Now you know things have gone a bit daft when an evening at the cricket ground costs roughly the same as a weekend away in the Peak District. But there we were Edgbaston Cricket Ground, me, the missus, and the kids, waiting for the much-hyped drone light show.
It was one of those damp Midlands evenings where you can almost hear the clouds laughing at you. The announcer said, “The show will begin shortly,” and right on cue, the heavens opened like someone had unscrewed the lid on Birmingham.
I’m not exaggerating when I say the rain began literally as the drones took off. Hundreds of tiny lights buzzing about in formation like techno fireflies while a collective groan rippled through the poncho-wearing crowd.
Still, fair play the display was impressive. They made all sorts of shapes and moved to the music, fish, sloths, a lion, even what looked suspiciously like a giant emoji at one point. Modern 2025 Britain, eh? I had to ask Sam about pronouns at one point, ignorant, yeah no doubt about it.
The kids thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Probably because they’d just inhaled £14.95’s worth of “street food” chicken and chips three lonely strips of breaded poultry sitting next to a sad pile of fries, served in a cardboard tray that probably cost more than the actual meal. The lad said it was “alright,” which at that price point is basically a Michelin star review.
The wife and I gave the menu a once-over and nearly choked. £12.95 for a pork and stuffing batch. I mean, I like a bit of pork, but I draw the line at remortgaging for it. “Bugger that,” she said, and I nodded like a man who’d just been spared a financial crisis. £26 for two rolls?
Still, the show was grand. The lights danced, the music swelled, and for a few minutes we all forgot the drizzle. Then, as the last drone descended, reality reasserted itself:
He always does well, does Baz. Probably whispers Latin poetry to his pellets or something.
So, I packed up the gear, made a flask of strong tea, and headed to the syndicate stretch for a few hours before dusk. The plan was simple: scale things down a bit. A small banded pellet, a neat little PVA bag of freebies, and a bucket of misplaced optimism. No fancy rigs, no faff just a bit of simplicity. Sometimes I think I spend more time “refining my approach” than actually catching fish.
The river looked gorgeous. The sort of moody autumn flow that makes you glad you dragged yourself out. A few leaves drifting past, the water just tinged enough with colour to hide a fish or two. The kind of scene that could calm the angriest man alive or at least distract him from the price of pork batches.
By the time dusk rolled in, Orion had appeared overhead the celestial angler, I call him. Belt, sword, and the faint outline of a bivvy bag if you squint hard enough.
The air had that crisp bite to it, the sort that makes your flask tea taste like nectar. And then bang. Out of nowhere, the rod top hammered round, and I thought, here we go — Barbara the Barbel has clocked in for her evening shift.
Heart pounding, I lifted into it, expecting that deep, thumping power of a proper barbel run. Instead… a couple of half-hearted headshakes and a sulky plod. A chub.
A decent enough one, but not the monster I’d imagined. Probably about as impressed with me as I was with him.
Still, can’t complain. A bend in the rod is a bend in the rod, and at least it wasn’t another blank. I slipped him back, sat down, and poured the last of my tea, watching fireworks burst in the distance. Somewhere behind me, the muffled sound of kids shouting and dogs barking the soundtrack of suburban England.
Walking back to the car, I thought about the weekend as a whole. The rain, the drones, the overpriced food, the chub that thought it was a barbel.
And yet, in a strange way, it all felt right. Life might be getting sillier by the minute street food menus written in Comic Sans, teenagers on e-bikes doing wheelies through red lights, drones replacing fireworks but the river never changes. It just flows, quietly, waiting for the next fool with a rod and a flask.
No barbel this time, but a pocketful of peace, a sniff of starlight, and a renewed appreciation for the simple stuff. You can’t put a price on that. Well unless you’re the bloke selling chicken strips at Edgbaston.
Now can we have some much-needed rain, please? Not the “three-minute drizzle that darkens the pavement then disappears” sort, but a proper, biblical, frog-drowning downpour that actually gets the rivers moving again.
Because honestly, the state of the Leam and the Alne at the minute you could practically step across them in a pair of Crocs and not even get damp socks.
This is supposed to be prime fishing time. The leaves are falling, the air smells faintly of bonfires, and the nights have that satisfying chill where a flask of tea feels like medicine. But what have we got? Trickles. Actual trickles. You could almost hear the fish coughing down there, begging for a bit of cover. The Leam’s barely wet enough to float a duck, and the Alne well, I’ve seen puddles in Tesco car parks with more flow.
And don’t get me started on the Warwickshire Avon. It’s so clear it looks like someone’s nicked all the colour out of it with a Brita filter. You can see every pebble, every leaf, every disinterested chub sulking behind a boulder pretending he’s not home. You might as well throw your rig in the bath and hope Barbara the Barbel climbs in for a visit.
It’s weird, isn’t it? All summer we were moaning about floods, and now we’re begging for rain. Nature’s got a wicked sense of humour. I reckon the weather gods sit around watching anglers like some kind of cosmic reality show.
“Look, Dave, they’ve just put their barbel gear in the car. Right, turn the taps off for three weeks.”
So here I am, staring at a forecast that promises “showers” that never materialise, and wondering whether it’s time to abandon the rivers altogether and go back to the canals. At least the canals have some colour — well, they used to. Even they’re looking unnervingly clear lately, which just feels wrong. The ducks are confused, the dog walkers can see the shopping trolleys, and I swear I spotted a perch looking embarrassed about being visible.
I’m half-tempted to perform some kind of rain dance probably in the garden, probably after a couple of pints of Champion, and almost certainly to the amusement of the neighbours. But desperate times call for desperate measures. A nice few days of steady rain, a bit of chocolate in the water, and maybe, just maybe, we can get back to fishing the rivers properly, rather than sitting at home scrolling weather apps and shaking our heads.
Until then, I’ll keep the gear ready, the bait in the freezer, and the kettle on standby. Because one thing’s certain: when the rain finally comes — and it will — we’ll all be out there, pretending we never moaned about it.
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