an evening on the Dorset stour.

fish · an evening on the Dorset stour.

Think of a famed river and a few come to mind , amongst them the Dorset stour.
The River Stour is a 60.5 mile long river which flows through Wiltshire and Dorset in southern England, and drains into the English Channel. It is sometimes called the Dorset Stour to distinguish it from rivers of the same name. The source of the river is at Stourhead, in Wiltshire, where it forms a series of artificial lakes which are part of the Stourhead estate owned by the National Trust. It flows south into Dorset through the Blackmore Vale and the towns of Gillingham and Sturminster Newton, where it is joined by the River Lydden. At Blandford Forum the river breaks through the chalk ridge of the Dorset Downs, and from there flows south east into the heathlands of south east Dorset. At Wimborne Minster it is joined by the River Allen, and at its estuary at Christchurch it is joined by the River Avon before it flows into the English Channel.
Amongst its accolades is that amongst the course fishing fraternity it is famed for its record breaking fish , notably the barbel and river pike.Infact only the Great Ouse rivals its ability to produce such fish.
So with this in mind i visited a mill pnd on the upper reaches of the Dorset Stour in search of a barbel,its a species of fish on my wish list and i had hoped that today would be the day i managed to break my barbel duck so to speak!
well after a few hours of some fine roach and silvers finally i had a stonking run , after 5 minutes of frantic running up and down the bank i landed a fine 2.5lb Tench! not what the Stour is famed for but none the less a fine fish. And taken on a home made grayling bobber float.
Heres a few picture i took of the mill and the fish:

thanks for looking.

Jack Russell

nice evening out then, great pics BTW

codfather

nice one mate

froggyfagan

Lovely

fish

thanks guys,ille get a barbel one day!

maximus

Nice looking Tench Fish, where did you get that float from by the way, I used to be able to buy them when I was in school but you can't find them any more

fish

maximus

It's a perch float isn't it? What did you make it out of is it balsa and cork or one of your hardwood specials?

fish

the stem is a bamboo bbq skewer, the bodyis balsa. with a fine dremmel piece i bored a hole in the base of the stem and superglued a shankand eye from a sea fishing hook . to shape the body just push the shortened skewer through the balsa and roughly symetrically shape it , then put it in a dril and shape it with coarse then fine sand paper.

maximus

Looks very nice fish, I'll see if I can pick up some Balsa blocks when I visit southampton in a few weeks time.

Thanks very much!