The Warwickshire Avon was still banging through so I fancied a few bites for this morning session so I decided to head to the Stour. I can be there in less than 20 minutes and there is so much to go at with typical small river fishing.
This particular stretch is match fish from time to time and that often means that the fish get bigger and bigger. Those half pints of left over maggots and groundbait deposited in the river at the end of the match only adds to that.
The river was still high and pacey in most swims however I would be fishing the slacks with my light feeder set-up and obviously rove from swim to swim if bites were not forthcoming. I need not have worried though as I couldn't believe how many bites I was getting. The fish were up for a feed. The set-up was a tiny cage feeder with some liquidised bread and some black roach groundbait for some pungency and a thumbnail piece of bread on the hook, or maggots.
I stuck it in the first swim far longer than I usually so because every cast of the feeder the fish were straight on the bait. They were roach and a reasonable stamp too however that all that seemed to be in the swim so I decided to go and have a nose at some other swims.
As anglers you get that feeling when a swim just looked perfect and needed some attention and the next swim was exactly that. A fallen tree upstream and a rather large back eddy was just downstream of that which visually looked like a washing machine at the end of its spin cycle.
The bread bait went out and after a few minutes a couple of pulls on the 3/4 oz tip which were unstrikeable eventually a full on bite developed and I hooked in to a fish. I knew exactly what it was from the initial fight, it was a BIG ROACH !! so I treated it with kid gloves for a while with my heart in my mouth, but then it was trying to get in to the dead reeds right by my feet which I had to steer it away from.
Then is popped up to the surface and WTF !! easily the biggest roach I've seen in my life and not only that it was a minter too, almost like an AI version of what you would want a big roach to look like, it was HUGE. I got the landing net and knelt down to scoop it in the landing net, but this roach had other ideas because one more headshake the hook and fish parted and I saw it swim away back to its watery depths. OH FFS !!! WTF, DID THAT JUST HAPPEN !!! you can imagine the expletives 🙈
A PB beater for sure and my PB is 1lb and 12oz's from the canal and this one was way bigger than that. These are predated on, so a roach like that is as rare as rocking horse poo and even if they do get to a decent size, my best off the Stour is 1lb 8 ounces they are usually quite tatty, with plenty of stories to tell.
With that fish lost I carried on fishing and managed a couple of nice chub and some other smaller roach before the bites dried up leaving me to go and fish some more swims. I returned to the swim for the last half an hour where I caught a small dace and that was that.
Now ok I've lost plenty of nice fish before but the lost of this fish I played in my mind over and over again to see what I could have done differently. These GURU feeder special hooks I've been using when they are locked on they are not coming out, so God knows what happened. Was the fish only lightly hooked ? should I have played it harder to set the hook better ? should I take up Golf ?
At least I know where it lives though so will give the swim and the stretch much more attention now. I still cannot believe I lost it, but then that's fishing for you. It's the fact that these fish rarely show so my next chance might be this time next you. Gutted is an understatement !!!
In the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger "I'll be back"
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