051. A Walk along the River Gade on Croxley Common Moor - An Angler's Perspective

I’ve been fishing this river & the close by adjacent Grand Union Canal since I was a lad in the 1960s. My late Dad & his pal (Uncle Eric) also used to fly monster kites & free flight kit build balsa wood & tissue gliders & diesel powered model aircraft on the Moor. There were very few bushes & brambles over it back then.

I am not at all happy with the ongoing growth of this scrub over this rare wild open glass / moorland, which is so important to butterflies & wild flowers. Sorry, but nature has to be managed, not left to its own devises (otherwise the lazy excuse known as rewilding). Soapboxing over !

The video filming of this dated 2018-06-22, was initially done to show to my mate & fishing buddy who now lives in Suffolk, but wanted to come down to visit & fish our old haunts. Said mate can be seen coarse fishing the river a few days later. I was throwing small chunks of white bread in the water as I knew this would attract & reveal the whereabouts, certainly of each swim’s resident Chub, but also the Roach & Dace for him to see, proving they were still there.

Like the moor, the river is getting more & more overgrown, making it difficult to find comfortable, safe fishable swims.

Back in the late 1970s when the Paper Mill was still producing the famous Croxley Script writing paper, I used to fish the river after work in the evenings right outside the factory entrance (just upstream of the weir) in the dark by the light of a lamppost & the security doorman used to hand me a cup of tea out of his window.

Very few anglers fish the river now. Other than many new anglers only know how to fish for carp in lakes, the main problem here is accessing the place. The main entrance to the fishing (river or canal) used to be via Mill Lane which is opposite the Croxley Station (Metropolitan Railway), using the six or so car parking spaces right down the bottom of the hill by the canal. These have now been reduced to about two spaces after wall building work to protect the old garden of the John Dickinson Croxley Mill, Manager’s House (demolished). These have been nabbed by boaters for their cars who now live permanently down there on their narrowboats. The entrance by the weir on the Byewaters housing estate is labelled as Private Road, so take your chances with that one if using a car. On the far side of the Moor is an industrial estate, but that’s a ¼ mile hike with all your gear (no thanks).

Starring :
The River Gade, a tributary of the nearby River Colne, which itself is a tributary of the River Thames.

Featuring :
The new bridge over the river connecting the end of Mill Lane onto the Moor.
A TfL Metropolitan Line S8 Stock electric train (EMU).

Venue :
Croxley Common Moor, Croxley Green, Hertfordshire, England
It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) & a Local Nature Reserve (LNR).
CCM website http://www.croxleycommonmoor.org.uk/

Filming :
Camera – Sony Xperia Z5 smartphone.

Video creation :
Software – Microsoft HD Movie Maker PRO.
Background sounds :
• freesound – weir near cefn mably, distant helicopter.wav file by odilonmarcenaro
https://freesound.org/people/odilonma...
• freesound – Babbling Brook.mp3 file by mycompasstv
https://freesound.org/people/mycompas...