Warwickshire Stour - Koyaanisqatsi and Kainotophobia

I've not fished here for a good while but knowing it would be nice and quiet I fancied a roving session to see what I could winkle out.

Tackle was minimal so a light float rod (TFG River and Stream) a centrepin, a small bag of bits and a selection of baits. Worms, maggots and a few slices of bread.

This section of the Warwickshire Stour really is my sort of river, in places only wide enough to jump across and with the weather taking a bit of a cold snap, the banks and swims are ideal to roam in some lovely countryside where you are highly unlikely to see another angler.

It's a roving river not a river to be fished where you are confined to a single peg.

Ok the fish are not the biggest but for me that's well down the list in the tick list when it's a stretch of river as therapeutic as this.

Thoughts turn to fish and to Uncle Ben in these troubling times, where the worlds ills can be entirely forgotten about during the 3 or 4 hours session.

A tonic that I'm consuming in even more quantities these days, the mind blanking ability of the art on angling is something I don't think I'd ever tire of.

You only have to look at my posts of late, ones maggot dangling is on the increase despite the sessions which are often very short indeed.

An altered state of consciousness if you will, now due to the behaviourist paradigm in psychology altered states of consciousness were dismissed as a field of scientific inquiry during the early 20th century.

They were pathologized and merely seen as symptoms of intoxication or demonic possession.

Rod in hand, river ahead this type of altered state of consciousness can be achieved without the use of the lockupables.

You see an altered state of consciousness may be defined as a short-term change in the general configuration of one's individual experience, such that the rational functioning is clearly altered from one's usual state of consciousness

Now obviously there are many ways that one's consciousness can be altered, such as by using psychoactive drugs, as well as alcohol and the like, which are defined as chemical substances that pass through the blood and disturb brain function, causing changes in awareness, attitude, consciousness, and behaviour.

It's when I return from a fishing trip that I realise that those things on ones mind before the session started never featured at all, gone, vanished, kyboshed. It works wonders and even amplified up a notch when the air is fresh, the skies are blue and clear like it was for this session.

Now if you've not seen the 1982 film Koyaanisqati give it ago, effectively one of the first environmental films I can remember. 

The first section of Koyaanisqatsi begins with long, aerial shots of the natural world cloudscapes, ocean waves, the desert scenery of Monument Valley made so famous by 1950s westerns. Slowly, the presence of mankind drips into the film, we see power lines, mines and atomic explosions. 

Then, after half an hour or so yes, this film demands commitment, concentration and utter capitulation the pace and visual intensity picks up, as some transfixing footage of derelict housing estates being demolished feeds into urban scenes of traffic, shown in either slow motion or rapid timelapse. 

We see hotdogs and sponge cakes being made in a food factory, people spilling out and on to trains and elevators, and jumbo jets taxiing at LAX. 

And then it climaxes perfectly with archive footage of a Nasa test rocket exploding during take-off in 1962, with the camera tracking the final flaming piece of debris as it falls back to earth.

I'd like it remade for as we stand now in 2020, a change in the world and it's society can happen just by a viral post on social media these days. 

Anything that works for you to deal with this world we live in really must be grabbed with both hands as it ain't an easy world to live in is it, especially in the COVID-19 world doom monger Professor Dim-Ditty has put his finger in the air to predict for us.

Anyway I'm going off topic back to the fishing.

I couldn't believe what I saw when I got to the river, a river dredged to an inch of its life, the river I knew and loved changed for ever I'd imagine. The banks littered with the extraction, habitat removed in huge clumps. Mussels, gravel and reeds there in plain sight.

The scale of it can be seen here, pile after pile, mound after mound the whole stretch of the river too. It didn't sit right with me and after speaking to the farmer it only confirmed that. 

To be honest I did think about going somewhere else such the eyesore but I stuck with it and to be honest in the end faired better than I thought.

Quite a few chublets were caught by roving around and by alternating the bait size I caught some gudgeon too.

A small jack pike chased some bread on the retrieve but sadly nothing worthy of note. It was 4 degrees when I started fishing, 12 degrees when I left at least the weather was pleasant.

Legality aside, as permits must been needed for this sort of invasive work I'm sure, sadly it really put a dampener on the session and I cut it short, I just wasn't feeling it, lets hope it wasn't done in the name of match fishing, that would be madness.