The Warwickshire Stour - Cockalorums and Coconuts

You can tell a good curry recipe by the state of the page in the book and this beef and coconut curry from the Hairy Bikers really is very nice indeed. I wanted shin to use however they had sold out of it in Barry the Butchers however 2 kg's of casserole steak was a nice compromise.

You see it is the annual curry night round at the Newey's later where we have a house full of close friends where these days it's about the only night of the year we have a good turn out. 

Like many I do seem to be getting busier and busier as every year passes and to be honest that's probably not a bad thing. 

It's a chilled and relaxed evening where the only requirement is to bring a bottle or two and a pot of curry. That means we generally have at least 6 different homemade curries on offer, and you know me I love a good curry. 

Anyway my go-to dish most years has been this beef curry because much of the prep can be done the night before when on the day of eating, you slow cook it in coconut milk where the beef goes really rather tender, and the flavours really intensify. 

Before I went to bed I checked the local river gauges and they really were looking unfishable especially the Alne and the Avon where the Alne especially would have been well in the fields.

The Avon looked just about dooable though and I decided to get the luncheon meat out of the freezer and have a go for the barbel in the floodwater conditions. It would have been banging through but I'm sure it would have been ok provided I could find a slack. A new location I fished recently was the plan and I was looking forward to 4 hours of blanking. 

The Stour though can drop significantly like the Alne and it looked like it had peaked so I was pleasantly surprised in the morning it had dropped like a stone, a good half a meter down and it would have been within the banks. So the barbel idea was kiboshed and I decided to try and winkle out a roach instead.

I didn't have long to be honest before I had to get back but enough time to try for one and I caught a cracking roach here recently that went 1lb and 9 ounces on the scales. That was caught in similar conditions too where there was literally a handful of fishable swims.

I had some bread, worms and maggots and that was it !!!

Well ok some black roach groundbait for in the feeder to put some extra attraction in the water. In these conditions when the fish have to batten down their hatches often the fish can be easier to find in theory. Why would the fish be right in the middle of the mosh pit ?

So finding those slacks is the key for this sort of fishing and like I said I was really quite surprised just how much the river had dropped when I got bankside. Ok it was still very high but after walking passed a few fishable swims I settled in to one that is usually quite productive.

There was a nice back eddy to my left and then over at the otherside another slack swim that looked fishable if only the feeder would hold bottom. I settled on a small but heavish 25g feeder and it worked from the off.

As long as you present to bait the best you can in floodwater you have a chance of a bite however a good hour in this swim without anything at all, I decided to go on the rove.

The swim I caught the decent roach from (actually my mediocre river PB) was a few minutes walk downstream and sure enough when I got there it looked perfect for a bite. A large tree in the water hinders the flow and a satisfying donk of the feeder meant at the least I was fishing on a clean bottom.

What I didn't expect though was that after a few unstrikeable twitches on the 1oz tip the tip sprung back where I lifted in to a fish that had already made inroads and was trying to get in the reeds to my left. When I saw it is was a decent sized roach, easily over a 1lb, but that was the only glimpse I'd got because one last lunge it got right in the middle of the reeds and that was my downfall. 

Yes my foul language would have been heard by the locals I'd imagine, but I hate losing decent fish as does every angler. I stuck it out for a chublet which took worm and maggot and then decided to head downstream to the tailend of the stretch where there is another nice slack that could be fished.

There were small fish in the swim straight from the off because the bread was being battered around and the quiver tip rattling away. 

I got to find what the culprit was though because with time motoring by I switched to a size 16 hook and a couple of red maggots where within a few minutes I had a gudgeon on the bank. I'm sure if I stayed longer I'd have banked some more fish because it was clear they were holding up in the slacks. 

On the way back to the car having had to set up again after getting caught in some hidden tree branches I fished this raft swim with a couple of SSG shots and a large piece of bread flake, but the chub that usually hang around here didn't seem to be home, so after 15 minutes I headed home feeling a little disheartened. 

I'm sure if I fished cheesepaste I'd have had a better chance of catching one of the chub but it was a decent roach I wanted and it did feel like a kick in the balls considering that was the target at the start of the session for me to lose a decent one. Oh well I'll be back !!! I might try another Stour stretch next time mind you, because I might be missing a trick.