My local river's demise may have been exagerated

[Ken L]

Over the winter when everything including most of the Severn below Stourport was frozen solid, I had two short sessions on the Worcestershire Stour without a bite and predictably, the cormerants were there in droves.

I honestly thought it would have been cleared out of fish but I had a short session of about an hour yesterday and the results were both suprising and encouraging.

I fished size two and three spinners with barbless hooks as the river used to be subject to heavy industrial polution and any trout caught (as well as any out of season chub) were going to be released anyway with minimal damage.

I started off in a very heavily wooded section that I've not fished before and got a hit on the very first cast but failed to hook up. The polarised glasses revieled the culprit and the next cast brough the lure through exactly the same spot and I watched as a lively little trout of about 10oz took the spinner. He was landed in short order and immediatly released.

Now trout (nor chub for that matter) rarely take a lure that is being pulled upstream but will happily smash one that's being held so that it drifts across the current in an arc, so the plan was a serise of casts tight to the far bank and a few clever tricks to fish the whole of the section below where I was standing. However, the first order of business was to free up the line after the first fish to improve accuracy so I flicked the lure right down to the bottom of the swim and let it arc across. It got about half way when it got absolutely nailed.

I only saw this fish for a moment but it was either a monster trout or a salmon and it smashed me up on 10lb Fireline and a 15lb trace. The dag was set light though and the river contains no shortage of junk so it's probable that it cut me off on something rather than broke the line - I was gutted, but three hits in the first three casts is good going in anybodys book.

I tried a few more casts without another bite and then moved on.

I carried on down to a more open section and continued to catch consistently with a few casts in each peg but bounced off more fish than I actually hooked as a result of fishing fast shallow water in very confined spaces and ended up with four trout to a little over a pound and three chub.

My cousin also joined me for the last 20 minutes and he had two chub and a trout.

We could undoubtedly have caught more chub but we deliberatly avoided the slightly deeper and slower areas where chub were more likely as it wouldn't have been reasonable to try to justify fishing those pegs on the basis of trying to catch trout but the results were still encouraging.

I even identified a couple of spots where I might have space to take the fly rod.

 

I've no doubt that the cormerants hammered the chub but there seem to be plenty of fish left and my backup river for when the Severn is in flood seems good to go.

Hopefully the fish that smashed me up will have little difficulty shedding the babless hooks and if it was (as I suspect) a big trout, I now know where it hangs out and will be back for a rematch.

[Ken L]

I supose I should add a strong suggestion that anyone planning to dig out the lure gear should check their local byelaws carefully. For my region, they state:

 

No person shall -

i) in fishing with rod and line for salmon in the Severn area use

any float in conjunction with any lure or bait.

ii) in fishing with rod and line for trout or any fish other than

freshwater fish during the annual close season for freshwater

fish, use any float or bait (which term includes ground bait)

other than artificial or natural fly (which term excludes

bloodworms, jokers and other midge larvae), spinners,

minnows, worms, prawns or shrimps.NB. “any fish other than freshwater fish” excludes salmon for the

purpose of this byelaw (see section 3).

 

 

It helps to remember that trout have a closed season too so you can't fish for them until after (I think) 28 March - makes no difference to me though as I never get to go out before the beginning of April.

[Steve Burke]

Good session, good report. Thanks for sharing it, Ken!

[Ken L]

We would have covered more water and got a better idea of how the river is if Dave had been there on time but he was messing about sorting out his EA licence on#line and our leaving time was fixed because we were off to watch a mates band playing a local pub.

I'm actually quite tempted to go back this afternoon and explore a bit more of the wooded section.

[Anthony78]

Hi Ken,

I'm only in Worcester and have crossed the Stour quiet a few times while looking down and thinking that it must contain a few fish. Who ownes the fishing rights?

I used to visit the scrap yard in Stourport (think it's called Potters) on a regular basis when I went through my stage of buying crappy old cars for a couple of hundred quid and always thought that there must be a few decent chub in there?

Is there any decent roach in there?

 

Cracking session by the way!!

 

Ant

[Ken L]

As far as I can tell, nobody controls the sections that I'm fishing as they're on common land but I do know that the BAA have the rights to a section at Stourton (next to what used to be The Stewpony pub) and apparently there's a club in Woverly that controls a lot of water upstream of Kiddy. Been trying to find out a bit more about the Woverly club but have had no success so far.

We've always used it for very short lure sessions so I've not explored it's coarse fishing potential but there were a few pegs that I ruled out today as "not trouty enough" that I will definitely be re-visiting with trotting gear when the season opens.

I did read a report about the BAA section that said there were some very good (2lb+) roach present which I can believe because Ive seen chub, barbel and some very large roach by the bridge in the town centre.

 

I went back this afternoon and had another session. I wasn't waiting for Dave so I was able to cover more water. I also used smaller lures but ended up going back up to a size two as the fish were engulfing the tiny ones at were more difficult to unhook without harm than they needed to be.

I ended up with 17 trout, 4 chub and a little jackpike that nailed the lure as soon as it hit the water. As before, I bumped loads of fish off too. Nothing big but an entertaining afternoons fishing.

 

I have a little four piece spinning rod that fits in a backpack and is ideal for lures of this size so I'll probably go explore the BAA stretch in the week by taking the pushbike out after work. If it's all deep and slow, I can note it up for a return in June or July and just head home along the canal for a bit of exercise. If not, I might catch a few fish and them have a workout.