Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.42

I arrived straight from work only to be greeted by the kind of darkness that makes you rethink not just your hobbies, but your entire approach to life. You know the sort the darkness that swallows the world whole and then asks if you’ve got any more it can borrow and the river track still impersonating something from a Discovery Channel documentary swamp edition.

Now I could probably coax the Jimny down to my peg however the syndicate had slapped a temporary block on using the track, presumably for those driving normal cars and not tiny mountain goats disguised as 4x4s.

So there I was: forced to rely on my legs, which normally operate only under duress, and tonight were protesting like French farmers. 

My posh new LED boot lights, which normally make setting up feel like I’m preparing to launch the space shuttle, were rendered useless. 

Instead, I was back to the head torch and the only one what was charged was a cheap, flickery type that seems to run on little more than hope and spite. It illuminates either everything or nothing depending on its mood, and tonight it had apparently chosen “moody ambience.”

The river was still up, muttering darkly under its breath like a pensioner annoyed at modern prices. I made my way to the little slack I’d fished before, zig-zagging my way through the darkness in what can only be described as an “approximate” straight line. 

But even under the dim, sulky glow of the head torch and the zoomable tip torch I could see something was badly wrong like discovering the fridge is empty when you were convinced you’d bought a trifle.

A huge snag half a tree really, the sort that rearranges swims and dreams had completely vanished. Gone. Whisked away by the recent flood like a drunk mate spirited off by a taxi at 3 a.m. That snag had sat between two fishable swims for ages, creating a lovely downstream slack where Barbara the barbel was first spotted. Sean caught her upstream once (though we’re 80% sure it was her and 20% sure it was a large, surly stick). But now the downstream slack was gone, redistributed by Mother Nature in what can only be described as poor taste. A swim changed forever, and not as usual in my favour.

Still, optimism is free, and so is delusion. I got the feeder ready with the kind of stinky krill groundbait that only madmen and barbel enjoy. It’s the sort of concoction that, if spilled in the car, would require professional hazmat involvement. Onto the bait band went a sausage-sizzle pellet wrapped in spicy robin red paste so pungent it should come with a disclaimer. If this didn’t attract barbel, then frankly nothing short of offering them a mortgage would.

Despite a chilly wind that tried its best to shear my ears off, the water temperature was surprisingly warm for the night. Warm enough, you’d think, for a barbel to at least consider wafting past. But this is the Warwickshire Avon, and expecting a barbel on demand is like expecting punctuality from public transport: admirable in theory, but fundamentally ridiculous.

I lobbed the rig out gracefully in my head, less so in reality and settled in. Half an hour passed. Nothing. Not even a sarcastic knock from a chub. So I reeled in, reloaded the feeder, filled it with enough krill mush to wake the ancestors, and sent it back out again.

Then finally movement. A twitch. Another. And then a proper pull-round that made my heart leap into the “we might actually be doing this” zone. I struck, made contact, felt a brief pulse of resistance, and for one glorious moment imagined Barbara herself gliding towards me in regal fury.

But then it wriggled.

Not a big wriggle. A modest, sheepish one. Up came a chublet a fish so small it should have been wearing armbands. It swung in through the air looking absolutely mortified, and if I’m honest, so was I. Still, proof the bait was presented properly, which these days is a small but meaningful victory. I congratulated myself in the way only a desperate man can.

Another twenty minutes ticked by. The temperature plummeted like my enthusiasm, the sky cleared, and the river began to freeze my fingerprints off one by one. At that point I decided enough was enough. Fishing is supposed to be relaxing, not a test of frostbite resistance.

I trudged back to the car, my breath fogging the air like a steam engine on overtime, and drove home with all the dignity of a man whose grand adventure had yielded a single, socially awkward chublet.