Warwickshire Stour - Strapontins and Strephosymbolia

Over a year ago now I discovered a stretch of the river dredged by the farmer, apparently after consulting with the angling club where the odd match takes place. A once picturesque stretch of the Warwickshire Stour changed beyond recognition, the environmental damage caused was quite staggering really, a river beyond repair ? 

Now I know that the EA were on the case petty sharpish however till this day I don't know how it ended, because it seems, as expected there was no authorisation for the works, and for some reason after trying to find out more information there was radio silence after some initial encouraging dialogue. 

There are a few houses that look out on to this stretch and I'm still amazed how these so called 'works' went unnoticed for such a long time, as the farmer must have been toing and froing with his overly large digger bucket for a couple weeks before the EA were notified. 

If only they were as keen to act as they currently as they were over another proposed eyesore, you see outraged residents have formed a campaign group to oppose the building of a large solar farm on picturesque countryside south of Stratford.

A planning application has been submitted to Stratford District Council to establish a 147-acre solar farm on agricultural land between Ilmington, Crimscote and Wimpstone.

In its proposal, Regener8 Power Limited says it wants to build a 48MWp solar farm and battery storage facility which it says will generate renewable electricity to meet the needs of 15,670 homes every year. It reckons on an annual saving of 25,900 tonnes of CO2 by displacing use of fossil fuels.

However, residents are adamant that the solar farm would blight the countryside and not necessarily bring the green dividends promised. To be fair I can see their point as I know of another field full of solar panels nearby and yeap, they ain't exactly nice to look at are they.

Anyway I was back, for a nose and to try and winkle out a chub !!!!

You see postie Bob fished a match here recently and his 3 chub went almost 12lbs on the scales, which to be honest for a small river, is excellent really. 

Those fish came quite quickly in to the 5 hour match and for the rest of it trotting maggots brought, well not a fat lot. 

I was out with the head turners though, yeap rather large pieces of bread flake because the river had dropped nicely and a quick gander when I went over Wimpstone bridge, a little like the Avon, the colour was dropping out of it. 

I've caught some nice plump roach here in the past too so the hook was reduced in size from my usual size 4 to a size 10, but having fished the Alne and caught dace on rigs meant for Chub, I wasn't that concerned to be honest, even an 8 ounce roach wouldn't think twice about tackling a large piece of flake, let alone a non swinger. 

So anyway, how did it go ?

Well to be honest much better than expected you see I caught 3 reasonable chub from the first swim which is the second picture down from the top, each one released downstream and with the flow to contend with on light tackle decent sport.

It's a roving river this and over the 3.5 hours session I actually caught 6 proper chub and 2 chublets. The biggest getting towards the 4lb mark, which ain't bad for a small river. If you didn't know how characterful this river was you'd probably not know any different if you walk its banks as a year later it certainly looks better than it did. 

All the debris has been removed thankfully but it still is an eyesore and baron in places and I doubt even in the summer it will look any different. I had to squint in  couple of the swims as I remembered what it once looked like. 

Any enjoyable session mind you, well I say that as I seem to have lost the 4lb salter scales as pictured. They must have fell out of my pocket probably negotiating the electric fence many a time. 

I did try and retrace my steps but no, sadly nowhere to be seen, I late losing stuff and these scales were quite hard to track down, they appear from Ebay time to time so I'll keep an eye out. No roach for this session, but then swim after swim had all the reeds removed, that certainly won't help now will it.