Continuing to catch up .....

I prayed and prayed for rain but it never came, in fact it still hasn't arrived yet well I say that its raining as I type . As we all know we need alot of rain to replace the water that we have lost and the odd shower here and there simply will not suffice.





As I mentioned in my last post, the foot bridge that crosses the river at Saxon mill had been shut since spring and so I gave the river a miss . Not just because the bridge was closed but also due to the lack of rain, the abundance of weed and having little fishing time . There is only so much carp fishing I can do though and before long I found myself revisiting a little spot on my local river Blythe to investigate the river level .








The spot I fish is a free spot at the back of the barston lakes and golf club known as packhorse bridge. The river arc round and flows away under the west coast main line bridge . I describe the area as a spot as there are no set pegs and not much room to fish in and two people would make it crowded. The photo shows the river with water on it at the begining of the year and you can see that the current flows at a strange angle in to adeep pool under the bridge . I like to fish the pool with lobworms on a light one swan shot rig and bounce the worm around in the flow so that it settles in the deep hole. 1lb 9oz perch on an autumn eve.
During several very short sessions after work (literally an hour before dark) I managed some lovely perch and a chub of 3lbs. All the fish fell to worms in the pool and my best perch from there was 1lb 9oz's . I love this type of angling and the fact that bit is free and overlooked by everyone makes it even better.

A 1lb 30z perch from my pool swim.

A 3lb chub that also took a liking for my lobworms .

Every now and again I would pop by the mill and check the progress of the bridge. Each time however I was met with the same answer and even worse a note from the council saying that the bridge would be closed until December . One warm afternoon my better half and I popped down for a slurp at the mill pub and I was amazed to see gleaming in the sunshine a brand new bridge .... I could barely contain my excitement and whooped with joy ( much to the mrs embarressment ) and skipped off to inspect the craftsman ship of the wonderful bridge joiners.

I took the camera and crossed the new bridge to take a photo as she shone in the golden autumn sunshine . We decided to have a mooch on the upstream stretch and see how over grown it was. My happiness turned to shock horror when as we walked through the undergrowth I found my beloved stretch and been used as a bin by some shit for brains.

These pictures show the worst of the litter I found and as I looked further there had been fires and god knows what else going on. I drove home a very ngry man . I had not been able to get in to my stretch of river but some one had been getting on it fro the old milverton side. They had picked a specific tree as a dumping ground and when I returned the next day I filled two black bags with lager cans, barbeques and crisp packets.

As an angler and nature lover I find it hard to comprehend how or why any one could do this to such a beautifull historic place . The cans must of built up over time which showed it was a habit of the prats to throw them in to the same place on each visit. They had even tied bags full of cans to tree branches which could of been a death trap to wildlife .Why oh why!!!!!

Now a new beautifull bridge was in I was free to fish my little heart out back on my wonderful stretch of river . I had so many plans for this place this year and so much bank clearing I wanted to do . Next year I will be cutting a path up to th top meadows and making the bank more accessible to anglers .

The river barely see's any anglers as far as Im aware yet offers such beauty and so many fish. As far as big fish go I am not sure what its potential is as I have not had enogh time to fish it with any kind of plan . There are shoals of dace and roach and plenty of chub as well , also I have seen some large carp in both the up and down stream stretches.

We shall see what it has soon I hope........

Barry Peck