stevetheangler

Well, a Black Country dialect version of ‘More Stour’ rather than someone who puts their lawn cutting equipment away…

Thursday, August 12th, I made a return journey back to the Worcs Stour as I said I intended to at the end of my last posting… the section being the BAA controlled length at Stourton in Staffordshire. Just looking up, on Wiki, the county that the stretch is in (as its very close to entering Worcs and Hereford at that point and I wasn’t sure) it seems there’s as much controversy over the pronunciation of the name as there is with Shrewsbury (Shrews-bury, Shrows-bury or Shows-bury) with three differeing pronunciations: Stower-ton (the right one to me as it matches the pronunciations for Stourport and Stourbridge and also the name of the river itself) but seems others call it ‘Stir-ton’ or ‘Store-ton’. Oh well, ‘a rose by any other name is still a rose’ as they say :).

Anyway, the day started as it had for the previous outing … again due to the alarm clock … actually a case of ‘bad workman always blames his tools’ as the alarm clock didn’t do what it what it wasn’t told to do and didn’t do it perfectly! I set the time perfectly, I even set the alarm time perfectly … but then I didn’t actually activate the alarm this time round! :(

So, I again was 30 minutes later rising than intended … luckily due to the body clock kicking in…

Anyway, it wasn’t too bad as I was only taking my ‘roving’ kit and thus with limited luggage to take most was pre-packed and had just a small selection of baits to be taken from the fridge and a flask of coffee to be made, my snacky stuff having already ready prepped the previous evening.

I arrived at the waterside in my selected swim – the one I’d fished on my last two visits – around 0700. Easier walking from car to water this time as the field had been mown and the 2’-3’ high grass intended for winter feed was now in plastic covered cylinders awaiting collection.

On arrival at the water’s edge I mixed up, and fed into the the margins to mid-stream area, some bread mash mixed with dead maggot … and at 0715 I made my first cast with maggot on my size 12 barbless hook to 6” 8lb braided hooklength and 8lb Daiwa Hyper Sensor main line weighted by a small (3g?) penny lead on a sliding short link. The rod is an 11’, Grandeslam ‘Des Taylor Avon System 3’ with the quiver top in use.

0730 – first good knock but no follow up ….

0732 – 1210 – all seems as dead as a dodo with not a single tremble even of the tip. Change of baits between maggot, bread, worm, cheese’n’garlic paste along with searching the water bank to bank, near to far, etc, etc plus light feeding of bread mash and catapulted dead maggots brings no change…

1210 – a definite small tug on maggot but again no follow up…

1530 – I call it a day, pack up and head home to shower and change ready to collect Liz from work and to collect our Thursday night McD/KFCs for tea.

SO … first visit was good (4lb bream, lost carp of about same size, plenty of plucks plus a few small fish), second and third visits however have been blanks and only produced a few knocks on each occasion. Why the difference? The place is hard to read, as this swim is located within 30 yards of the sill of a weir the water level changes literally less than 2”-3” if that even … there is a monitoring station at this location BUT it is situated 300 yards or so BELOW the weir so doesn’t help with levels above … and the only other station on the river is upstream 8 miles away but should be the best indicator of water flows (current) at my area of fishing I’m thinking. Maybe need to try to get a correlation between results and water levels (and hence current) by referring to the data available via GaugeMap (https://www.gaugemap.co.uk/)?

Anyway, being as quiet as it was, I did walk upstream a little way and found some swims possibly worthy of investigation – easier now with the grass cut to get to without the battling. I think I will actually revert to the ‘roving’ that I’ve geared up for – fish a swim for 30-60 minutes then move on to the next one. As the stretch is relatively short it would be possible to rove in an upstream direction, fish and then bait up each swim as I move on the the next and then fish each again on the return back downstream on my way to the car. Ummmm…. :)

PLANS

Tuesday – Liz has decided not to fish so I’m planning to fish a BAA stretch of the Warks Avon at Pensham or Pershore) … https://www.baa.uk.com/where-fish/avon/pershore-left-right-bank-pensham/ … both areas are close to each other but of differing character allowing a choice to be made between fishing for chub/barbel at Pershore or for bream at Pensham … and its not inconceivable that I may do a half day on each as due to having to travel mainly on the M5 or the A449, both being very busy roads in the daytime, it requires an early start and a late’ish return to avoid the work time traffic.