Windrush - Day Out

[maceo]

Nice bright sunny day fishing on the Windrush yesterday around New Mill. Got a bit breezy later in the afternoon though.

The Windrush is a pretty little river, but seems very small and tame compared to my usual upper Thames. It's free fishing though and reasonably picturesque, but for me swim choice is dictated by finding somewhere as far away from the path as possible because there are loads of dog walkers and dogs running around free charging up to you.

One of the reasons for choosing to fish the Windy rather than the Thames was that I've been desperate to get back on the float and haven't had a good float session since last season. Wagged and magged it for most of the morning and caught a tiny gudgeon the size of my little finger and a couple of dace, but wasn't really getting that many bites.

Switched over to the maggot feeder for the afternoon and started catching brown trout! That's something different - I think I've only caught one or two of those before, but caught four on this session and all of a decent size. Thinking of getting myself one of those tweed hats with flies in it now!

Thanks to FM contributors for the ideas about using leger stops and a feeder boom - I was really pleased how that worked out and solved the problems of tangling that I was having.

Here's a photo of one of the trout next to my Lidl special £10 baitrunner reel, that's already earned its keep three times over. I did catch a bigger one than this, but it was foul hooked and so didn't count.

There's also a photo of the swim I was fishing - as I say, pretty little river.

 

[sam vimes]

Is that Witney lurking in the distance? Perhaps not, as it looks to be a bigger river than I recall.

 

[maceo]

Yep, that's Cameron's cosy Cotswolds alright Sam!

The river does look a little bigger than it actually is, but it's just the angle of the photo. It's only about 10 to 15 feet wide down on that section.

There are parts of it where, with a good run up, you could probably make a reasonable stab at jumping across it!

 

[dezza]

I fished the Windrush where it ran next to the Bypass Pit in Whitney. This was a few days after I met with Peter Stone to fish the pit for tench. He informed me that the Windrush there was private and I couldn't fish it.

But the river was crystal clear and I could see a group of what looked like fair sized fish. I cast a link leger down and across towards these fish. The rod top pulled round and I landed a small barbel using maggots which I quickly released.

I then went back to the pit.

But it's a long time ago.

 

[Chevin]

I fished the Windrush where it ran next to the Bypass Pit in Whitney. This was a few days after I met with Peter Stone to fish the pit for tench. He informed me that the Windrush there was private and I couldn't fish it.

But the river was crystal clear and I could see a group of what looked like fair sized fish. I cast a link leger down and across towards these fish. The rod top pulled round and I landed a small barbel using maggots which I quickly released.

I then went back to the pit.

But it's a long time ago.

Yeah, a lovely river, I fished the stretch near The Rose Revived a few times. There was a strange fault or fissure in the river bed on the stretch. I well remember the first time I fished there, I got there at day break and used Upper Ouse tactics for the chub and slaughtered them. They were so uneducated they had no idea of what was going on. The day turned out to be quite warm and by 10:00am I had caught enough fish for the day and went in to The Rose and had a couple of very refreshing pints. There was another fishery not far away at a home called Gaunt Mill which was owned by a Brigadier Goadby. I knocked on his door and asked him if I could fish the weir pool that was in his garden. Surprisingly he agreed and I enjoyed some entertainng fishing there with the proviso that any trout I caught were to be killed, cleaned and given to him. I never caught a trout there, but a few that were caught in other rivers were given to him and so the privilege of fishing the pool was maintained.

 

[peter crabtree]

I too remember my dad taking me and a couple of mates to the Rose revived stretch 40 odd years ago. We bought our day tickets in the pub.
We walked down to to some swims opposite a 2nd WW pill box on a nice sweeping bend. I remember catching numerous chublets and dace on the float.
As we were packing up one of my mates hooked a big fish and it took nearly half an hour to land on his light tackle. It turned out to be a barbel of around
7lb.
Happy days.

 

[chub_on_the_block]

Nice thread. I was only looking into planning a session on the upper Thames in the coming week or two the other night. Ideally i was hoping to go below Tadpole Br, but i know the south bank is out of bounds and pub no longer issues day tickets. Gutted about that - it was a stretch i knew well. Please correct me if i am wrong but i dont think the Thames Trail path can be fished? syndicate?. I was also looking into the bits above or below the Rose Revived as there is some day ticket water there.

The difficulty is that its all well and good if a day ticket can be got from some tackle shop or other in a distant town, but that is impractical on the day if you are travelling a long distance and are hoping for an early start.

I think day ticket availability is an issue with a lot of river fishing - really reduces opportunity to try venues for a visiting angler when reaches are club only. Its hardly like back in the day when riverbanks were overcrowded and local anglers needed to keep waters to members only to get on them. I know my local River Ivel is all tied up with the Ivel Protection Association, or to individual clubs, so to fish any of it you would need to be a member of one of the six or so clubs affiliated to the IPA, whilst to fish particular bits outside IPA control you would need to be a member of whichever club that reach is controlled by. As it is only a small river, this is understandable, but in truth much of it is lightly fished outside the known barbel areas.

 

[maceo]

Yes COB, you can fish the two fields up from the Rose Revived on a £4 day ticket from the farmer when he comes round. Park in the Maybush pub car park on the other side of the bridge. The pub's closed at the moment so no problems parking there and you can go straight through the gate onto the bank. Lovely fishing there. My favourite haunt.

It's strange to hear you all mention how you fished around the Rose Revived in the past, because I swear you never see a soul there fishing now. I left a gap of a fortnight between sessions and my day ticket was the next consecutive serial number! Nobody had fished in those two weeks. I've read some old books about the Upper Thames and they say it used to be ram jam packed. Coaches used to come from London and Birmingham to fish it at the weekends. They even had special anglers camping sites next to the river. All the pubs were fishing pubs. Now......nobody. Not a soul. Very strange.


Anyway, to let you know that if you're coming up here, Tadpole bridge is closed to traffic for about 3 weeks now while they repair it (again). So look out if you up there by car.

The Thames Path is finished as far as I know. I've explored pretty widely and although it's very rough in places (deep mud, very narrow paths through woods etc) it's all there. You can get through if you're determined!

 

[Chevin]

It's strange to hear you all mention how you fished around the Rose Revived in the past, because I swear you never see a soul there fishing now. I left a gap of a fortnight between sessions and my day ticket was the next consecutive serial number! Nobody had fished in those two weeks. I've read some old books about the Upper Thames and they say it used to be ram jam packed. Coaches used to come from London and Birmingham to fish it at the weekends. They even had special anglers camping sites next to the river. All the pubs were fishing pubs. Now......nobody. Not a soul. Very strange.


!

Sadly that seems to be the way of things these days. During my visit to the UK in 2004 I went to a number of waters that used to be so popular the clubs owning them had waiting lists. Without exception, they were deserted. Pay and catch fisheries were crowded though. I fished a couple of them just to see what they were about and found them to be a poor substitute for real fisheries despite the fact I caught a lot of fish.