so much in depth over the >1 mile stretch, from properly shallow to >12-14ft plus (one mad swim that needs to meet the deeper sonar).

The river was still well up and most shallow swims are unfishable due to the pace of the water but managed to find a few swims that would allow me to drop in a bait.

After biteless in all those swims I decided to retrace my steps and fish where I started, however before that a walk to the very bottom of the stretch showed just how turbulent it was and just how much the fish have to tolerate in this small spate river. 

So back the starting swim where here the river is almost static in places. I'd put a bait just off the crease and drip fed maggots as loose feed.

A few more dace succumbed to the offering, the first dace I caught as pictured the best of the lot though, a good 5 or 6 ounce fish that had a belly fit to bursting.

Now I bumped in to a rare angler on this stretch as I made my way to the upper reaches and he'd fished matches here for years and recounted stories of how it's changed over the years.

Don't neglect what's under you feet was the first tip so for the last half an hour that's exactly what I did. This time a 1/4 of a fat lobworm again tipped with a red maggot. 15 minutes in a couple of violent sharp pulls and I struck in to a confident bite.

At first I thought it was one of the resident trout but then it surfaced and it was a roach, a potential mediocre PB beater too. I thought a simple slide in to the net and the prize would be mine, but as I reached for with the landing net, one last lunge the fish is gone, the hook hold no longer. Damn !!!! a rubbish end to the session.

Now talking of rubbish this was the result of me clearing the area in and around our syndicate stretch of the Warwickshire Avon. After stopping off for some essential shopping the gloves the donned and I got to it. It's not a place you'd stop really but much of this had been there for sometime.

However sadly of late the muddy parking verge had seen a visit from the littering scumbags and such an eyesore I had to do something about it. Why is that some really don't care for their environment ?, chucked from windows, out of sight out of their tiny minds.