Warwickshire Avon - Deep Dish and Depeculation

I had precisely two hours. One hundred and twenty fleeting, golden minutes of sanctioned freedom before domestic responsibility descended upon me like a bailiff with a clipboard and a moral compass. The Wife had a spa day. The Wife had a friend. The Wife had plans. I had children.

This, is how empires fall.

Now, before you picture me as some martyr of matrimony, let it be known that I was flying to Glasgow the following morning for what can only be described as cultural enrichment of the loud, bass-heavy, whisky-laced variety. So I was, in effect, a man temporarily unsupervised. A dog let off the leash. A Labrador pointed toward water.

And water there was.

The Warwickshire Avon was up. And when I say up, I mean it had ideas above its station. It was swollen, brooding, carrying that faint air of “don’t get clever, son.” The sort of river that looks at your carefully tied hooklength and says, “That’s adorable.” Still, chub live there. Big chub. Proper barrel-bodied, smug-faced, bread-munching thugs. And where there are chub, there is hope. Where there is hope, there is a man with a rod and deeply misplaced confidence.

The water temperature was cold enough to make a penguin consider knitwear, but chub are not governed by logic. They are governed by appetite and mischief. Or so I like to believe when justifying my presence at a river that sensible men have written off. It was to be a roving session. No barrow. No bivvy. Just me, a rod, a landing net, and four swims that have historically whispered sweet nothings into my catch report. Four swims. Four opportunities for piscatorial redemption.

Swim one looked promising. Slack water hugging the crease, a bit of cover, just the sort of spot where a chub might lurk, rubbing its fins together like a cartoon villain. I presented the bait beautifully. It drifted down like a Michelin-star canapé.

Nothing.

Not a tremor. Not a pluck. Not even the discourteous tap of a small fish investigating.

Swim two. Same story. The bait looked glorious. I looked hopeful. The river looked indifferent.

Swim three offered a little flicker of optimism. A slight dip of the tip. A heartbeat quickened. I tightened. Struck.

Leaves.

I had successfully hooked autumn.

Swim four, the banker, the one that had previously surrendered fish of such girth that I’d strutted back to the car like a returning gladiator… gave me precisely the same response as a disinterested cat.

Blank.

A rare off day, I told myself. A character-building exercise. A reminder that angling is not about fish; it’s about contemplation, humility, and occasionally questioning your life choices while staring at moving water. But time, that cruel accountant, was tapping his watch. I reeled in, packed up, and retreated home to assume the role of Responsible Adult.

Fast forward to 4:30am.

The Uber arrived. I shuffled in, a man powered by caffeine and questionable decisions. A 7:00am flight from Birmingham. Forty-five minutes in the air. Cheaper than a train ticket that would have me touring half of Britain and aging visibly in the process.

Up we went. Down we came. Glasgow.

Now Glasgow, on a good day, feels like a city that could outdrink you, outwalk you, and still hold the door open with impeccable manners. 

The weather, in a rare act of cooperation, was delightful. Sunshine. Blue skies. Not a horizontal raincloud in sight. I checked for signs of the apocalypse. Before the evening’s auditory assault, there was tourism to be done. 

The university, all gothic grandeur and academic gravitas, stood looking like it had opinions on Latin. I wandered about pretending I understood architecture.

Then the Necropolis. A Victorian cemetery perched grandly above the city. Monumental. Dramatic. The sort of place that makes you walk slower and consider your posture. 

Gravestones leaning at existential angles. Angels gazing mournfully over the Clyde. I half expected a raven to critique my footwear. 

A full Scottish breakfast followed. A plate so substantial it required strategic planning. Sausage, bacon, eggs, black pudding, tattie scones a carb symposium. I ate like a man preparing for battle. Or dancing. Or both.

The river Clyde shimmered obligingly as I stopped at a bar perched beside it. A civilised pint in civilised sunshine, watching the water drift by and thinking, traitorously, about chub. Then whisky. A proper whisky bar. Shelves lined with amber promises. 

I sampled responsibly, which is to say I nodded thoughtfully after each sip and said things like “complex” and “notes of…” without committing to specifics.

But the evening beckoned.

The Sub Club.

Dark. Proper dark. Not “dimly lit gastropub” dark. Not “romantic bistro” dark. This was subterranean, bass-laden, sensory recalibration dark. The sort of venue where the music doesn’t enter your ears so much as occupy your skeleton. The bass began as a suggestion and quickly became a constitutional amendment. You could feel it through your feet, up your spine, into your dental records. It was magnificent.

Deep, progressive beats rolled out, layered and hypnotic and Deep Dish. Familiar hooks surfaced like old friends at a reunion, only to dissolve into heavier, driving rhythms that nudged gleefully into techno territory. Arms went up. Heads nodded with solemn devotion. Somewhere in the gloom, I was dancing in a manner that would alarm my children.

Hours passed in a blur of rhythm and grins and that peculiar camaraderie that only exists in dark rooms where everyone agrees that this, this right here, is the moment. Earlier, I had sampled a tasting menu at Swadish, a restaurant with a Nordic lilt. Small plates. 

Intricate presentations. The sort of food that arrives with an explanation. I had initially feared starvation, but by course six I was questioning my elasticity. Small portions accumulate like interest.

By the end of the day, my watch informed me I had clocked 41,000 steps. Forty-one thousand. I had effectively walked to another county and back. No wonder I could still button my jeans .The following day maintained a curry theme. Mother India's Café promising authenticity delivered enthusiasm and salt in roughly equal measure. It pains me to report that it was underwhelming (Don't bother). The sort of meal that leaves you nostalgically thinking about last night’s whisky.

But Glasgow, as ever, surprised me. It has that knack. A city that wears its history with a shrug and its nightlife with pride. Grand buildings beside graffiti. Laughter spilling from doorways. 

People who’ll happily tell you where to go and then explain why it’s brilliant. And so, from blanking on a swollen river in Warwickshire to dancing beneath the earth in Scotland, the weekend arced beautifully.

No chub were harmed in the making of this story. My dignity, however, took several calculated risks.

Would I change anything?

Perhaps I’d have preferred one thumping great chub to bend the rod and justify my optimism. But then again, not every session yields a fish. 

Some yield perspective. Some yield whisky. Some yield 41,000 steps and calves like reinforced cable. And as I sat on the late flight home, pleasantly shattered, ears faintly ringing, legs mildly offended, I couldn’t help but smile.

Two hours on the river. Forty-eight hours in Glasgow. A blank. A bassline. A breakfast of heroic proportions.

All in all, a rather fine trade.

The Tiny River Alne - 101st Chairborne's and Chronosynchronicity

It has been, one of those weeks where the news alone makes you want to retreat to a quiet riverbank with nothing but a loaf of bread, a box of worms and the faint hope that extraterrestrials might at least have the decency to show themselves before teatime. 

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor having his collar felt, UFO files being waved about like a raffle prize at a village fête, former presidents hinting that “they’re real” but apparently not in Area 51 honestly, if little green men did land, they’d probably take one look at us and reverse straight back out of the solar system muttering, “Nope. Not today.” And somewhere in all this cosmic kerfuffle I found myself thinking: yes, take me back to the 90s (fingers crossed), when the biggest mystery was why your maggots had all turned into casters overnight.

Still, while politicians rummage through filing cabinets marked “Definitely Not Aliens,” there are more pressing matters namely, a neglected 800 yards of the River Alne that I had somehow managed to ignore thanks to my cartographical incompetence. 

You see, I had been fishing what I thought was the entire stretch, only to discover—via a chance chinwag with Nic from Avon Angling that I had effectively been operating on half a tank. The point I believed to be “the end” was in fact the halfway mark. Eight hundred yards! That’s not a missed swim or two; that’s practically a small expedition. I’ve seen lesser oversights spark public inquiries.

Now, who doesn’t like exploring a new bit of river? Who doesn’t like roving a small, intimate, slightly moody watercourse that looks as though it was designed by someone with a fondness for bends and overhanging branches? Not I. I cannot sit behind motionless rods like a garden ornament, especially when it’s cold enough to make your tea freeze mid-sip. Ten minutes in a swim, no dithering, no existential debates just in, fish it properly, and if nothing obliges, move on with the brisk determination of a man late for pudding.

My tactics were as subtle as a brick but, in the right conditions, gloriously effective: liquidised bread in the feeder, a small piece of bread on the hook or a couple of worms from my industrious wormery. 

The worms, incidentally, seem to live a more structured and productive life than I do. They compost. They contribute. They don’t read maps incorrectly. I envy them.

The Alne has been up and down more often than a yo-yo in a wind tunnel. One minute it’s fining down beautifully after a flood, the next it’s back to looking like a vat of over-brewed tea. 

It’s enough to make the float-trotters sigh theatrically into their centrepins. 

But small rivers have a saving grace: when they begin to fine down, they reveal their secrets. You can see where the crease forms, where the steadier water tucks in under a far-bank bush, where a dace might sit like a silver coin waiting for a tip.

Ah yes, the dace. The Alne can throw up some clonking specimens when it’s coloured proper shoulders on them, not those apologetic slivers that look like they’ve skipped breakfast. There is something deeply satisfying about a big dace in turbulent water, all shimmer and indignation. 

They don’t so much bite as object. And in my more optimistic moments I allowed myself to picture a chub lurking in the wild stretch one of those broad-headed bruisers that picks up a feeder with the quiet authority of a headmaster confiscating contraband.

The new section felt wilder, less “towny,” as though it had shrugged off the background hum of humanity. Fewer dog walkers offering tactical advice. Fewer metal detectorists asking, “Caught anything?” with that hopeful tone suggesting they might accept one for dinner. Just the river, the trees, and me, stomping about like a mobile bread dispenser.

Roving in such conditions is not merely a tactic; it is a state of mind. You are hunter, gatherer, mildly confused naturalist. You peer into slacks and undercut banks as if expecting a chub to wink back at you. You convince yourself that the next swim always the next swim will produce that decisive pull round. And when it doesn’t, you mutter philosophical observations about water levels and atmospheric pressure, as though delivering a lecture rather than admitting you’ve just blanked again.

But there is hope on the horizon. The weather is due to turn milder next week, which in angling terms is akin to hearing that the buffet has been restocked. Warmer air, steadier levels, and the whispered promise of the Warwickshire Avon being described by an unlettered 'anonymous' blog reader, no less as “barbel soup.” Barbel soup! The very phrase causes the rod to twitch involuntarily. It conjures visions of powerful fish charging downstream, of quivering quivertips and clutches singing like overenthusiastic choirboys, or inebriated head-wand tappers on the snakebite.

And really, after a week of headlines about aliens, secret files, and the general wobbliness of the world, what could be more grounding than a proper bend in the rod? No conspiracy theories, no classified documents just a fish on the line and the honest, uncomplicated thump of life at the end of it.

So yes, let the governments release whatever they’re releasing. Let the skies reveal what they will. I shall be on a small river, marching from swim to swim with a bag of bread and a pocket full of worms, content in the knowledge that while the universe may be vast and mysterious, at least the Alne is only 800 yards longer than I thought. And this time, map in hand (not really), I intend to fish every last yard of it.

Now it wasn’t so much “fishing in the rain” as “standing in a mobile car wash with a rod.” The sort of weather that makes you question your life choices and your waterproofs in equal measure. At one point the rain was coming in horizontally, which is always impressive this far inland, and I briefly considered turning round to check for a sea behind me. Still, it was milder than the recent Siberian nonsense we’ve endured, so I told myself this was practically tropical. Monsoon chic. Very River Alne couture.

Access, as ever on this particular stretch of the River Alne, is not what you’d call “match friendly.” If you’re the sort of chap who travels with a seat box the size of a modest semi-detached and enough attachments to dock with the ISS, you’d have wept quietly at the first stile. This is more a venue for the minimalist, or the terminally stubborn. I opted for stubborn. A pleasant first swim winked at me crease, slack, all very postcard and the fish promptly vacated the parish. They were not in the slack. They were not in the crease. They were, I suspect, in conference elsewhere discussing my arrival.

The river was still hoofing through like it had somewhere important to be, but in these conditions at least you can read it. Big water simplifies things: the fish are where they can breathe without being relocated to Stratford. The next swim had “chub residence” written all over it deep, a tidy back eddy, a gentle slack, and enough cover to conceal a minor scandal. 

I wedged the rod on what I believe was barbed wire (health and safety need not apply) and awaited developments. One shy pluck became a proper melt-down and we were attached. A pleasingly argumentative scrap ensued, all head shakes and dour intent, before a two-pounder slid into the net looking like it had opinions about the whole affair.

Given the visibility somewhere between “pea soup” and “builder’s tea”—I wasn’t about to grumble. Up the stretch I trudged, interrogating likely spots like a damp detective. By the time the rain was doing its sideways trick again, I’d winkled out five chub in cracking nick. The best went 3lb 8oz, which on this bit of the Alne is a fish you nod respectfully at, and another three-pounder came from the same swim while the heavens were emptying buckets with malicious enthusiasm. 

No umbrella. Obviously. We’re not made of sugar, and besides, umbrellas are for people who don’t rest rods on agricultural fencing. So there it was: five solid, winter-toned chub from a river that looked like it wanted to be somewhere else entirely. I was soaked, mildly perforated, and grinning like a man who’s found treasure in a drainage ditch. 

A new stretch walked, a fishing fix administered, and the sort of day that reminds you why we do this in the first place. Jobs a good’un, as they say preferably while wringing out one’s sleeves and checking for livestock-related tetanus. Oh I forgot to mention bread did the business, not even a tap on worm bizarrely. 

Warwickshire Avon - Kiertravesties and Kakorrhaphiophobia

Fishing, I’ve decided, is essentially a long-running experiment in optimism versus common sense. Last Friday was a fine example of this delicate balance. The Warwickshire Avon had been rising steadily all week, carrying just enough pace and colour to get the imagination working overtime. In my head, hefty chub or barbel (potentially) were queuing up behind every crease, nudging each other out of the way to get at my hookbait.

I seized a late afternoon opportunity with all the enthusiasm of a man who had already pictured the trophy shot. The rods were in the boot, bait prepped, waterproofs reluctantly packed. I even made it to the club car park, which is normally the point of no return. 

Unfortunately, stepping out of the car revealed two degrees of icy reality and rain that felt personally vindictive. The river was charging through like it had somewhere urgent to be, and I quickly concluded that bravery is overrated. The pub, on the other hand with the Wife, was warm and serving decent ale.

By Saturday morning the rivers had risen to such an extent that Noah was probably pricing up timber. There was nowhere remotely fishable unless I fancied freelining from a tree branch. 

Typical then that the weather improved, just to rub it in. So I opted for a lie-in, followed by a family excursion to witness the legendary Flying Scotsman steaming through Henley-in-Arden. The kids had never seen it, and I took it upon myself to deliver a full historical briefing, complete with dramatic hand gestures and references to 100 mph heroics.

We positioned ourselves strategically, which is to say within comfortable range of the station pub. Three pints later, anticipation was high. A distant plume of steam appeared and the unmistakable rhythm of a steam locomotive grew louder. 

This was it British engineering glory in motion. And then it thundered past at speed… towing backwards 🙈. We barely had time to register its existence before it vanished down the line like an embarrassed celebrity avoiding eye contact. Sam looked up at me and asked, “Is that it?” I had no satisfactory answer.

Sunday dissolved into rain and mild regret. I toyed with the idea of attacking the canal for a zander, just to salvage some angling credibility, but the sofa mounted a persuasive counterattack involving wine, and films. 

It was relaxing, certainly, but there’s always that underlying guilt when you suspect the fish might be feeding while you’re horizontal. Anglers are cursed with this peculiar paranoia. The evening meant a good wine, good rum, a movie and a roaring fire, a time to chill in other ways.

No Sunday roast dinner this time (rare), as the night’s culinary virtue signalling began, as it so often does, with the noble intention of “eating well” and ended in a skillet of Pad kaphrao featuring pork belly so crisp it could’ve applied for planning permission, crowned with an egg fried to the structural integrity of a Victorian mill roof arteries aghast, tastebuds euphoric.

One tells oneself this is balance, especially with a forthcoming Glasgow sabbatical looming Sunday into Monday: a wholesome pilgrimage of food, drink, and the sort of enthusiastic excess that requires an elasticated waistband and plausible deniability.

There will be “just a couple” of pints, no doubt escalating into a symposium on fermentation via the Bon Accord and the Inn Deep, before tinnitus with Deep Dish at famous Sub Club reminds my knees that they are no longer undergraduate. Still, one must nourish the soul as well as the cholesterol count; life is short, the pork is crispy, and repentance like the dancefloor will be over far quicker than it began.

Anyway enough of that, this week, however, the Avon began dropping nicely. Not raging, not unfishable just that lovely steady fall that suggests things might be happening beneath the surface. I managed to carve out an hour and a half after work and headed for the Secret Swim, the one where bites are almost suspiciously reliable. Simple tactics were deployed: small lead, large piece of flake sprayed with garlic oil and underarm cast in to the coloured water, minimal fuss. It’s a swim that rewards confidence and punishes overthinking.

Last time out it had produced a 4lb 10oz chub that fought like it owned the postcode. Naturally, I wondered if something larger had moved in during the floods. The first cast settled perfectly into the slack and within minutes the rod tip gave that firm, purposeful nod that every chub angler recognises. No dithering, no tapping, then just a proper pull round that nearly took the rod in !!.

An unmissable bite !!!, that obviously I missed 😆

Still 10 minutes later I had a second chance !!, this time the strike met solid resistance. The fish bored downstream towards the snag with steady authority, not frantic but powerful, head thumping away as if mildly offended by the interruption. Then a broad bronze flank rolled in the current, a fish a fish !!

Not monstrous, not record-breaking, a 3lber or so. But a proper Avon chub, all muscle and disdain. In that instant, the sodden Friday, the flooded rivers, and the backwards steam locomotive were completely forgiven. Fishing has a habit of doing that  hours of inconvenience rewarded by a single, satisfying moment.

The forecast now hints at a positively tropical fourteen degrees. next week, however a cold morning may have nipped the fingers, but the promise of milder air has the barbel anglers twitching. It’s not quite shorts-and-T-shirt weather, but it’s enough to stir hope again. I’ll be watching the levels closely, pretending to exercise restraint.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that next time — just maybe — it’ll be bigger.