The Traditional Fisherman's Forum

Sunday March 11th 2012 and here are a couple of photos of the Upper Ouse betweeen Milton Keynes and Buckingham

First one is just a hundred yards upstream of Thornton Bridge facing upstream at Thornton weir:



The second one is just a couple of hundred yards downsteam from Thornton bridge on the stretch still called 'Walkers'.
Note just how low the level of the river is for mid March:



Now roll the date forward to Monday April 30th 2012 - just seven weeks later- It is day 26 of the hosepipe ban in this region.
It has rained almost every day since the hosepipe ban started, and the previous three days prior to the 30th April gave us nearly 3 inches of rain in this area. (Therefore hosepipe bans are highly effective! - QED - )

However on Monday 30th April there was a temporary break in the weather - the rain stopped, the sun came out - all day, the temperatures rose, and as I have recently taken early retirement, I decided to go fishing (posting about my fishing session will appear shortly on my personal fishing diary section), but not to miss a good photographic opportunity I decided to first of all venture out to the Upper Ouse and take a few photos of the river.

First two are taken from Thornton bridge facing upstream towards Thornton weir ( to compare with the first photo from March 11th I posted). Just in case its not clear whgere the river actually is, its the narrow stretch on the left of the photo.





These two are also taken from Thornton Bridge facing downstream - 'Walkers' stretch ( to compare with the second photo from March 11th):





Well that should have finally flushed out all the debris and rubbish accumulated for the last 18 months of drought conditions !

Blimey! :o

Yikes! :o

It may look dramatic but that's what floodplains are naturally for, it's only since we started interfering with rivers and also building in unsuitable areas it has become a problem.

What do the fish do in situations like this?

Mark wrote:What do the fish do in situations like this?

Swim for their lives.

A few more taken at Kempston Mill yesterday afternoon. The river is usually about 3-4 foot deep and 15 foot wide here. There's normally several foot of clear air beneath the bridge. Looks more like a 40 acre gravel pit now.

Hi Haydn
Kempston is a long way further downstream from Thornton so I am hardly surprised that the flooding is even more severe
there.
However I can't remember when it was last as bad as this at the very end of April/ beginning of May. I believe in 2008 we had some bad flooding in April - but that was much earlier in the month.