Fishing midweek on a school day !!, well it is half term after all where I decided to take a rare day off from work. With some ten pin bowling later on and a curry afterwards I had a morning to go and do some fishing down at the lovely Warwickshire Stour.
Fishing can be very hit and miss on this river but it offers the angler that small river fix that many like me require from time to time.
The chub don't go big, a 4lber is a good'un but it is the nice roach that from time show up with 1lb 9oz the biggest I've managed to muster up so far. I lost one recently that was much bigger than that and would it have made the magic 2lb ? well I'd never know but quite possibly, it was certainly the biggest roach I'd ever seen.
I arrived at dawn on a rather cold morning with the water temperature a nadger over 4 degrees and got fishing. Simple tactics of a small feeder filled with some groundbait and liquidised bread and a thumbnail piece of bread on the hook.
Like many small rivers the depth can vary considerable where just in this swim it goes from 6 ft to shallow, to 12 foot over a small distance. The 3/4 oz quiver amplifies those roach bites and they are so distinctive and quite easy to tell the difference from a chub bite.
I was only fishing for ten minutes when a chub bite came out of nowhere and when I struck the fish had powered downstream right in to a snag within what seemed like a split seconds. A fish that knew its home that's for sure. Damn it !!!
Bites were forthcoming on nearly every cast and in the deepest swim after some telltale sharp roach pulls a fish was on and the bite matched the quarry. A nice roach of around 12 ounces succumbed to the small piece of bread.
I'm sure if I had used maggots I'd catch more fish because small fish I'm sure were messing around with the bread unable to get the bait in their mouths. A good hour in the first swim the bites dried up and I got on the move.
There is a good reason why I prefer other sections of the Stour and that is because despite the public footpath slap bang in the middle of the two fields, dog walkers ignore that complete and hug the river bank the best that can. I don't really want a dog sniffing around me and its owner shouting it back at the top of his voice, and I don't really want a dog chasing its ball feet from me, but both of those happened in this short mornings session. 💩
Then the chainsawing started, as did the planes which seemed one after the other, not exactly a peaceful morning in solitude I must admit. 👀
As the time ticked by the bites became hard to by but I did managed another similar sized roach and a chublet as I headed down the stretch. Even Nic from Avon Angling banker swim didn't produce so a very tough morning really, the fish just were not up for a feed really most likely having a short feeding window and I wasn't there to capitalise on that.
Still I could get used to this fishing when I should be working, despite the fishing being mediocre and the background noise being I know would I would rather be doing !!
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