Warwickshire Avon - Firesticks and Firkins

Now with the wife recently acquiring her second shoulder surgery like she’s collecting the full orthopaedic set the days of guilt-free fishing have taken a bit of a dent (Got to use the private medical insurance whilst it lasts). Last year’s experience taught me three things: she can't drive for a couple of weeks, one-armed dinner prep involves a lot of shouting, and me sneaking off fishing during this period is riskier than waving a red rag at a hormonal bull... while dressed as a matador.

But alas, the Summer Solstice! That annual planetary nudge that whispers “You’ve got daylight until forever, go fishing you fool.” So, with the kids fed, watered, and within arm’s reach of a pillow, I muttered something vague about “needing air” and was out the door before anyone could ask if I’d remembered the washing.

The destination was a handy stretch of the Warwickshire Avon, armed with optimism and a pint of pellets, hoping for a start-of-season barbel amongst the gravel glides and streamer weed. The kind of swim that screams “big whiskers live here!” but only ever seems to deliver chub with boundary issues.

Now, I’ve tried rolling meat under weed rafts before and, to be fair, a couple of barbel did oblige. But this time I fancied a more stealthy approach scaled-down tackle, ninja-like creeping, and only mildly audible swearing when a nettle found my shin.

The first swim I settled into was shallow, clear, and lively. One barbel (probably imaginary) and a gang of loitering chub were milling about like bored teenagers at a bus stop. The plan was to fish here for an hour, then move to a deeper, moodier swim for dusk where dreams of double-figure barbel live and, usually, die.

At 8:00 PM it was still 28 degrees. The sweat was real. I looked like I’d run a marathon in neoprene. But I was fishing, and that made everything else heat, guilt, the impending laundry pile completely irrelevant.

The first tug on the quivertip came quickly... could it be?

Nope. Perch. A small one. Possibly still wearing armbands. How it managed to suck up two pellets nearly its own size I’ll never know. Determination? Masochism? A death wish?

Then came the chub. One after the other, all desperate for a starring role in the “Shoulda Been a Barbel” documentary I’ve been mentally scripting for years. Two came to the net before the swim went quiet. Classic chub move smash and dash.

So off I went to the evening shift swim. A bit deeper, a bit quieter, and with pedigree. I've had barbel over 12lb here in years gone by though recently it feels like I’ve been fishing for ghosts and being outwitted by squirrels.

A few handfuls of pellets to butter them up, a couple of hair-rigged offerings on the dinner plate, and we were back in business. The chub, however, had followed me like bad luck. They battered the rig mercilessly, stripping baits like they were unwrapping sweets.

By this point, I was fed up. So I went full rogue: Peperami Firestick deployed. Let’s see you strip that, lads. And wouldn’t you know it, another chub bigger this time, a solid 4lb brute with a face like it owed me money. Smelled faintly of cured sausage, but then again so did I by this point.

The barbel? Still absent. Probably sulking in a weed bed somewhere, watching me through disdainful eyes and planning their next coordinated no-show. When the bats came out, the insect life turned up to eleven. I was engulfed in a swirling midge soup that made breathing risky and blinking optional.

Still, as I packed down under a star-pricked sky, rods unsnagged and spirits only mildly bruised, I couldn’t help but smile. Barbel? Next time, maybe. But the chub? Oh, they’ll always turn up uninvited like in-laws with keys to your fridge.

Warwickshire Avon - Fool's Errands and Fooliaminy

After much debate, a few muttered expletives, and a daring expedition involving a GPS, an OS map from 1994, and the blind optimism only a Suzuki Jimny owner possesses, I finally managed to open up the ancient jungle trail known locally as the Syndicate Stretch. It had long since been claimed by nature or possibly just the nettles. 

Later on Keith Jobling, armed with his industrial-strength strimmer and the grim determination of a man who once trimmed an entire golf course in a day, set about reclaiming the land. Five hours of buzzing, sweating, and the occasional “this’ll be worth it, mate” later, we had something resembling a track. Not quite a road, but certainly navigable for anything short of a Sherman tank.

Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. A few days later, in true agricultural plot twist fashion, the farmer decided to literally make hay. With all the timing and subtlety of a Shakespearean villain, he brought in the machinery, flattened the lot, and cleared the field like a man who’d just discovered what fun it is to ruin other people’s hard work. All that effort reduced to nothing but anecdotal glory and a faint smell of petrol-soaked nettles.

Still, with work related stress multiplying like rabbits on Red Bull and future responsibilities lurking ominously on the horizon like unpaid council tax, I needed a break. A proper one. Not a coffee break. A fishing break. The kind where your brain slowly deflates like a lilo in the sun and you forget your own name for an hour, especially when I had to cancel my trip to the Wye the following day. 

Fishing, as every overworked soul knows, is the most effective form of budget therapy. It’s just you, the water, and the existential question of whether that thing you saw move was a fish or a leaf with ideas above its station.

Armed with nothing but a size 6 hook and a chunk of  bread crust, I took to the water. The sun blazed down like it had a grudge, the birds chirped away like they hadn’t read the room, and before long, a few greedy chub couldn’t resist my humble offerings. 

No alarms, no boilies, no twenty-piece tackle set that requires an engineering degree just crust and calm. Job done. Off the mark for the new season. Rod packed away, mind a little lighter, and sanity, for now, safely reeled back in.

The Avon is gin clear at the minute, often the most simple tactics outwit the often most cautious of fish. Oddly the tactics will work one day and not the next. This session they were on it !! I baited a spot with hemp and pellets at the start of the session, an hour later, only minnows and tiny dace to show for it. The Wife is having a shoulder op tomorrow, my fishing could be limited to a couple of hours like it was for the session. Fingers crossed she recovers a little faster when she had the other one done. 

Warwickshire Avon - Shandies and Shenangos

There’s something spiritual nay, borderline religious about the Glorious 16th. You could be forgiven for thinking it’s a pagan rite or the Queen’s second birthday, but no, it's far more sacred than either: the opening day of the coarse river fishing season. That date sits circled in the calendar like a holy pilgrimage. Forget Christmas, ignore Easter this is the date when men (and the occasional, sainted woman) abandon all pretense of normality, dust off their tackle, and head waterside in search of scaly redemption.

Now, I’d love to tell you I had a whole day planned. Thermos flask, sandwiches cut diagonally, hat with a feather in it, and a three-part Shakespearean monologue ready to deliver to a rising chub but alas, domestic life had other plans. A fleeting window opened between work and parental obligation, barely wide enough to fit a hook through, and I slipped out like a burglar, bread in one hand, rod in the other, heart full of hope and head full of excuses in case I came home fishless.

My destination was a local haunt conveniently close, modestly magical a little stretch of river where the chub sulk under overhanging willows like Victorian poets nursing brandy hangovers. On arrival, I clocked two cars parked up. One of them belonged to none other than Buffalo Si, a man who once described roach as "God's way of testing our eyesight." The other Bream master Dirty Mike, a chap with all the angling subtlety of a flaming chainsaw, but who, in fairness, always seems to catch.

So, I thought, this will do.

Now, the beauty of early-season fishing is its promise. The river, low and gin-clear, looks like bottled summer poured over gravel. Everything is visible: fish, flies, submerged objects from the mid-90s. The downside is, of course, the fish can see you too especially chub, who, upon spotting an angler, immediately pretend to be wood.

With only two hours before I had to return home and be transformed into Responsible Parent No.1 while my wife went out gallivanting with her friends (read: prosecco-fuelled conspiracy theorists), I kept it simple. Hook, loaf of bread, zero dignity.

Si greeted me with a shandy seemingly straight from the fridge, which was either an act of brotherly solidarity or a cunning plan to sabotage my already feeble concentration. We chatted. He’d been feeding a swim for some time but hadn’t cast in. Mike, meanwhile, had already winkled out a decent chub, because of course he had. I suspect if Mike dipped his toes in the water, the fish would line up to nibble them in gratitude.

After bidding farewell to the lads, I crept upriver, stealthier than a ninja with gout, and flip flopping like Starmer the Farmer Harmer, I adopted the “wandering fool” method drifting floating crusts from swim to swim, whispering sweet nothings to the fish like an aquatic Romeo with a soggy loaf.

Fish were everywhere. Big, thick-backed chub the colour of burnt bronze lurking under tree roots and marginal weeds, peering out like naughty schoolboys. But would they rise? Would they even look? Not a sniff. Even the flake trick, that old magician's flourish, didn't stir them. I’d have had better luck waving a Tesco Clubcard.

It was like being in a fishy Madame Tussauds chub frozen in suspicion, not one so much as twitching a fin. Occasionally, one would float out from the safety of cover, inspect the bait like a wine snob at a village fête, then turn tail in disgust. I began to suspect they’d unionised in the close season.

And so the couple of hours slipped away. My loaf now more pigeon buffet than viable bait, my spirits sagging like damp socks, I conceded defeat and sloped off, tail metaphorically and spiritually between my legs.

Back at the car, in the morning I learned Si had blanked (vindication!), while Dirty Mike had managed “a few more good 'uns” his method involving groundbait and micro pellets in a deeper swim. Typical. Always fishing a swim with more underwater furniture than IKEA. I mumbled some congratulatory gibberish, secretly plotting to sabotage his bait bucket next time.

Still, blank or not, it felt so good to be back on flowing water. The Avon perfume in the air, the flick of a wagtail, the whisper of reeds brushing your thoughts clean. There’s a peace to be had from just being there. Catching a fish is merely a bonus an often denied one.

So there it is. The season has begun. The bread is stale, the chub are laughing, and the river runs on, uncaring and glorious.

Roll on the next one, can I catch a fish next time ?