The Tiny River Alne - Rumgudgeonry and Roses

Funny how a team can go from fifty dreamers to over four hundred engineers, turning a sketch into the Polestar 5 a 900-horsepower aluminium bonded body GT monster going down the production line then poof the hatchet CEO decides it’s all a bit too ambitious and back to rebadged Volvos and Zeekrs we go. Last night’s farewell was a proper knees-up though, a final lap with the usual suspects before everyone drifts off to new pastures, I escaped a few months ago after taking voluntary redundancy but some were happy to stay to find out what came next, and sadly what came next was the announcement that the whole UK operation was shutting down at Christmas. 

I reacquainted myself with body weight amounts of Rum Bongo cocktails Malibu, Wray & Nephew, Appleton Estate and enough tropical fruit to qualify as one of your five-a-day. Close cousins to the Painkillers I first met sailing around the BVIs in a Lagoon 440 catamaran… and nearly as dangerous. 

I grabbed an Uber back from Brum at 2:00am at the exact moment the DJ should’ve taken a long, hard look at his life choices. Cotton Eye Joe. Cotton. Eye. Joe. At that hour. Honestly, no repetitive beats to be seen all night, a wedding disco on steroids .I was still mostly compos mentis, to be fair but then my liver is a seasoned veteran at this point. Proper war-torn. Dunk it in a cup of tea and it’d hold together better than a hobnob.

That was all well and good, however I woke up this morning with a head like wet cardboard, craving fresh air and forgiveness. But for a send-off to six very good years and some of the best work parties I’ve known it was worth every fuzzy minute.

Fresh air required !!!!

I still remember that dace. Twelve ounces of pure Alne perfection a proper bar of silver, glimmering in the net like it had just escaped being made into jewellery. 

For a brief, shimmering moment, I genuinely believed I’d cracked it. Me, the Dace Whisperer, the man with the magic touch, the chap who could pluck specimen fish from a river barely wider than the average driveway.

Of course, the river had other ideas.
It always does.
It’s the Alne. 

Now, anyone who’s fished the Alne knows it’s basically a trout stream desperately pretending to be a proper river, wearing its best “No really, I am running water!” hat. But it’s my local, and like all questionable relationships, I kept coming back. 

I knew every bend, every undercut, every spot where a chub might lurk, plotting domestic terrorism on my end tackle. It was practically mine seeing another angler was rarer than seeing Bigfoot piloting a UFO.

And then came the predators.

Not the elegant, nature-in-balance ones you see in BBC documentaries narrated by morally upright people with warm tones. No, these were the type that roll up uninvited, eat everything that isn’t nailed down, and treat your carefully nurtured stretch of river like an all-inclusive buffet.

Not just otters and herons, but now Cormorants !!!

On the Alne.

I mean, honestly. That’s like seeing a giraffe in a corner shop.

They stuck out like black hoodie wearing teenagers at a village fete dark, sulking, and clearly there to ruin someone’s day. Before long the bites dried up. Dace sightings became about as common as winning scratch cards. And after an entire season of soul-sapping blanking, even my stubbornness gave in. I gave up the syndicate ticket before it finished the job of crushing my spirit.

But anglers never really quit, do we? We just redirect the madness.

So I picked up a new club book after given the lowdown from @BuffaloSi, it was one of those impulse purchases that sits unread for months while you sulk about fish that don’t know how good you are. I’d dipped a toe at the start of the season, but the conditions were biblical: hot, bright, low, gin-clear, minnow riddled and entirely designed to amplify my failures. So I did what any responsible angler would do…

 …I ignored it and went home.

But now — NOW — the rivers have colour. The sort of perfect, turd hue that makes you believe anything is possible. Except catching barbel. Never barbel. But still it’s the sort of colour that puts a little swagger in your step and a lot of hope in your over-stuffed ruckbag.

And with the Christmas holidays approaching, spirits high, motivation semi-functional, and bladder capacity reduced by festive ale, I decided I’d better give the new stretch another seeing-to. A post-working from home roving session. Nothing too ambitious we know how those end but enough to scope out swims and see if any dace were willing to give me so much as a hint that I wasn’t wasting my life.

Enter: the bread feeder approach.
Simple. Pure. Classic.
Also the angling equivalent of turning up at a nightclub in trousers from M&S and hoping for the best.

Liquidised bread into the feeder. A thumbnail flake on the hook. Wander, cast, wander, cast, mutter something inspirational to yourself, repeat. Perfect for covering water, or for looking productive when you’re actually just faffing about hoping someone upstream has fed the fish already.

Now there comes a moment in every angler’s life when you realise you’ve finally lost the plot. For some it’s when they start talking to barbel as if they’re rescue dogs. For others it’s when they begin carrying more glugs, dips and potions than the average medieval apothecary. For me, blog readers, it was when I found myself at the kitchen table, eyed suspiciously by the wife, dripping geranium essential oil into a bag full of liquidised bread like a budget aromatherapist with a questionable sideline.

This all started, of course, with Fishflix. I blame them entirely. One minute you're innocently binge-watching Martin Bowler catching roach the size of dinner plates, the next thing you know he’s whispering sweet nothings about “geranium rose oil” turning fish heads like it’s Gordon Gino and Fred visit the Avon. Well, if it’s good enough for Bowler and a roach with an unfortunate appetite, then it’s good enough for me. Eight quid on eBay. Bargain. Or madness. Hard to tell these days.

So there I was, rocking up to the first swim on the River Alne, armed with my rose-scented liquidised bread for the feeder and smelling faintly like I’d spent the night locked in the ladies’ aisle of Boots. Cast into a slack bit of water by a snag, sat back, breathed in the perfume, contemplated my sanity… and bang nibbles. Actual, honest-to-God nibbles within five minutes. Then carnage. Chaos. Tip-tapping, rod-bending drama. My first fish: a chublet. But a chublet that absolutely reeked of success (and possibly geranium).

Now what I didn’t expect  what nobody expects  is to hit the Alne on one of its rare “Yes, alright then, have some fish” moods. Because as rivers go, the Alne is moodier than a teenager asked to empty a dishwasher. Normally I’m lucky if I get a single disgruntled tap that feels more like a leaf having second thoughts. But on this day? Every swim had that electric feel, that whisper of possibility, that quiver in the rod that makes you sit up straighter like a dog hearing a cheese wrapper open.

And the chub the gluttonous, greedy, “we’ve not fed since 1997” chub were absolutely having it. I lost count after ten. Ten! Me! On the Alne! Usually the Alne gives me one fish and a lecture on humility. But I was into fish after fish, like some kind of budget-range Matt Hayes with slightly worse hair and a suspicious floral odour.

The dace, of course, were nowhere to be seen. They didn’t stand a chance against the chub that were piling in like it was the early-bird buffet at a garden centre. The biggest went 3 lb 8 oz, which on most rivers doesn’t warrant a parade, but on the Alne? That’s practically a local celebrity. A fish worthy of a plaque. Perhaps even a small statue.

Was it the geranium oil? The mythical snake oil? The essence of “SAGA reader on date night”? Who knows. But I tell you what: when the angling stars align, when the river mood swings in your favour, and when your bait smells like an elderly lady called Maureen who says “Ooh that’s lovely” a lot sometimes, just sometimes, magic happens.

And magic it was. One of those sessions that reminds you why we lug tackle bags through mud, why we tolerate the odd blank that bruises the soul, and why we occasionally smell like we’ve been hugged by a florist.

The river gave. The chub gorged. And I left grinning like an idiot, smelling faintly of roses, and wondering if maybe just maybe I’m onto something.

Warwickshire Avon - Minnows and Meatloafs

Now it’s strange returning to a stretch of river that once felt like home. The kind of place where the banks used to buzz with anglers, gossip, and that one bloke who always claimed he “almost had a seventeen last week,” even though his landing net was drier than my humour. 

Now it feels more like walking through a forgotten chapter of a book no one remembers writing overgrown paths, quiet water, the faint smell of old bait tubs and broken dreams. Idyllic, really. The matches, still go on mind you, those keepnets not as full as they used to be !!.

Of course, the tragedy of 2023 still hangs over the Warwickshire Avon like a dodgy chip-shop curry. The “oxygen crash” or as I like to call it, The Great Fish Apocalypse That Everyone Talks About Except the People Who Should Probably Have Investigated It. 

Miles of dead fish, the press involved, and an “apparently” that does a lot of heavy lifting. Pike the size of retired greyhounds, barbel shaped like torpedoes, chub with expressions of eternal disappointment... all belly-up. Grim times. Even now, when the river gives you a nibble, you almost want to whisper, “thanks for sticking around.”

Still, restocking happened, and floods do what floods do shuffle fish around like drunken tourists trying to find their hotel at 2 a.m. Little by little, life returned. Even the minnows returned more accurately, they multiplied into a biblical plague of finned pickpockets.

Which brings us to today.

The river was bowling through like it had somewhere important to be, brown and foamy like a giant latte made by an angry barista. Perfect conditions for a barbel if you believe everything written in fishing folklore and the back pages of Angling Times between mattress adverts.

 Armed with a lump of spam the size of a couple of boxes of matches and groundbait so krill-infused it could probably summon a blue whale, I set up. The thermometer told me the water was 8.4°C warming nicely. A sign of hope. A sign of life. A sign that I should continue ignoring the mounting evidence that I’ve no idea what I’m doing.

What I hadn’t accounted for was the leaf debris. Oh, the debris. More debris than the leaf pile in my garden that's always staring at me, and that’s saying something because I’m still convinced there’s a tent in there under them or something. 

Leaves were hitting my line like angry fan mail. Even with the rod tip high enough to make the bloke in the ISS raise an eyebrow, I was recasting every fifteen minutes, a right royal pain in the backside. 

But the feeder landed with a satisfying thud each time like dropping a brick onto a wobble board. That’s how you know the bait’s fishing well. Or at least that’s what I tell myself to justify the mechanically separated meat outlay.

The spam came back every cast absolutely rinsed by minnows. Minnows everywhere. Millions of them. I’ve seen fewer people at a free beer festival. They must hold monthly council meetings discussing how best to strip my bait before an actual fish gets near it.

Two hours, not a chub pull. Not even one of those cheeky little taps that gives you false hope before turning out to be a drifting shoal of leaves shaped like disappointment. So I moved swims. Because that’s what proper anglers do when nothing is happening they relocate, re-strategize, and ultimately fail somewhere else.

The new swim lasted thirty minutes. The flow was faster, the debris was worse, and the line looked like it had been decorated for Christmas by someone with a personal vendetta against me. So back I went to the original swim. The one that had produced that double-figure barbel just weeks earlier. My “hero swim.” My “golden memory spot.” My “please work again because I’m emotionally invested in you now” swim.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The river looked bang on. Moody and atmospheric. A nice slick glide. A bait presented so well it should’ve come with a Michelin star. Yet the rod remained as lifeless as a pub garden in February.

And here’s the weird thing: I still loved it.

There’s something deeply satisfying about fishing in conditions that most right-thinking people would describe as “utterly pointless.” Something calming in the futile battle against nature, minnows, and the creeping suspicion that every barbel in Warwickshire has conspired against you personally.

Because that’s fishing, isn’t it?
Ninety percent stubbornness, five percent misplaced optimism, four percent spam, and one percent actual success. I packed up with cold hands, a muddy arse, and zero bites but a big stupid grin because challenging days on the river are still better than good days doing anything else.

Besides, the minnows need someone to feed them.

I’ll be back, where are all the other anglers ? answers on a postcard. 

Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.44

The river greeted me like an old mate who’s borrowed twenty quid and still hasn’t paid it back familiar, slightly guilty looking, and a touch murkier than expected. After yesterday’s minor miracle of winkling out a few chub on cheesepaste (blessed be the stinky cube of dairy-based hope), I swaggered down to the syndicate stretch convinced absolutely convinced that I could replicate the magic. I even whispered to myself, “Lightning does strike twice, doesn’t it?” as though I was the lead character in some low-budget angling documentary with questionable narration.

But the fishing gods, much like the weather forecast, enjoy lying.

Negotiating the entrance track felt like starring in a budget remake of Ice Road Truckers, only in this version the road is made of sloppy Worcestershire mud and the truck is a slightly bewildered Suzuki Jimny, which I’m fairly sure weighs less than a Labrador with a healthy appetite. Still, up it climbed  a tiny automotive mountain goat with the determination of a toddler going for the last sausage roll at a birthday party. By the time I parked up behind the first swim, I was already congratulating myself on both the Jimny’s heroics and my questionable life choices.

Only then did I remember from the WhatsApp group chat : TRACK CLOSED UNTIL IT DRIES OUT. Marvellous. Typical. Exactly the sort of thing you want to discover after you’ve already slithered your way in like a penguin on a slip-n-slide. To be fair I lied, it was a doddle !!

But seeing as I was now effectively committed or possibly should be committed I decided it was a case of in for a penny, in for a soggy, mud-caked pound. The plan was simple, even elegant: bait a few likely chub haunts with stinky cheesepaste, wait for the tip to rattle, claim victory, go home smelling slightly worse than when I arrived.

A flawless strategy, I thought.

Except the first bite came from a minnow clearly experiencing an early life crisis. It inhaled my cheesepaste like it was auditioning for Britain’s Got Talent: Sword Swallowing Edition. A minnow! On cheesepaste! The river’s smallest resident had gambled big and, sadly for my pride, won. Still, the blank was technically avoided, even if the victory felt a bit like getting a round of applause for tying your shoelaces at age forty.

Down the stretch I trudged, disturbing a cormorant who gave me a look that suggested I was the one ruining its fishing. It flapped off like an indignant Victorian aunt, its day clearly ruined by my mere presence. I primed several swims with stealthy nuggets of cheesepaste and a little mashed bread the angling equivalent of throwing out free samples in the hope someone buys the full product.

Five swims, countless casts, two hundred and seventeen internal monologues about why I bother, and what did I get?

Nothing. Not a chub pull. Not a pluck. Not even the courtesy of a half-hearted nod from something small and uninterested. My bread was getting mullered by minnow, of course the aquatic equivalent of a late night kebab van: always busy, never what you actually want.

Yet and this is the sort of thing non-anglers simply will never grasp I still enjoyed myself. The frosts had revealed parts of the river I’ve not been able to access since approximately the Bronze Age. I discovered two swims that, when the river is lower and behaving itself, look like they could hold chub of suspicious girth. Proper ones. The kind that make you double-take, mutter “Oof, hello”, and wonder whether you need a bigger landing net.

And that’s the strange thing about fishing. Success isn’t measured solely by what you catch, but by the moments of promise, the gentle ridiculousness of the whole affair, and the sheer stubborn optimism that keeps you returning to the water’s edge when any sane person would stay inside and do something sensible… like hoovering, or taxes, or literally anything that doesn’t involve being up to your ankles in cold mud while debating whether a bird just judged you.

So while the chub were clearly off having a committee meeting elsewhere, ignoring me completely, the morning wasn’t wasted. Far from it. It was reconnaissance. It was fresh air. It was ridiculous, muddy, fishless, minnow-ridden joy.

On to the next one because someone has to give those chub a talking-to, and it might as well be me.