Well, the session didn't exactly get off to the most auspicious of starts, although to be fair, down here it’s generally about as peaceful as Piccadilly Circus at rush hour, only with more bivvies and considerably less public transport.
As I pulled into the car park, there was already a van positioned broadside across the swim I’d intended to fish, with its occupants apparently settled in for the duration, having brought enough tackle to suggest they were either planning a week-long campaign or preparing to excavate the Avon. Rod pods, gear everywhere and what appeared to be a takeaway on the go completed the scene, because apparently barbel fishing now requires catering facilities.
I looked downstream towards Plan B, only to see the unmistakable silhouette of line stretching across the water after another angler had just cast out. Bugger. As I sat there contemplating whether Plan C was actually going to be Plan Z, another bloke appeared carrying a rod pod, closely followed by his missus lugging what looked like a moon chair, heading towards one of the convenient swims adjacent to the car park, presumably because walking more than twelve yards from the car was considered an unreasonable hardship.
I eventually settled on Plan C, which was upstream to Neil from the garage's peg, or Buffalo Si's sloppy seconds, otherwise known as ‘last year's hot peg’, although despite its reputation it’s still a decent bit of river and one that ALWAYS seems to produce. It’s only about eighteen minutes from home, but I don't fish it that often because, Jesus Christ, it sees some foot traffic.
Not just anglers who seem intent on pouring enough bait into the river to qualify as civil engineering, but the great unwashed too, all wandering about with dogs, children, sandwiches and absolutely no awareness whatsoever that somebody might actually be trying to fish.
Still, I lowered the bag and rod, ready for a relatively short session from 6.30pm until a nadger past dusk, and immediately my rod caught the little elastic strap on the smiley acid-house bracelet Sam had bought me.
The elastic stretched, twanged and surrendered to the laws of physics, sending all the tiny smiley faces exploding in every direction like a psychedelic hand grenade.
There I was, crawling around amongst the detritus of the peg to retrieve tiny yellow faces while simultaneously wondering whether this was some sort of omen. Clearly it was, and I shall have to order another bracelet, although next time I may choose something less emotionally and mechanically fragile, such as a length of chain.
Eventually I got myself sorted and started setting up, at which point a long, grey-haired fella appeared with a couple of dogs which, judging by their behaviour, had either never attended a training class or had been expelled from one. They proceeded to run all over the peg I'd chosen, sniffing around for anything edible and generally conducting themselves like two furry members of a forensic investigation team. It turns out they were, as their owner cheerfully explained, ‘luncheon meat monsters’, which did at least explain why they were treating my fishing gear as though it had been served up on a buffet.
The same performance occurred on my return, despite me having a word with their owner, who appeared to regard my concerns with all the urgency of someone being told the kettle had boiled. Still, I resisted the temptation to feed him to the dogs and carried on. Shortly afterwards three perfectly pleasant Eastern European lads came wandering along, roving around chucking lures left, right and centre, including, naturally, directly through the areas I was fishing.
“Come on fellas, there are plenty of pegs to fish, can't you see I'm fishing here?” I politely enquired, receiving the sort of response that suggested they regarded my stationary rod, baited hook and general angling activity as an unnecessarily dull interruption to their mobile entertainment.
Apparently they liked to move around when lure fishing and didn't do the “boring fishing” that I did, which was fair enough, although I did briefly consider demonstrating just how boring I could make a fishing rod by inserting it somewhere inconvenient. Eventually, mercifully, the chaos subsided. The dogs disappeared, the lure chuckers moved on, the banks emptied and the riverbank finally became quiet, which suited me perfectly because I am, by my own admission, something of a misanthrope.
This particular stretch is normally rammed with fish, largely because it receives enough bait to keep a small aquatic population in permanent employment, and the Avon here is effectively the all-you-can-eat buffet of Warwickshire. Barbel, chub and everything else hang around because there is always something dropping through the water column, which makes the complete lack of action that followed even more baffling.
The target was barbel, so I primed the swim with a scaled pellet and groundbait mix, allowing it to settle on the bottom before giving things a rest. Tactics were deliberately simple: a Robin Red drilled pellet on the hair, accompanied by a small PVA bag of freebies, which has been my usual approach of late. Because I was only fishing a short smash-and-grab session into dusk, I deliberately made the hair longer than normal, hoping to be a little more selective and perhaps avoid the attentions of every small chub, gudgeon and aquatic idiot that fancied a nibble.
I needn't have worried about being selective. Despite decent fish showing, not only in my swim but in the areas immediately to my left and right, the rod remained about as animated as as Trigger's broom handle leaning against a shed.
Not even a chub pull materialised, which on this stretch is frankly bizarre, rather like turning up at an all-you-can-eat buffet to discover that the entire kitchen has gone home. I moved the bait around the swim, tried a few different spots and found a reassuringly satisfying thud as the lead hit bottom, so presentation was clearly fine.
And yet… nothing. Not a tap, not a knock, not even the sort of pathetic little twitch that allows you to convince yourself afterwards that you definitely had a bite but were simply too slow to react. As darkness crept in, the fish continued to show themselves with the sort of calculated indifference usually reserved for people you owe money to, while my bait sat beneath them apparently invisible.
Eventually I called time, packed away and headed home wondering quite how a place that normally resembles a barbel branch of Tesco's had managed to close its doors for the evening.
So, all in all, not exactly the session I'd envisaged. I arrived to a human traffic jam, lost my acid house bracelet, had my swim invaded by luncheon-meat-obsessed dogs, had lures fired through my fishing area and then spent the evening watching decent fish show everywhere except on the end of my hook.
Still, that's fishing, I suppose, and perhaps the Avon was simply having one of those evenings where it had decided that despite providing everyone else with an all-you-can-eat buffet, my table reservation had mysteriously been cancelled.
On a better note, a link to the River Severn Trip with Nic from Avon Angling where I actually catch some fish !!
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