Warwickshire Stour - Osmiferousbreaminality AND Turbiditationalism

There are times on the Warwickshire Stour when you feel less like an angler and more like an unpaid extra in a low-budget natural history documentary entitled Men Who Persist Despite All Available Evidence. This winter has been one of those times. 

The Warks Stour Power WhatsApp group normally a place of mild exaggeration, heroic selfies, and suspiciously well-timed PBs has recently taken on the tone of a grief counselling session chaired by a damp keepnet. Three men. One river. And a collective inability to get anything resembling consistency out of it.

The trio in question are, of course, myself (the roaming optimist), Nic of Avon Angling fame (who knows this river better than the fish themselves), and George “I Don’t Blog Any More” Burton, who despite the name has begun the New Year obsessed with the idea of a big Stour roach an obsession that places him somewhere between dedicated specimen hunter and man waiting for a bus that may never come.

Now the Stour has been patchy. Not “a bit hit and miss” patchy, but Jekyll and Hyde with a landing net patchy. Hit it right and you’re into chub as if they’ve formed a queue. Miss it by a matter of hours and you could spend the entire session communing with gudgeon that nibble like Victorian pickpockets. Only a short while ago I had seven chub in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it session, each one convincing me I’d cracked the code. The very next day? Naff all most likely. Not even a courtesy knock.

Nic, being a man of science (or at least a man who sounds scientific when holding a glass of water), reckons it’s all down to water colour. And I suspect he’s onto something. He’d fished it when the river was still charging through, but the colour oh the colour was that unmistakable Stour green. Not a pleasant mossy green. Not a healthy aquatic green. More like the colour the Hulk might produce after a heavy night involving lime slush puppies and a Midori Sour chaser. Visibility somewhere between “murky” and “why bother wearing polarised glasses at all.”

When the Stour’s in proper flood, chocolate brown and angry, it can actually fish well. Those canals in spitting distance turbidity, the fish lose their paranoia, and those old, streetwise roach the ones with PhDs in hook avoidance suddenly fancy a wander. They know the drill. Brown water means fewer fins brushing their flanks and fewer beady-eyed anglers staring into their souls. Confidence, it turns out, is a murky thing.

So off I went, roving like a man with optimism but no plan, alternating between half a lobworm and bread, with liquidised bread laced with geranium essential oil squeezed lovingly into the feeder. Yes, geranium. Don’t ask. I read it somewhere once, probably at midnight, probably written by a man who owns more tweed than sense.

The conditions were, frankly, abysmal. A cold wind gusting like it had a personal vendetta against my quivertip. Bites were less “tap tap” and more “was that the wind or my imagination?” Not exactly textbook stuff, but then needs must when the river calls and the canals are still sulking in the background.

And then because fishing is nothing if not a cruel performance artist within ten minutes I had rattly bites on the one-ounce tip in the very swim that produced my PB river roach. I struck. 

The rod hooped. And for approximately three seconds I was connected to destiny. Roach? Chublet? I’ll never know. It felt right. It felt silvery. And then it was gone, leaving only a slack line and that hollow feeling anglers carry far longer than any fish.

After that, swim after swim delivered nothing but nibbles. Tiny fish with ambition vastly exceeding mouth capacity. Strikes that connected with nothing but hope. 

 At one point I deployed the “get out of jail card” those woody swims that usually cough up at least something but even they merely offered more pecking and more disappointment. Even the chub didn't show after switching to an all out bread feeder attack. 

Four hours later I was staring down the barrel of a blank. A proper one. The sort that seeps into your bones and makes you question past life choices. Meanwhile, downstream, George was into bream. And not just bream good’uns. Slabs. 

The sort of fish that arrive uninvited and leave your landing net smelling like a trawler’s sock drawer. It just goes to show what can turn up in this river as it winds through open farmland, quietly ignoring our theories and plans. 

On the plus side, my landing net remained blissfully free of bream slime, my garage was spared, and domestic harmony was preserved. Small victories matter.

Still, I’m fed up with floodwater now. Properly fed up. The romance has worn thin. The Stour will do what it wants, when it wants, and explain nothing. I’m not quite ready to retreat to the canals just yet but the thought is there, hovering, like a backup plan written in pencil.

Until then, we’ll keep going. Because sometimes the blank is part of the story. And sometimes, just sometimes, the river gives you three seconds of magic enough to keep you coming back for the next chapter

Warwickshire Stour - Misadventurousness & Melancholiosity

There are days in an angler’s calendar that promise greatness. Days where the mist hangs mysteriously over the fields like a scene from a low-budget fantasy film, days where you wake with purpose, spring out of bed, and most importantly don’t feel like death warmed up because you haven’t been bathing your liver in Merlot the night before. 

This, dear reader, was one of those days. I leapt out of bed as fresh as a Mountain Dew advert, ready to take on the world, or at least ready to lob bread at fish with unrealistic optimism. Dry January, despite YouTube’s well-timed attempts to derail me via targeted ads featuring cheerful sociopaths telling me I deserve a drink, was going strong. My willpower rare, delicate, and about as dependable as a politician’s promise was still intact.

The plan was straightforward: hit the Arrow like a caffeinated otter, strike into a chub or two, and revel in that smug satisfaction that only a successful winter session can deliver. I’d even sorted the tackle the night before, which is practically unheard of. 

Usually, I’m rummaging in the back of the car like a raccoon in a skip, finding month-old pork pies and floats I’d assumed were lost to the ages. I even woke up after one of those sleeps where you open your eyes and think, “So this is what it feels like to not consume a distilled vineyard before bed.” Simply marvellous.

But fate fickle, cruel, and clearly a fan of slapstick comedy had other ideas. I decided to check to see if there wasn’t a match on. And of course, there was. Thirty-odd organised individuals most likely lined up like an angling firing squad, each armed with poles long enough to vault the Severn. Plans, as they say, utterly and spectacularly scuppered.

So off to the Warwickshire Stour I went, muttering to myself like a man who’d just realised he’d left his wallet in a taxi. The Stour, bless it, can be brilliant after a flood. Huge roach sometimes appear like shimmering aquatic miracles, drawn to colour and flow like a drunk to a kebab shop. I was brimming with optimism. That is, until I laid eyes on the river.

Now, I’m not exaggerating when I say it was green. Not nice countryside green. Not gentle minty green. No, we are talking glowing, radioactive, phosphorescent, mutant-slime green. 

A green so intense it could probably power a small village if you hooked it up to a turbine. A green that made me ponder whether the Ninja Turtles were about to emerge asking for pizza recommendations. I had expected weak tea. I got neon mushy peas.

Still, the chub can’t resist bread in a small cage feeder when the river’s tanking through, and I came prepared. 

Size 12 hook, thumbnail-sized flake of Warburtons, and chub-scaled gear that whispers confidence even if the angler using it is mostly running on blind faith and caffeine.

The first swim was the banker. The Almighty Banker. The swim where, nine times out of ten, you’d expect at least a tentative pluck or the tell-tale movement of something that isn’t submerged shopping trolleys. 

It’s sheltered by trees and a nice high bank that blocks the worst of the wind though the wind was still lively enough to blow the moustache off a walrus. I cast in, sat back, and tried to look like a man who knew exactly what he was doing.

Twenty minutes passed. Not a twitch. Not a tremble. Nothing. If the quivertip had shown any less movement, I’d have assumed I’d accidentally superglued it to the rest of the rod. So on I trudged, swim to swim like a wandering prophet with a bait bucket. Each spot looked fishy seductive even but each gave me absolutely nothing. 

I could’ve been fishing in a chlorinated swimming pool for all the interest I got. By swim number five (banker number two), I finally saw the quivertip give the slightest tremor. A nibble! Or possibly wind vibration. Or maybe the river sneezing. Hard to say. But I reeled in to find the bread gone. Something had happened, and that was enough to inflate my optimism like a punctured football being blown up with a foot pump.

Refreshed, inspired, and with the grace of a man who definitely knows how to cast, I filled the feeder again, stuck on a perfect piece of bread, took aim at the sweet spot… and immediately launched it straight into an overhanging branch like an absolute clown. I stared at it in disbelief as the feeder swung gently, taunting me like some kind of annoying river-side wind chime.

I pulled. I tugged. I even gave it the classic “wiggle and swear” technique, which has a success rate of approximately 0.0047%. Nothing. So I yanked with a bit more conviction, fully expecting the rig to drop back into the swim.

Instead, the line snapped, the feeder swung back, and my quivertip decided it fancied a career as a submarine. Off it plopped into the river, vanishing into the murky green depths like Leonardo DiCaprio at the end of Titanic (apparently I've not seen it). Goodbye, old friend.

Session over. Abruptly. Dramatically. Stupidly.

Spot the piece of bread in the tree - Where's Wally ? !!

Now, unlike Nic from Avon Angling, whose car boot resembles a fully stocked tackle megastore with more spare rods than a medieval armoury, the back of my car contains only the essentials: half a sandwich, mismatched gloves, vague hope, and definitely no spare quivertips.

Tail firmly between my legs, I admitted defeat, climbed into the car, and grumbled all the way home. Sometimes fishing teaches you patience. Sometimes it teaches you humility. And sometimes it just smacks you round the face with a radioactive river and flings your quivertip into oblivion.

But fear not. There’s always tomorrow (or most likely next Friday). And besides, at least I didn’t break Dry January. Small mercies.

Warwickshire Stour - Tumble and Tatterdemalion

The Warwickshire Avon, having recently decided it would quite like to impersonate the North Sea for a few days, was clearly in no mood for sensible conversation, so I did what any right-minded angler does when faced with several thousand tons of angry brown water and floating detritus: I legged it up one of its tributaries and pretended this was Plan A all along. 

The Warwickshire Stour, bless it, was doing that lovely post-flood thing where it looks apologetic, as if to say, “Yes, sorry about all that nonsense earlier, I’ve tidied myself up now,” and had settled into that deep olive green that makes you believe against all evidence that today might be the day. Roving a small river with a quiver rod is one of those pursuits that sounds idyllic when written down but in reality involves a lot of heavy breathing, slippery banks, and talking to yourself while wedged between hawthorn and nettles wondering how you’ll get back out again without ringing Mountain Rescue.

You do need to be reasonably fit for this sort of fishing, or at least reasonably optimistic about your own fitness, because every swim is either two feet lower than expected or six feet further away, and gravity is always watching, waiting for you to relax for just one second.

Which is precisely what happened in the very last swim of the first stretch, when I went from “carefully transferring weight sideways onto my left foot” to “Eddie the Eagle Edwards about to launch from the ski jump” in roughly the time it takes a chub to reject a maggot. I’ve met Eddie, incidentally, and I can now say with some authority that I briefly understood his life choices. 

I went arse over tit in a manner that would have delighted any passing dog walkers (thankfully no public access), landing firmly on my backside while clinging to the TFG River and Stream rod like it was the last helicopter out of Saigon. The rod survived. I survived. My dignity is still somewhere up that bank, possibly lodged in a bramble.

I arrived at dawn, as all proper fishing stories insist you must, to find the river wearing a rather fetching shade of green one of those colours that makes you feel clever for noticing it. George Burton, of Float, Flight and Flannel fame, has been poking about these hallowed waters recently and apparently couldn’t believe just how featured the place is, which is true if by “featured” you mean “every swim looks perfect until you try to fish it.” 

This is one of those club stretches that feels like it ought to be guarded by a medieval charter and a bloke called Geoffrey who disapproves of your footwear. A few days earlier the river had been over its banks and rearranging the furniture, but now it had fined down nicely, and although it wasn’t chocolate brown always a colour that smells faintly of hope it was in that in-between state where you convince yourself a big roach might finally slip up and make a mistake.

Of course, olive green Stour water doesn’t whisper “roach,” it bellows “chub,” and sure enough that’s what turned up. Nic from Avon Angling was on a different stretch altogether and had spent four hours trotting maggots for precisely nothing, which immediately filled me with sympathy and the quiet, shameful relief that it wasn’t me.

I managed four chub and lost one in the reeds, with the best nudging 3lb 1oz, a solid fish that fought like they’d been personally offended by my presence. It was tough going, though far fewer bites than expected and that’s the sort of day that slowly eats away at your confidence while pretending everything is fine. You tell yourself it’s “interesting” and “making you think,” when really it’s just the river politely declining all your invitations.

After the now-legendary arse-over-tit incident thankfully conducted out of sight of the general public, though possibly observed by a squirrel I decided the river upstream had had enough of me and headed downstream to another stretch of the Stour, the scene of a recent personal tragedy involving a roach of frankly unreasonable proportions. 

Three swims later, nothing of note had happened unless you count the odd minnow rattling the tip as “action,” which I don’t, no matter how desperate I am. Still, there’s something oddly satisfying about fishing a place that gives you nothing back; it feels honest, like it’s reminding you who’s really in charge here.

All told, it was a tough morning, the sort that doesn’t produce heroic photographs or exaggerated pub stories, but it felt good. Fishing during the working week has a slightly illicit thrill to it, like bunking off school but with better sandwiches. 

And as I packed up, muddy, sore, and faintly greener than when I arrived, it occurred to me that we’ve turned a corner now. The days will start to stretch themselves out again, slowly but surely, and before long this fall, this cold, this slipping down banks like an underfunded ski jumper will all seem like part of the bargain. Which, of course, it is and I’ll be back for more

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.

Warwickshire Stour - Cacophonous and Cacaesthesia

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 !!

Warwickshire Stour - Shoulders and Shuftiscopes

So with the loss of that PB beating Roach in the back of my mind I decided to revisit the stretch for another go to see if that roach was home and well, to see if I could catch it this time. All very pie in the sky I suppose but you never know.

The Stour was cold, very cold, the water too, because that had dropped to 4.7 degrees which could explain why the bites were far harder to come by. 

Obviously I started off in the swim where I lost the big'un but a good 45 minutes in there with only a few minnow nibbles it was time to get on the rove. 

The Stour is rarely clear but without any meaningful rain for a while in one of the swims I could see a metre down at least which is probably why from swim to swim, there was nothing really doing at all. 

The colour was perfect though so I decided to concentrate on the chub fishing instead and fish tight to cover, snags and rafts to see if I could drop a bait in the right place at the right time.

It took a good while to be honest with maybe the 6th swim where a bite on the drop came and then after a minute or so a proper chub bite where I was in to a solid fish. Bread did the trick again, the most reliable chub bait ? well I think so. 

It gave me a bit of a run around and I could see it trying to bury its head in an undercut bank and then it tried to get in to some dead reeds right by my feet.  Dirty tactics but then I wouldn't expect anything less from chub this size, they are not stupid.

A nice solid fish for the Stour and really big shoulders on it, a proper bully I'd imagine and it fought really in the clear water. Anyway a small chublet from the same swim and that was my lot.  I even fished the first swim last again and swapped between bread and lobworm, but not even a bite.Tough going actually, but it has been barassic of late to I bet many fish are holding up trying to ride the temperature drop. I would if I were them anyway 👤

Warwickshire Stour - Mendaciloquence and Melancholy

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 year. Gutted is an understatement !!!

In the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger "I'll be back"

Warwickshire Stour - Undercarriages and Undulationisms

 A rather dramatic sunrise greeted me when I arrived at the rather lovely Warwickshire Stour. I'm fond of this one particular stretch mainly because you are unlikely to bump in to another angler in pursuit of the angle. 

Sheepshit and Solitude....😎

The problem with the Stour is that you have often have the session played out, where you are going to fish, what you are going to catch but often like like this session those prerequisites go out the window. 

So tackle for this short (aren't they all) my TFG river and stream rod, liquidised bread flavoured with Sensas Gros Gardons aromix liquid attractant in the feeder and bread on the hook was the plan, and chub the intended quarry. I do scale down to fish this little river though where I swap to a size 12 feeder special hook and a lighter hooklink.

There are some nice roach down here you see (my best 1lb 9oz) but they are less likely to show up than the electorate in a general election. The chub don't go massive to if you do lose one it might be a 4 lber not a cry in the handkerchief 6lber from the Avon.  

Being inland we were rather sheltered from the recent Storm Éowyn but its wrath could be seen in a few of the swims. I did wonder why some of the downstream pegs were a bit more turbulent from normal and this could well have been the cause of it. Its undercarriage on full show so I didn't take a picture to spare someone's blushes, oh wait !!!, oh well, I doubt it reads my blog anyway. 

The Stour wasn't its usual emerald green colour, the recent rain had turned it to more of a weak tea colour and could well have been why I was struggling for bites.

Hmmmm....

This wasn't going well until the fourth swim where a few quick missed bites played out on the 3/4 ounce quiver tip, I decided to switch to maggots instead. Now I rarely bring maggots but last night I packed a few for a vacation, well that or a drowning !! so maybe the fish Gods were looking down on me.

You see a minute or so after the feeder hit the bottom some twerky bites I struck in to a fish. At first I thought it was a chublet as it was trying to get in to some cover to my right however I got a glimpse of it when it came to the surface after steering it away from the inevitable. 

It was a rather nice roach 💞...

....and who doesn't love a nice roach !!!

Happy days !!! 

I really didn't expect that so I carried on the maggots as hook bait and liquidised bread in the feeder where over the next hour I picked up another 2 roach ranging from around 12 ounces with the biggest an ounce over the pound mark.

Oh nothing to write home about but we are fishing a dirty river that winds itself through open farmland. this isn't a chalk stream in Hampshire. They made me happy anyway 💗, especially when they were in cracking condition. 

The wind was starting to pick up with another storm on the way and to be honest not only was it that chilly wind that gets you right to the bone, but the bites had dried up and difficult to see even if I had one. 

I dropped in to the first swim again which I'd pre-baited which is usually good for a chub, but no the chub were having an off day, they didn't show at all. I really do love small river fishing, what's not to like (well apart from the size of the fish 😃, give them a go, you might be 'hooked' like I am.