Hants Avon on TV

Paul Boote · May 9, 2013

Not a fish in sight, but some fine glimpses of the river (Avon - afon (ancient Celtic / modern-day Welsh): river) - source to sea and how our earliest ancestors held the river and the lands about it sacred and dear.

BBC iPlayer - The Flying Archaeologist: Stonehenge: The Missing Link

"Steady on, Paul ... have you been watching TV...?"

"Only the good stuff. I was, however, somewhat taken by the lass leading the Damerham dig..."

cg74 · May 9, 2013

Thanks Paul, an enjoyable watch.

terry m · May 9, 2013

God's country - unquestionably.

Peter Jacobs · May 10, 2013

terry m said:
God's country - unquestionably.

No argument from me on that.

My home is about 3 miles as the Crow flies to the East of Stonehenge close to both Woodhenge and the Durrington Walls.

The river flows on the other side of the road to my house and I know it pretty well dowstream to below Ibsley.

A gorgeous river that is sadly now a shadow of its former self regarding Roach in particular, although they are still there though if you know where to look . . . .

It is a river that has always captured my imagination from my early teens, when the local club took the coach down to Ibsley (stopping for a pint at the Bull at Downton on the way back) for a day fishing until, well, the present day really.

Paul Boote · May 10, 2013

At the risk of being branded a bragger....

A river that I have known since I was knee-high to nothing.

Its archaeological sites - four of my childhood pals lived in Salisbury Cathedral Close, their Dad being the Chairman of Salisbury Museum and also a leading light in the restoration of the Harnham watermeadows that lay across the river from the family's riverside garden, from which I caught my first trout and grayling (and Avon roach) aged 6 or 7.

Its fishers, both no name and big name, some of the latter being Frank Sawyer at Netheravon (fished with him twice when I was a kid, being given tea (early cooked dinner) by Molly his wife at their house); Tom Williams the keeper at Longford and several of his great salmon fishers (plus the famous roach man Gerry Swanton, who had a deep bend above a mill that he haunted with float tackle named after him) and Jack Harrigan who Tom and I put on to a record-breaking barbel then watched him pull out of; Peter and Jean(? - a formidable lady) Scott-Newman of the Bull at Downton, Tom Williams' drinking hole and that of many others; Colonel Crow at Ibsley...

Walks around and all over windy Old Sarum, along the Avon, the Nadder, the Wylye, the Bourne and the Ebble, drinking some of my first pints as a teenager in The Boot at Berwick St. James, at The Three Horseshoes at Bishopstone, in some of the old pubs in town.

A lot of book-buying in Beach's Bookshop and The Barn Book Supply in Crane St.

Of several times stop-watch racing my pals to the top of the Cathedral Spire (can't remember how many steps - a lot).

Yup. Some nice memories.

guest61 · May 10, 2013

terry m said:
God's country - unquestionably.

Yes, where else would God put Swindon?

Paul Boote · May 10, 2013

The Man was exhausted by week's end and running out of good ideas ... "Cream crackered, I am ... where shall I dump this rubbish...?"

Not just in Swindon, I assure you.

Fred Bonney · May 10, 2013

I spent my delayed honeymoon at the Bull in Downton in June 1975 and fished the Avon.
We left Essex by train for Salisbury in the snow and on June the 16th the sun beat down and didn't stop for some time. We got burnt alive fishing in bright sunshine!

An old boy,who's name I've forgotten (Arthur?) acted as the baliff for The Bull at that time, he helped pick up my Mrs when she fell over the style carrying my rods!!
His concern for her well being far outweighed my concern for the rods, of which I'm still reminded

Many a long night in the bar drinking Courage best, I think I even bought Tom Williams a pint.
I didn't catch any fish, in fact I've never caught a single fish from the Avon. The Stour has looked after me though.

Paul Boote · May 10, 2013

When I was 12, I believe it was, Fred, in the second half of the 1960s anyway, my Dad took me and my Mum out of western edge of London off for a few days at The Bull when the Scott-Newmans (and that old boy) were in their pomp. Its was mid June, the season just begun, and the "hotel"'s little stretch of river yet to get its usual big influx of visitors - so I had the stretch to myself.

There was a jetty where a punt was moored, so I fished from the jetty into some deepish but super-clear-water hole with, I remember it well, my Dad's / Mum's / My B. James Mk. IV Avon (still have it), a beaten-up Rapidex or Flick 'em, 4lb line, a size-8 hook and a ruddy great brandling. No float, just a few shot a distance above the hook. Don't know why, just did.

Big stripey appeared and snaffled the worm as I freelined it / jigged it up and down in the hole.

2 pounds 7 ounces! My first 2-pounder and my biggest perch for many years to come. My god, I was chuffed. Not a single fish more from the stretch though, that day and the day after.

I still have the photos or slides that my Dad took of the fish laid on a keepnet with the old MK IV and reel beside it.

Lord Paul of Sheffield · May 10, 2013

Paul Boote said:
When I was 12, I believe it was, Fred, in the second half of the 1960s anyway, my Dad took me and my Mum out of western edge of London off for a few days at The Bull when the Scott-Newmans (and that old boy) were in their pomp. Its was mid June, the season just begun, and the "hotel"'s little stretch of river yet to get its usual big influx of visitors - so I had the stretch to myself.

There was a jetty where a punt was moored, so I fished from the jetty into some deepish but super-clear-water hole with, I remember it well, my Dad's / Mum's / My B. James Mk. IV Avon (still have it), a beaten-up Rapidex or Flick 'em, 4lb line, a size-8 hook and a ruddy great brandling. No float, just a few shot a distance above the hook. Don't know why, just did.

Big stripey appeared and snaffled the worm as I freelined it / jigged it up and down in the hole.

2 pounds 7 ounces! My first 2-pounder and my biggest perch for many years to come. My god, I was chuffed. Not a single fish more from the stretch though, that day and the day after.

I still have the photos or slides that my Dad took of the fish laid on a keepnet with the old MK IV and reel beside it.

Possibly it memories like those that mean more to an angler than any big fish caught alter on in their angling life.
I still recall seeing an angler catch a bream of maybe 4 or 5lb when I was about 12 or 13 and thinking "wow what a fish" - at the time I was catching small roach on a good day. I can still see in my mind the fish's bronze colour as it lay in the net in the sunshine

Paul Boote · May 10, 2013

Just the same when (aged around 12 again) my best fishing mate Chris and I were walking round an overgrown little gravel pit in the lower Colne valley with spinning rods, chucking Mepps and things for perch and the surface-basking chub that had got into the lake via a ditch that ran off the main river miles away. Then we saw this "old bloke" packing up and pulling up his keepnet after an early-morning session. Heaving with tench it was. My word, he started something for me and Chris.

barbelboi · May 10, 2013

Paul Boote said:
Just the same when (aged around 12 again) my best fishing mate Chris and I were walking round an overgrown little gravel pit in the lower Colne valley with spinning rods, chucking Mepps and things for perch and the surface-basking chub that had got into the lake via a ditch that ran off the main river miles away. Then we saw this "old bloke" packing up and pulling up his keepnet after an early-morning session. Heaving with tench it was. My word, he started something for me and Chris.

That brings back memories of the tench fishing from what we called the best of the Harefield pits in the 50's/60's. Savay to the south, Broadwater to the north, then just over the canal to the east what is now Harefield Marina (the half a crown lake) and what is now Harefield Pit 2 to the south of the marina (still a working pit as well then). I believe that Savay was the only one to hold carp in the 50's.
Jerry
PS I don't remember any heaving nets in those days - 4 or 5 was a good session for us kids

.

Paul Boote · May 10, 2013

Knew yours, Jerry - they were a little upriver from me. Most of the lower river pits, including the one I was talking about, got turned into business parks and motorways, those a little below them into mega-fisheries like Kingsmead and the Crayfish Lake and Colne Mere (known to only my carp-mad mate Kevin - one or two carp notables, an author among them, met Kevin through me - and to Pete Springate and Kenny Hodder as 'Blackwater'. Nobody else knew it held monstrous carp, but then Kevin had put some of the better ones in there and snorkeled with them for years before wetting a line, as he had done with the Crayfish Lake and caught his pet biggie long before Richie and Rod did).

Long ago and far away.

PS - For the "He must be fanstasizing again" crowd: ask Ian Welch for a truth-check, he knew what Kevin and I were up to back then.

terry m · May 10, 2013

bottle rocket said:
Yes, where else would God put Swindon?

Salisbury and Swindon are at opposite ends of the county, but you probably know that already. Linking the two is like pairing Bradford with Harrowgate or Bath with Bristol.

---------- Post added at 11:23 ---------- Previous post was at 11:19 ----------

Paul Boote said:
At the risk of being branded a bragger....

A river that I have known since I was knee-high to nothing.

Its archaeological sites - four of my childhood pals lived in Salisbury Cathedral Close, their Dad being the Chairman of Salisbury Museum and also a leading light in the restoration of the Harnham watermeadows that lay across the river from the family's riverside garden, from which I caught my first trout and grayling (and Avon roach) aged 6 or 7.

Its fishers, both no name and big name, some of the latter being Frank Sawyer at Netheravon (fished with him twice when I was a kid, being given tea (early cooked dinner) by Molly his wife at their house); Tom Williams the keeper at Longford and several of his great salmon fishers (plus the famous roach man Gerry Swanton, who had a deep bend above a mill that he haunted with float tackle named after him) and Jack Harrigan who Tom and I put on to a record-breaking barbel then watched him pull out of; Peter and Jean(? - a formidable lady) Scott-Newman of the Bull at Downton, Tom Williams' drinking hole and that of many others; Colonel Crow at Ibsley...

Walks around and all over windy Old Sarum, along the Avon, the Nadder, the Wylye, the Bourne and the Ebble, drinking some of my first pints as a teenager in The Boot at Berwick St. James, at The Three Horseshoes at Bishopstone, in some of the old pubs in town.

A lot of book-buying in Beach's Bookshop and The Barn Book Supply in Crane St.

Of several times stop-watch racing my pals to the top of the Cathedral Spire (can't remember how many steps - a lot).

Yup. Some nice memories.

I used to be familiar with all of those watering holes and many more.

BTW I drove through Salisbury for the first time in ages a few weeks ago and noticed that Beaches Bookshop is no more. It had been on that site on the corner of New Street and Crane Street for - I believe - over 100 years and was world famous. Shame.

Hugh Bailey · May 10, 2013

Paul,

Is the Avon now so bad as the other thread here would have? No roach it seems and very few fish?

I've never fished it - have be sort of saving it for a Crabtree special occasion.

I hope it's not so bad.

Paul Boote · May 10, 2013

I can't tell you, Hugh, not having fished the river since the mid 1990s (when, even back then, I was beginning to really worry for whole reaches of the river). The coarse-fishing rot began in the mid-late 1970s when a huge trout farm (begun early in the decade, I watched the first ponds being dragline dug in the meadows at Barford) was built just above Downton. There are some "good bits" still above the farm and even in the river below it, but the few people I know who fish the river these days, men who like me knew it at the tale-end of its glorydays, have some grim tales to tell. I do hope that it can be turned round - this from someone who as a teenager in 1971 popped out one lunchtime to catch some dace livebaits for a pike trip and caught two 2-pound roach and a 1.5-pounder in only a few dozen casts!

Hugh Bailey · May 10, 2013

Thanks. I think I have maybe missed the boat. Is it worth going a long way upstream, or is this all game-only?

Paul Boote · May 10, 2013

The London Anglers Association water at Britford just below Salisbury, though sometimes heavily and very well-fished, still has some lovely roach. The stretch below it, on a private landed estate, with some very fine fishing, is megabucks - too rich for me now, too rich for me back then - I just worked on it.

Fred Bonney · May 10, 2013

Hugh, you may not have seen this

AVON ROACH PROJECT

Paul Boote · May 10, 2013

Yes, Fred, they're the guys who could turn the Avon round, not the salmon boys who, as soon as fish appear in a stretch, start calling for the weed to be cut so that they can fish for them. This didn't matter too much 40 years ago, when the river was in great heart, but now...

Very sound boys, the Avon Roach Project people.

Hants Avon on TV

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