It has been raining all morning here in London. By about 15:00 it had stopped, and the sun came out. Itching to get out of the house, we went for a walk along the river and were surprised just how much water was flowing and how high it must have been a few hours earlier. Our usually tame trickle of a river was in full flow. At the confluence of the two rivers, the water was hammering down the shallow weirs with speed not seen all summer, at least not by us.
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| At the confluence of the River Ravensbourne and the Pool River, The water is flowing over the weirs with force. | | |
From this point, the river flows down through Catford and Ladywell on its way to Lewisham and onward to Deptford Creek and into the River Thames, as the River Ravensbourne. Following our little river upstream to our favourite places, the river was very much higher than usual and carrying a lot of colour.
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| The camera has frozen the action, and the river looks almost flat calm - it wasn't! |
Our little spot where we
first caught a few fish last summer was almost unrecognisable as all the bank-side features were submerged and the water was flowing with some speed. In the picture above, you can see, on the opposite bank, where the vegetation has been flattened by water that must have been at least a couple of feet higher, a few hours earlier today.
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| Again the camera has taken the speed out of the shot, but as you can see, it looked a lot different today! |
We continued upstream to the next weir, where we have caught a couple of
decently sized chub this summer. Here the water was again barrelling over the weir, turning our usually calm spot into a raging torrent.
By this time we were a couple of miles away from home, and it was time to be getting back. It is Sunday today, and tonight roast pork is on the menu for this evening! There was not much point in trying to fish the river when it is this state as the rain will have changed the water temperature and upset the calm of the river, as we have discovered in the past. I will wait until it calms down a bit before I have another dangle in the river. In the meantime, I will investigate the commercials. I was planning on going to Beaver tomorrow, but with all the rain we have had today I think the fishing there will be harder than I would like, for a day pleasure fishing. It looks as though the weather will be a bit better later in the week, so I may well give it a go on Thursday - we will see.
Ralph.
