Not a chance!

After a large dinner on Christmas day I went for a walk to check out another stretch of river near my new home, the river Sowe. I've heard from a reliable sources that this stretch contains Roach, Perch and small Pike as well as plenty of Crayfish so I thought it would be worth a look. I walked the one and a half miles from my house, down the A45 to Sowe Bridge, the stretch runs from this bridge to the back of the Old Mill Hotel at Bagington. It isn't a long a stretch but there are plenty of good looking spots and seeing as I had a half box of maggots left over from Friday, I thought it would be worth giving it a go on Boxing day.

Some nice looking spots, shame about the wildlife!

On arrival the first thing I disturbed was a Cormorant, 'not good' I thought but I proceeded to the first spot, I crept up to this swim but still managed to disturb two Heron's, ok, I'll try the next swim. Things went fine for a couple of spots but no fish, I headed down to a corner swim that I really liked the look of the day before and disturbed two more Cormorant's, now this wasn't looking good at all. I tried the swim anyway, the flow came in at one corner into a deep pool this shelved up to a gravel and sand bar on the far side, there was a clump of dead reeds at the head of the pool, lovely. I trotted through a couple of times then saw something floating down with the flow, I turned only to see an Otter swim into my pool, I kept as still as I could but it caught a glimpse of me and stopped by the old reed bed it then swam right up in front of me before realising I was a human and made a bolt downstream. 

The Otter swim.

Three Cormorant's, two Heron's and an Otter, no chance of catching anything in that stretch, I did try a couple of other spots just in case but I blanked.

After the Boxing day blank I headed down to the Avon today with a fresh batch of maggots. It was good to see an extra six to eight inches of water flowing through complete with chunks of ice and other debris, I concentrated on a couple of swims using a feeder to get the germs to the bottom quickly. Things were slow and bites didn't start till late in the afternoon, when they did start I kept missing and loosing fish but did eventually bank a nice Chub at around four thirty just as it got dark.

It didn't seem that dark.

With the orange glow from the estate behind it didn't seem to be as dark as it was, might have to look into this one.