The River Boyd is a river of some 7 miles (11 km) in length which rises near Dodington in South Gloucestershire, England. It is a tributary of the Bristol Avon, running in a southerly direction and joining near Bitton. The flow rate at Bitton is an average 19.8 cubic feet per second (0.56 m3/s). It was immortalised in the 1613 poem by John Dennys of Pucklechurch The Secrets of Angling, the earliest English poetical tract on fishing: And thou sweet Boyd that with thy watry sway Dost wash the cliffes of Deington and of Weeke And through their Rockes with crooked winding way Thy mother Avon runnest soft to seeke In whose fayre streames the speckled Trout doth play The Roche the Dace the Gudgin and the Bleeke Teach me the skill with slender Line and Hooke To take each Fish of River Pond and Brooke.

John Dennys, a poet and fisherman, pioneered Angling poetry in England. His only work The Secrets of Angling was the earliest English poetical treatise on fishing. John Dennys may have been an acquaintance of Shakespeare.