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.

Warwickshire Avon - Rammish and Rankness

Now if you’ve ever wondered why cheesepaste is basically the winter equivalent of chub kryptonite, picture a cold, grey river where everything sensible is hiding and trying to conserve energy except the chub, which apparently didn’t get the memo and is still waddling around with the appetite of a teenager let loose at an all-you-can-eat buffet. 

While most creatures in winter are thinking deep, philosophical thoughts like, “I shall not move unless absolutely necessary,” the chub is out there cruising the currents like a fridge on fins, sniffing around for its next questionable snack. Cheesepaste works because it smells like a dairy explosion (in the best possible way). Even in icy water, that bold, unmistakable aroma travels straight into a chub’s brain like a flashing neon sign saying, “FREE FOOD, LIMITED TIME ONLY.” And despite whatever internal fish-logic they might have, the chub’s stomach always wins the argument. 

One minute it’s saying, “We don’t really need to eat today,” and the next it’s screaming, “IT’S CHEESE—TAKE IT, YOU FOOL!” By the time your carefully moulded glob of cheesepaste hits the riverbed, the chub is already mentally clearing space in its digestive system like someone unbuttoning their jeans after Christmas dinner.

The texture doesn’t hurt either. Cheesepaste is soft, squidgy, and reassuringly edible-feeling—nothing that screams “HOOK!” or “SUSPICIOUS HUMAN TRICKERY!” It’s basically the comfort food of the fish world. The fats and oils seep out gently, drifting downstream, whispering to any lurking chub, “Hey… psst… winter’s terrible… come emotional-eat your feelings.”

 And let’s be honest, chub have the kind of appetite that could impress a Labrador. They don’t nibble delicately or make polite decisions about portion sizes they hoover. So when that irresistible lump of cheesepaste rolls into view, the chub doesn’t hesitate. It doesn’t negotiate. It just goes full vacuum-cleaner mode, because in its mind, winter survival is 10% instinct and 90% “if it fits, I eats.”

So really, that’s why cheesepaste shines in winter: it’s warm, it’s rich, it’s smelly, and to a hungry chub in January, it’s basically a Michelin-starred meal disguised as a fistful of dairy and breadcrumbs. Anyway I’d not been up this part of the Warwickshire Avon for a good while, and as soon as I stepped through the gate I was reminded why I’d missed it proper big chub country. 

Not your “that’ll do” three-pounders, but those thick-set, winter-ready bruisers that sulk under snags like they’re weighing up whether to eat your bait or just glare at you for disturbing them. With the working week mercifully ending at 12:30pm, I had a few golden hours for a roving session before the light slipped away and the frost started creeping back in.

A rather rude overnight temperature drop had iced everything into a crunchy misery, and as I trudged along the bank I couldn’t help thinking, “This is going to be tricky, isn’t it?” But tricky often means interesting, and interesting usually means chub so the plan was simple. 

 

Check out a handful of swims, trickle in a few paste nuggets to get the dinner bell chiming, and then give each spot a disciplined fifteen minutes with a lump of cheesepaste wrapped round the hook. No lounging about, no overthinking just cover water and let the river tell me what mood it’s in.

I know this stretch can produce fish that make you question the strength of your landing net handle. My PB chub stands at a rather pleasing 6lb 2oz, but the Warwickshire Avon these days feels like exactly the sort of river where personal bests quietly go to die. 

These fish are big, bold, and more than happy to loiter where the regulars introduce bait those steady trickles of crumb and pellet forming underwater dining rooms that the chub slip into with the swagger of customers who know the chef personally.

Every swim felt like it had a story. A slack beneath a leaning willow here, a crease pushing off a sunken tree there, each one looking like the kind of place a big old chub might sit and ponder the meaning of life or at least the meaning of cheese. 

The river had that cold, metallic green look to it, the kind that says, “If you’re not organised, you’re blanking.” Thankfully, I’d brought enough cheesepaste to supply a medium-sized pizzeria as I made a fresh batch, so morale remained high.

With each stop I would mould the paste round the size 6 hook, swung it carefully into the quietest part of the swim, and settled in. Fifteen minutes. Not sixteen. Not a hopeful seventeen. Just enough time for a curious slab-sided river monster to shuffle out of its lair and decide whether today was the day it fancied a dairy-based snack.

Whether I’d pick up a chub or two didn’t matter quite as much as the roaming itself the slow meander along a nice stretch, the crunch of bank frost underfoot, and the quiet feeling that any cast, absolutely any cast, could produce the fish that finally nudges that PB off the top spot. And truth be told, on a river like the Warwickshire Avon, that possibility is the real hook that keeps you coming back.

Anyway after all the planning, the session got off to a cracking start, even if I was still rubbing the CAD eyes and wondering whether the river gods were in a benevolent mood or the usual spiteful one. I’d just wandered past two anglers sat in what looked like textbook chub real estate proper slack water, overhanging branches, the whole brochure when I plonked myself in a swim that looked, frankly, like it needed a pep talk. Still, there was a snail-pace crease just off the fast water, a kind of aquatic conveyor belt leading straight out of a tree-affected riffle, and that was enough for me.

To my utter astonishment (and mild panic), the cheesepaste barely had time to introduce itself before the first chub walloped it. Then another on the very next cast. Sudden chaos, proper rod-hooping bedlam, the sort of action that makes you look around to check no one saw you grinning like an idiot. The better fish an old warrior of a 4-pounder gave me a scrap that suggested it’d done a bit of boxing on the side. Then, as chub often do when they’ve had their fun making you feel smug, the swim completely died on me.

So off I went for a rove. That’s when I found myself utterly preoccupied with the world’s fastest rattly bites so quick they could’ve been powered by caffeine. I swapped to a smaller hook and a bit of bread, but I still couldn’t connect. It felt like trying to text someone back while wearing oven gloves. Annoying, comedic, and slightly humbling.

Eventually I gave myself the customary kick up the backside and marched back to the job at hand. Five swims later I ended up right back where I started typical. At dusk, just as the sky turned that moody shade of “you’ve pushed your luck, mate,” a plucky 2-lber obliged. Lovely fish… followed immediately by the heavens opening and soaking me to the marrow on the trudge back to the car.

Still, an enjoyable few hours. No monster today but I’ll be back. The river owes me one, and I intend to collect.