The Little Avon is the sort of river you could drive past a hundred times without suspecting it held a trout. It rises from Cotswold springs above Wickwar and runs about fifteen kilometres northwest through Charfield and Stone to Berkeley, where a set of tidal gates hold back the Severn. It is really two rivers. The upper beats above the A38 are proper trout-and-grayling water — a steep, intimate sequence of pools, riffles and glides over gravel, with beds of water crowfoot waving in the holding lies. Below Stone it flattens onto the vale, slows, and becomes coarse-fish country, parts of it choked with pipe reed. The Berkeley Estate Fishing Syndicate runs around seven kilometres of it (Damery to below Berkeley) as a genuine mixed fishery: fly for the wild browns and grayling, standard tackle for the coarse fish. It is members-only — no day tickets. There has been no stocking for years; the trout are river-bred and worth treating gently, and now and then a big fish runs up from the estuary.
- Mixed sandstone limestone
