stevetheangler

Monday, June 17th, 0630, I headed off out on my first river session of the new 2024-2025 season.

Destination: The BAA controlled stretch of the River Severn at Ladyham, near Stourport.

The  weather of the day generally was bright and warm although around midday a dark cloud seemed to settle over the area and a few short showers ensued one of them quite sharp but not lengthy enough that the brolly was needed…

The river is wide here with a gentle steady flow (in fact, a couple of canoes passed by … going upstream … not something I’ve EVER encountered before on a river! :D) and more typically bream territory than a barbel one … and hence my targeted species for the day. There are the odd barbel caught here though and the stretch is also noted for chub and pike.

So, tackle for the day was a Ron Thompson 12’ EVO2 feeder rod with quiver tip – don’t ask me what the TC of the tip as I’ve no idea, the rod came with 3 tips and as far as I can ascertain all are much of a muchness apart from tip colours of yellow, red and green … and I used the green one as (a) that was the tone already fitted, (b) the red one (fitted into my ‘spare’ rod had snapped in transit and (c) I hadn’t my yellow one with me. BTW the quiver tip had also been painted with black/white bars for the length below the coloured tip (just plain black as supplied) as an extra visual aid. Line was 8lb mono. Terminal tackle was fairly standard – basically a running lead set up using a large eye swivel with 5” of mono attaching to a quick change link allowed for any changes I wanted to make to switch between various lead and feeder was stopped on the line with an Enterprise Adjustastop. Hook length was of 8lb braid to size 8 hook.

In use, I used a standard 20g open ended cage feeder all session loaded with my cereal groundbait plus the usual dead maggots, particles, etc with added cheese&garlic pellets plus a handful of blitzed grated 4-cheese.

For hook baits I used worm and cheese paste. The cheese paste was actually created by spreading a few slices of left over kitchen bread on which I spread some old squeezy Primula Cheese&Ham and Cheese&Prawn from my bait fridge as you would make multilayer butties (ie spead on bottom slice add a slice, spread, another slice, etc)… cut off the crusts and the microwave for a minute to melt the cheese into the bread …. allow to cool awhile (too hot for hands otherwise! OUCH! I know.. I was that man! LOL) …. then mould and knead into a ball. Paste worked well, soft but stayed on hook well….

So, I fished from about 0745 until 1400 … and not a single touch! L … as usual for me recently!

A chap a couple of swims downstream of me came for a chat and transpired he’d not been having much look either – nothing on ‘larger’ baits but when he switched to maggot he’d had a few small perch. There were about 6 or so other anglers out on the water but all were quite a distance away and out of sight from my location so not sure if they’d fared better.

I had hoped that feed from a match that had been on the previous day (the Glorious 16th) at the venue might have given the fish a bit of an awakening to feed and increased interest but seemingly not! J