Warwickshire Stour - Frostbound Flummery and Fanciful Foppery

There’s nothing quite like waking up to an overnight frost so thick it looks like your windscreen has been laminated in frozen milk full-fat, none of that semi-skimmed nonsense. I stood there, scraper in hand, attacking the ice on the Jimny with all the enthusiasm and finesse of a man chiselling at the Rosetta Stone using a spoon he stole from a motorway service station. As the shards of frost ricocheted off my face, I found myself pondering whether the great oracles of angling the Fishing Gods, the Weather App, and the Mrs. might, for once, be aligned in something other than their mutual disdain for my weekend plans.

And blow me down with a roach scale, they were. Because shining through that crisp, biting, nose-hair-snapping cold was the sort of sun that leans in, gives you a cheeky wink, and whispers, “Go on lad… go fishing… the chores can wait, the odds are against you, and let’s face it, you were never going to grout that bathroom anyway.”

After consulting with the Oracle the evening before (you know who you are, dispenser of cryptic advice and suspicious confidence), I set off to the diminutive Warwickshire Stour the muddy little underdog of a river that looks, at first glance, like it ought to hold nothing bigger than a confused stickleback with low self-esteem and perhaps a midlife crisis. 

Its colour can best be described as “eau de farm runoff,” and if you scoop a handful up, it smells faintly of cow gossip and the distant echo of a tractor that hasn’t been serviced since 1987.

But those who know the Stour proper those who’ve crouched on its slippery banks, dropped their phone in to it, with £40 at the bask of the case, fallen into its unsuspecting holes, or been mugged by a surprised moorhen understand the truth: beneath that suspiciously green surface lurk chub that fight like they’ve been raised on black coffee, creatine, and daily screenings of Rocky II. 

And then there are the roach. Oh, the roach. plump, smug creatures of such girth that rumours circulate of them entering local Strongman competitions under assumed names. There’s even talk of a 3lb 2oz roach who once flipped a tractor tyre, though that may have been exaggerated by at least three pints and a packet of Scampi Fries.

Now, the Stour isn’t just any tributary. Oh no. It’s the river that gave Shipston-on-Stour its name though presumably after rejecting several alternatives like Shipston-On-Boggy-Trickle or Shipston-On-That-Drain-Behind-Tesco. 

Rising in Oxfordshire before slinking through Warwickshire toward the Avon, the Stour enjoys long walks in the countryside, getting flooded at inappropriate times, and being blamed for the agricultural sins of mankind. Classic British river behaviour, really.

Arriving at the bank with a windscreen finally visible after ten minutes of cardio I found the river much lower than expected. 

The Stour is usually a lovely shade of pastoral pea-soup, but today it looked like it had been on the kale smoothies again. Still, the colour was right. 

The smell was right. And above all, the sense of “big roach maybe, possibly, please please let it happen today” hung in the air like the breath cloud of a man who’s spent far too long daydreaming of mythical 2-lbers.

Speaking of which, yes, I did once lose a monster on another stretch. A fish so wide I still get phantom tugs in the night thinking about it. 

A fish that rose, winked at me, flexed its pecs, and then parted company with my hook like it had better places to be. Therapy may be required.

Tactics today were classic winter simplicity: a thumbnail of bread on a size 12, liquidised bread in the feeder, and my trusty TFG River & Stream rod with a 0.5oz glass tip the kind of setup that makes you feel like a proper roving river ninja rather than a grown man stumbling about in waders trying not to fall in.

Roving is my favourite way to fish these skinny rivers. Cast, wait ten minutes, catch or swear, move on. It’s a sort of aquatic speed-dating. You power through more swims than a salmon with impatience issues, you stay warm, and your mind clears of all life’s rubbish. It’s like meditation, except instead of chanting “om,” you mutter “that looked like a bite… didn’t it?”

And then—BOOM. First swim. Ten minutes in. The quivertip went from calm and steady to “ABSOLUTELY NOT, MATE” as if the chub had just heard last orders at the pub. 

A proper clattering bite. I struck, the rod hooped over, and the Stour delivered its first hard-fighting chub of the morning. Not huge, but scrappy, bullish, and determined like a drunk terrier defending a pork pie.

Downstream I trudged, enjoying the rare pleasure of fingers that were only mostly numb. Swim two offered another lightning bite and another chub… except this one fought like a pub bouncer who’d recently taken a correspondence course in Advanced Dirty Tricks. 

It ploughed into reeds, wrapped itself around submerged foliage, and somehow attempted both a kidney punch and a kick in the nuts. The thing escaped in the end, leaving me questioning whether it had also stolen my wallet.

But the chub were properly on it today. Almost every swim produced action. In one shady little glide and raft, a fish grabbed the bread almost on the drop and shot off upstream like it had just remembered it’d left the oven on. 

Another quick strike another hooked fish another ping as the hook popped out. At this point I started wondering whether these chub had unionised and voted for coordinated resistance.

Still, hope springs eternal in the quivering heart of an angler, and sure enough I dropped back in and had another bite within minutes. 

That one stayed on, probably out of sheer politeness. Eventually, the morning tally reached seven chub, all on bread, with the best going maybe 3½lb. Not exactly a British record, but on light gear on a frosty morning, it felt like battling river-reared prizefighters.

No roach, sadly. Not even a modest one for morale and maggots I tried were hovered up by minnows, but when you’ve had a morning like that sunshine, fish, cold air that wakes your soul up instead of freezing it solid you walk back to the car with a grin that suggests you know something the rest of the world doesn’t.

And then, the Sunday continued its ascent into a proper good'un.

The rabble and I marched proudly into Stratford-upon-Avon’s busy Christmas market like a troop of victors returning from battle. A pub stop was of course mandatory purely medicinal to warm the bones with a winter ale that tasted like Santa’s beard had been steeped in malt.

Then home for a roast pork dinner with all the trimmings, followed by Formula 1, YouTube binge watching and the glorious feeling of having wrung every last drop of joy from a crisp winter Sunday. One of those rare days you wish you could bottle, label as “For Emergency Use Only,” and drink whenever the world turns moody.

A frost, a river, some chub, a pub, and a roast.

If that’s not the recipe for happiness, I don’t know what is.