stevetheangler

Thursday 20th July, in a change from my usual Friday trip which had to be changed due to a dental appointment, I headed down to a member’s section of one of my club’s River Severn stretches (KF-S/HL/M) for the day…

Although I was up at 0500, due to the falling rain being slightly too heavy and the forecast being that it would start clearing up around 0800, it was 0700 before I left the house allowing an hour travel. On arrival it was still raining slightly but within the hour it had ceased and around 1000 it was blue skies and fluffy white clouds.

As can be seen from the picture, just downstream of my position on the bank was an overhanging tree and the river flow twixt myself and tree was quite slack whilst a heavier flow existed on the line outside the line of the tree’s overhang. So I decided to fish baits on the line of and under the bush to start with as it seemed it could be a good chub holding spot. Particles and crumb were fed to drift down that line… and bread was fished on a size 4 hook to 10lb mono on a 3/4oz lead and I fished like this until around 1200 and had a few minor tugs and nudges but nothing substantial. At 1200 I swapped to fishing a quivertip rod with 8lb line, 1/4oz lead and a worm/maggot baited size 8 hook along the same line. This resulted in one chub of around 6oz … and many more nudges/tweaks/pulls but no further fish were landed up to 1615 when I packed up for the day.

Spotted/observed over the day – one cormorant swimming downstream mid-morning … a group of four merganser/goosander (whichever is the tufted one) swam upstream mid-afternoon diving and coming up with small fry along the far bank … whilst swapping over my rods at midday and facing downstream there was a huge splash just off the edge of an overhanging bush directly behind me, no birds, etc in the vicinity so assuming it was a large barbel jumped or a pike had swirled at or taken something … and just before leaving there was a weaving ‘ripple’ of about 2’-3’ in length travelling downstream about 10’ from the far bank, possibly a fish but suspect a snake due to the weaving pattern although couldn’t make out an obvious body or head protruding from the water – a case of not see one in around 50 years and then possibly see two within a few weeks?