THE SEVERN, JUST A LITTLE STREAM

By John Costello

John Costello with a 13-4 from the Lower Severn

Go to Next Article; Why the Wye? by Brian Ridley

At the start of each season, I keep making myself promises that I should do more fishing on different rivers. The Wye, Bristol Avon, Thames, Lugg, Warwickshire Avon and Teme all lie within an hour's drive but I keep getting drawn back to the Lower Severn. Each season I learn a bit more about the river and I also learn to disregard theories and methods over the years. As with most fishing I've learnt to use the words “never” and “always” with caution and in particular when used in reference to the Lower Severn.

One thing I can say with certainty is that there is no shortage of fish. Several years ago it seemed impossible to catch a barbel anywhere and there were dark rumours of stolen fish. It's obvious that some fish were taken from the Lower Teme and placed in stillwaters but I doubt if there would have been enough room to put the water in their ponds if a significant proportion of Lower Severn fish had been taken. Just because we can't always catch them doesn't mean they are not there. Twenty years ago the late Billy Lane described the Lower Severn as the moodiest river that he had ever fished but one which offered a fascinating challenge. He was referring to the bream, roach and chub fishing, barbel had not yet established themselves on the lower river, but his statement still holds true today. I'm not saying this to imply that I'm a particularly clever angler, simply to show that it does have a certain unique character irrespective of the type of fish you are after.

One thing that I keep reminding myself is that the barbel are the same as on any other river; they love hemp, luncheon meat, maggots, corn etc., they love warm coloured water, they feed more confidently at dusk and after dark, prebaiting and resting swims works, in short what works for you on your own river will work on the Severn. I get mildly irritated by people who don't consider it a proper river and look at it as a flowing, featureless drain. Of course it's a river, just bigger than the traditional stream. It's a question of scale but the principles of river location and rivercraft still hold good. The main current is on the outside of a bend whether the bend is twenty yards long or half a mile. Likewise you will find slacker water on the inside of the bend. If one looks at a stretch or river between two weirs then generally speaking the faster, shallower water will be at the upstream end and the slower, deeper water at the downstream end. This is true whether the gap between weirs is one mile or twenty miles. Typically one finds a downstream movement of fish as the season progresses. All of this applies to the Lower Severn as much as it does to any other river, bearing in mind that they are only general guidelines. This season for example, the extra water at the end of June probably spread the barbel around more than they would normally be at this time of year. Conversely, prolonged dry conditions will often see them comparatively tightly shoaled up, usually in areas where there is a bit more current.

Location on a river sixty yards wide and up to twenty feet deep might seem a daunting task but the main ingredient for success is confidence. Assuming that the river hasn't switched off then if you're not catching they probably aren't there. In normal summer and autumn conditions if you haven't caught, seen fish roll or had any line bites after a couple of trips then I will consider moving to a different stretch. I enjoy every barbel I catch and I don't like blanking so I am prepared to move and move again until I find fish. It may be that there are fish in the area which are not prepared to feed but if they're not interested in feeding then I'm not interested in waiting until they do.

Although you can't see Lower Severn barbel they have a very convenient habit of rolling. Obviously salmon and bream can be responsible but once one recognises a rolling barbel for what it is, it can be a very reliable form of location. This is so much the case that if I'm fishing and hear a barbel roll elsewhere I'm often up the bank looking for subsiding ripples. At times they will roll over one specific area continuously, at other times they might be spread over an area up to one hundred yards long. Yet again you might only hear or see the odd fish at dusk but anywhere you see barbel rolling is worth investigating.

Remember the scale of things on the Lower Severn. Precise location of a swim containing barbel is not so important as finding an area holding barbel. A few feet on a smaller river may be the difference between success and failure. You can be a hundred yards on the Lower Severn and still be in with a chance. Baiting and fishing more than one spot, watching for rolling fish, awareness of line bites and activity or inactivity from other fish all help towards more precise location.

So what do I look for on a stretch of the Lower Severn when I fish it for the first time? I suppose a boat and echo sounder is the quickest way to learn but it's not proper barbel fishing is it?!? Walking the bank I would initially look for areas of increased flow or bankside evidence of increased flow. Areas of increased flow are relative, the current speed on the outside of a bend at say Upton might be slower than anywhere at Kempsey or Severn Stoke but this would at least be a starting point. Bankside features give clues as well. A steep bank usually means a pronounced near bank ledge whereas a shallow, sloping bank often means a steady slope from the margins which would indicate that the main flow is on the other side of the river. Silty margins as opposed to a firm clay margin again indicates a lack of flow. Reinforced banks, usually boulders often indicate areas of increased flow. For example, if you walk down the right bank at Beauchamp Court there is a pronounced and visible clay shelf as far down as Kempsey church. Walk the left bank upstream of Kempsey and for much of the length the margin is shallow and silty. Two or three rod lengths out on the right bank one will find eleven feet whereas the same distance on the other bank you might find six or seven feet. You may draw fish into such water by baiting up but in this particular instance the fish naturally lie on the Beauchamp Court side of the river. On the right bank at Upton much of the Upton A.A. water is comparatively shallow until you are round the long sweeping bend and onto the Severn Trent stretch where you start to find a pronounced near shelf and a good depth of water.

Once one starts to see the subtle variations on the river one can start to look at it as a proper river and not a flowing drain. If nothing else one can start to eliminate unlikely areas. So in the first instance I would look for areas with positive flow. I seem to have laboured the importance of current speed but it is the only common factor I can find in most of the areas I catch barbel from. Obviously underwater snags and other underwater features attract barbel but I believe they lie up near such features only if the current speed is to their liking. Heavy prebaiting or areas which are heavily fished attract barbel but this may be a chicken or egg situation. Are the barbel there because of the bait that goes in or is it heavily fished because the barbel and other fish are there?

That last sentence brings me on to another very noticeable characteristic of the Lower Severn, namely the interrelation of barbel with other fish. When the barbel are feeding well it is nearly always the case that the roach and bream and to a lesser extent the chub are feeding well. Conversely if the barbel are “off”, then the whole river can seem dead. Note, I'm talking about normal summer and autumn conditions, extremes of flood and cold are a different story. So, the greater the “nuisance” fish activity in my swim the more confident I am that the barbel will move in. I don't necessarily believe that bream or roach activity draws barbel into a swim, simply that if the stretch you are on is fishing well then if you haven't got barbel in your swim you will be pestered by roach and bream. If I'm not getting bites off anything, I would seriously consider moving swims or moving to a different stretch.

Consequently if I hear of pleasure or match anglers doing well with the bream or roach on a particular length of river I have often found that there are a few barbel in the area as well. Conversely if somewhere is not fishing the barbel may not be there either. I suspect that the bream and roach as well as the barbel are extremely nomadic at times. Some areas can appear full of fish at times and then a few weeks later can appear barren. For a couple of weeks in late July I had some consistent sport on one stretch. There were several barbel (and carp!) rolling at dusk and when barbel weren't in the swim the skimmers and bream were a continual nuisance. Then over the course of a week the rolling slowed down and there was little bream activity in the swims. The last time I fished the stretch I fished two swims in rotation and never had a touch in six hours. I think that the bream as well as the barbel had moved. The next trip I moved but it is still a good area.

One thing I have found is that once you have found a good area or swim then with few exceptions it will always remain a good area. There might not be fish there throughout the season or it might not fish for a couple of seasons, but never write off an area if you haven't caught from it. The time of year, water temperature, water height and colour, angling pressure and a dozen other reasons I can only guess at can cause fish to move.

Lower Severn barbel are very nomadic at times. Mike Burdon told me of a fish tagged near Tewkesbury which was recovered some weeks later on the middle reaches of the Teme, a distance if I remember of over fifty miles. If you accept the nomadic nature of the fish then I have found that some of the mysteries start to unravel. How, for example, your favourite stretch can appear to be devoid of fish, how you can suddenly start catching large numbers of “sundries”, or even better how you start seeing a number of big fish slide over your net in a short space of time. What this means in practical terms is that I tend to move around trying different swims on different stretches at different times of year.

However whilst the barbel are quite nomadic they do settle in areas, sometimes for several weeks, sometimes for months. The old theory about travellers and residents holds true on the Severn but there are so many variations that I think it would be difficult to say that one fish was a traveller and another a resident. At one time or other all of them are travellers and all of them are residents.

Whilst I have emphasised the nomadic nature of the barbel, like any other river there is a slight shifting of positions of fish on a stretch according to the season and fluctuations in water levels and temperature. It is an accepted fact that on smaller rivers that high water levels usually move the fish into different swims or different areas of the same swim and the same is true on the Lower Severn. Some swims do produce whatever the state of the river but I have noticed on several stretches many of the barbel move to areas where the current speed is more to their liking. On one stretch the best swims are spread over a hundred yards or so of slightly pacier water. In winter and especially during high water levels the river hammers through here and the fish either move a couple of hundred yards upstream to where the river widens and where the current is appreciably slower or they spread downstream for a quarter of a mile, where the river deepens but where there is a very distinct marginal shelf. Although the surface current speed appears very similar to their normal summer swims I suspect the greater depth and the distinct shelf combine to create a slowing on the river bed and hence comfortable living conditions. On another stretch the most consistent winter and high water swims are two or three hundred yards upstream of their autumn haunts. In normal summer conditions this area is almost still and over sixteen foot deep. Once again these are only examples but I'm trying to show how it is possible to read the Lower Severn in the same way as any other river.

Whilst the Lower Severn does have its own character and moods, and the fish do have an uncanny ability to appear and disappear, the principle of location are the same as any other river. Most of my fishing on the Lower Severn has between Tewkesbury and Worcester but if you classify anywhere downstream of Stourport as the Lower Severn, then there is a lot of river that has never been seriously barbel fished. There are barbel as far downstream as Gloucester and one can never rule out the possibility of an uncaught monster or two and I suppose that what keeps drawing me back.

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