stevetheangler

Today Liz and myself visited Kingsbury Water Park in Sutton Coldfield near Birmingham to purchase my planned annual coarse fishing permit. https://countryparks.warwickshire.gov.uk/homepage/6/kingsbury-water-park

An almost exactly one hour drive from home to destination not using the M6 but going via Walsall itself, the usual way I visited the Belfry golf course when I golfed back in the 90’s it was an easy trip and with the SatNav there was only one slight deviation/recovery when it said ‘second exit’ at a roundabout when seemingly the first exit was actually an inconsequential tiny track leading me to leave one exit later than required… but soon resolved… and, as I said, we arrived one hour later at the car park to the visitor centre.

A trip into the centre to produce my rod licences, sign forms and hand over passport photos and fees saw me soon in possession of my annual coarse permit (valid 1st April to 31st March) and my car park permit … I get free car parking for the year with the fishing and that can be used at any time, not just fishing trips, which, at the usual daily car park fee of £5, is very value added as the fishing permit is £77 (for an old codger like me, £92 IIRC without the concession).

The coarse permit offers fishing for the year on several of the pools and the River Tame that runs through park but there are other options for annual permits – https://countryparks.warwickshire.gov.uk/annualfishingpermit – and day tickets are also available – https://countryparks.warwickshire.gov.uk/fishingdayticket.

Having obtained my ticket it was time for a coffee in the coffee shop before doing a recce of some of the waters…

A busy day on the park as it was a Bank Holiday Monday – and first day of the school half term… but no anglers were spotted at all at this time.

The first water visited was Bodymoor Heath Pool – the closest to the visitor centre car park, and the largest pool on the site at 47 acres … and which also has sailing and power boating on alternate days… so a few pegs are unavailable at certain times but with a large number of pegs available that’s no problem especially as the best pegs (on the opposite bank) are not affected it seems.

We continued our walk around the near and visited and looked at a few of the other pools around that area… and noted that the far bank looked quieter in terms of ‘grockles’. A quick scan of the map showed a handy car park over there too :) … so we headed back to the car to go to check it out.

After one error and correction in our route we arrived on that far bank car park and were starting to walk up the track when a barrow pushing (well, steering really as it was battery powered) angler was just returning to his car. A quick chat and he gave us some advice on pegs, baits, distances to cast, etc – very useful! :)

Anyway, we continued on to the area advised and checked out the recommended area – and decided on my peg for next Monday! :)

So, then back to the cafe for another coffee before setting out to the other half of the park on the opposite side of the M42 where a pool (Gibsons) had looked attractive on initially reading the site’s blurb online…

Parking over there easily located – and close to the start of the pools in that area – all of which looked quite enticing although some were very weedy and ‘later in the year’ venues really.

Some of the pools near Gibsons but didn’t note which ones! DOH!

So at this point we decided to head home, doing some shopping en route… again the journey was easy … but roads were quiet, it being Bank Holiday, so I’ll find out the truth of that on my first trip over ‘in anger’…

PLANS

Well, as said, Monday 2nd June it will be my first Bodymoor Heath Pool outing (weather, etc permitting)…

Tuesday, will be Liz’s ‘official royal’ 50th birthday – her real birthday is actually the following day (4th) but as she’ll be working that day, and we go out on Wednesday evenings too, it’d all be a rush hence the day early so that pressies can be opened and an evening celebratory meal partaken of :)