Warwickshire Stour - Macrophobia and Macrocephalous

Another misty morning down at the Warwickshire Stour however 24 hours previously my landing net was frozen solid after landing the first chub, this time though the air temperature was a rather tropical 7 degrees. 

As per the norm here I had the banks to myself again and this time the plan was to scale down to try and catch a roach as well as also targeting the chub that swim in this river. 

The last time here which must have been a couple or three years ago me and Sam had an encounter with a bull however apart from the odd walker this session was animal free.

One of the dog walkers stopped for a natter though and he said that he'd spotted a couple of otters on this stretch, but then not unexpected, they are on all the stretches of river and canal I fish.

This stretch is match fished from time to time and there is a good reason for that because the swims are convenient for the trolley pushers and pole handlers as many of the swims run at a pedestrian pace. 

Upstream mind you there are quite a few swim that have plenty of character such as the raft shown above but in the main its much slower here than the other sections of the Stour I fish. 

The Stour more often than not unlike the Warwickshire Avon which can run gin clear much of the year, this river always seems have some colour and its that lovely light green colour where you know the fish are going to feed.

Again a roving session this and no harm in that because if you're a CAD jockey like me any opportunity to get out and go fishing needs to grabbed with both hands especially if there is exercise involved. 10k steps can be covered quite easily in a session, and considering most people fishing is for the fat and lazy, fishing can be active it you want it to be.

I scaled down considerably for this session and in a few of the swims just used maggots but again I couldn't find the roach. It was just chub again which, ok, I do love catching chub, especially on small rivers but the fish were nothing like the stamp of fish only a mile or two upstream.

I primed one of the snaggier swims with bread mash and would fish that last but nothing in the weir oddly and a few swims upstream of the weir.

Oddly the first fish caught was the biggest and that came from an overhanging tree swims which screamed chub. The other fish caught were of smaller stamp and the biggest fish hooked was actually a jack pike that grabbed the bread on the retrieve. The inevitable happened but you can see why the pike would like it here as much of it is very sluggish indeed.

To be honest I don't think I will rush back here given the size of the fish and the public footfall but it's still a nice stretch even though it doesn't quite gel with me. I wanted to fish all the stretches available to me over this Xmas break to see if I was missing anything, but this is one of those I won't rush back to.