Stour again.

[barbelblanker]

OK after yesterdays dissapointing trip to the Severn I fell back on what is rapidly becoming one of my favourtie venues, the midlands Stour.

So about 3 (ish) I turned up on a bright day thinking I'd have another minimum tackle experience.

The idea was to

- travel light so I can explore the whole of the venue,
- get to use to centrepin a bit more
- catch something.

So 1 rod , 1 reel (OK I cheated and packed my trusty old closed face "just in case"), a rod a bait apron and some gear in that there free holdall/bag from my "improve your coarse fishing, buy Korum sh@te till you are broke" magazine subsciption (though the underwater stuff has had me enthralled).

I got there to find the "bushes" swim was not free. Wandered up the stretch past two sets of abandoned gear to find to guys talking (one fishing , the other with a bodied waggler hanging off his rod). Had a quick chat then legged it up to the top of the BAA stretch.

Now , bear in mind, the first thing i wanted to do was get to know this place even better than I did . So I was quite suprised to find 10 foot of water this end of the place. The river is quite narrow here (no more than 25 foot) but I was not expecting that.

Tackled up and was immediately impressed with the free holdall type thing as it neither fell over nor collapsed in a heap.

Fed, trotted, nowt.

So move a few times and fed, trotted , nowt.

Moved again. Nowt.

Moved again and found a suprise. In a stretch I thought I knew well there was a channel just off the rod tip that was a good foot or two deeper than the river either side. Must have roach in there then. One about 12oz fell for the bait but that was about it. Signs were getting better though. The Dick Clegg Series 3 float was making some very funny "I am not moving down the river in a straight line" moves and the maggots were being killed off. Not out and out roach mashing bites , just subtle ones. More of a "givena stern glance" than a chew I reckon.


Water temperature checked out at 8.3 which is a lot warmer than the Severn was yesterday.

The sun was dipping when I had another chat with the bloke I met earlier and he was most definately what I would class as "old school" or as I prefer to call it "knows what he's talking about". We had a chat and agreed that the roach were being right buggers and were no fools here.

So (as I knew his son was in "my" peg) settled in a swim with a tree fallen in at it's tail end. Roach love cover, no honest, they will rarely be far from it.

So fed a few maggots and let rip.

Sure enough the float went under .

Had an enjoyable roach plunder cacthing about 9 before the swim died and it was getting a little on the dark side . Packed up with 10 roach under my belt and not entirely p@es off having achieved all three of the things i set out to do.

One of them was the oddest shape roach I have ever seen. It was definately a roach, no doubt, but had a right pot belly on it. Like them pictures carp anglers send in to magazines. Wierd.

So the only things remaining now are

- how much line should be on the centrepin ? Occasionally it did feel like I had some "bedding in" going on. I reckon there's about 75 metres of 4lb (yep I know, too heavy for light stick work) in there. Do I go down to maybe half that for now (till I go for float fished barbel in the summer).

I am rapidly becoming a fan of the Stour. It's a little river, it's close and there are fish in it. OK so it does not contain record breakers, it's close and got fish in it.

Does it need more?

Sorry no pictures this time. I did take the phone, it's just that I have photed this place before so didn't get the phone out.

[MRG2000]

nice report Peter .....