Warwickshire Avon - Twinosaurs and Twincompatibility

Now there are few things in life more reassuring than meeting up with your identical twin brother, Chris, because you know you’re in the company of someone who shares your genes, your facial features and, presumably, the same questionable manufacturing process. 

We are, quite literally, two peas from the same pod, although one of us has clearly been stored in a slightly more questionable environment than the other.

Chris escaped Coventry some eight years ago and established himself in North Devon, where he has built a life for himself as a single dad, provider, chauffeur, cook, counsellor and general-purpose domestic appliance. 

He’s one of those unsung heroes who quietly gets on with things, despite life occasionally chucking a paving slab in his direction, and in 2026 I suspect we belong to a forgotten breed of men who simply crack on regardless.

Not that we sit around discussing the decline of Western civilisation over a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit, you understand. 

We’re identical twins, after all, and there are only so many times you can stare into a slightly older-looking version of your own face before the conversation turns to fishing, food or when was it that the hairline finally surrendered.

Chris was stopping at our mum’s for the night because, apparently, the modern world still requires human beings to physically attend an office occasionally, just to prove they haven’t been replaced by a particularly convincing screensaver. 

As an IT specialist who has spent much of the post-COVID era working from home, he’d been summoned to show his face for a couple of days to appease a new client, presumably to demonstrate that the bloke fixing their computer problems wasn’t actually a well-trained Labrador.

 We managed a pint in the local hotel before heading for a curry, which was a pleasant enough evening until the restaurant demonstrated its own unique interpretation of quality control. They’d managed to provide us with an extra main course, which meant I found myself eating a substantial portion of curry for lunch the following day at work, attracting the sort of raised eyebrows normally reserved for people who bring a full Sunday roast into the office.

Still, there are worse things in life than unexpected curry, and I certainly wasn’t about to complain. My colleagues may have wondered whether I was experiencing a midweek breakdown, but if a man can’t enjoy a free curry at lunchtime in this economy, then frankly the country is finished.

Chris was on call, so our evening had a curfew imposed by the technological gods, but it was good to catch up properly. We’re heading back down to Devon during the half-term holiday, where he’s promised to show me some of his fishing spots, and I’m particularly looking forward to that because I’ve managed to get him back into fishing again.

He’s already been catching bass and smoothhound, the lucky so-and-so, and I’ve yet to catch a smoothhound myself. I’m hoping this will be rectified, although knowing my luck I’ll travel all the way to North Devon, spend a fortune on bait, and end up photographing a crab that looks disappointed in me.

Anyway, Chris asked how my own fishing had been going, and I had to admit that things weren’t actually too bad, all things considered. The conditions on the Warwickshire Avon have been absolutely pants, though, with water levels so low and clarity so ridiculous that I half expected to see a barbel reading the writing on my hooklength before swimming away to report me to the Environment Agency.

Consequently, my fishing has become a series of short, sharp, smash-and-grab missions, squeezed into the available gaps between work, domestic responsibilities and the general business of trying to remain a functioning member of society. There’s little time for leisurely sessions involving three courses, a comfortable chair and a philosophical discussion with a passing swan; this is angling by appointment, with a strict return-to-base policy.

On the journey home from work, after another day that had been about as stimulating as watching paint dry in a darkened shed, the Skullcandy Crushers had once again been earning their keep. They’re excellent headphones, capable of delivering enough bass to make your ears question their life choices, and without them I suspect I’d have started communicating with the photocopier just to feel something.

Then I remembered the surplus curry sitting comfortably in my stomach and thought there was really only one sensible thing to do. Rather than head straight home like a responsible adult, I decided to squeeze in another smash-and-grab session on the Avon, because apparently what my body needed after a full day at work and another Indian meal was an hour or two sat beside a dying river hoping a fish would make a mistake.

The river really is on its knees at the moment, and we desperately need some rain. 

The Warwickshire Avon is looking less like a productive barbel river and more like an enormous, slightly murky garden ornament, although I remain convinced that somewhere beneath the streamer weed there are fish wondering why the hell everyone keeps turning up with fishing rods.

I headed for a stretch where I’d already managed to catch a few barbel and chub this season, but decided to try something different. Not a completely different swim, you understand, because that would involve too much walking and potentially a dangerous amount of optimism; 

I simply chose the right-hand side of the same peg, leaving the deeper section to the left where I’d been fishing upstream. The new swim looked promising, with a little more cover, a narrowing channel and shallower water around the streamer weed. It had that lovely, fishy look about it, the sort of place that makes an angler think he’s finally discovered something clever, when in reality he’s probably just found somewhere a fish occasionally goes to have a quiet afternoon. I introduced a helping of scalded pellet and a little groundbait, then left the swim to settle for half an hour. 

This is the sort of tactical patience that separates the serious angler from the impatient idiot, although the distinction becomes considerably less clear when you’re sitting there watching the clock and wondering whether you could have got away with fishing ten minutes earlier.

With dusk still about forty minutes away, I reckoned the fading light would offer the best chance of a bite. 

The water was so clear that I was half expecting the fish to have already inspected the swim, checked my credentials and circulated a WhatsApp message warning the others that some bloke with a barbel rod was operating in the area.

The rig finally went out, the bait settled on the bottom, and within a minute the rod tip gave a sharp pull. Another followed shortly afterwards, and I was suddenly alert in the manner of a man who has spent the previous eight hours being paid to look at a screen and has finally encountered something interesting that doesn’t require a password.

Whatever was responsible had clearly taken a liking to my paste-wrapped 10mm Robin Red pellet, and the indications were encouraging enough to get the old ticker working. I was immediately entertaining visions of a barbel, a bend in the rod and a triumphant photograph, which was rather premature given that I’d barely had time to digest the last mouthful of curry.

The culprit soon revealed itself as a chub, which was hardly a disappointment, although it did mean my grand plans for a heroic barbel encounter would have to be shelved. It was a decent fish, too, and put up a respectable scrap, but against the barbel rod it was a little like challenging a shopping trolley to a tug-of-war with a tractor. Still, a fish is a fish, and I was grateful not to have blanked. The chub had done its bit for the evening, taken a liking to the bait and provided some welcome entertainment, whereas the river had so far contributed little beyond scenery and an overwhelming sense of impending hydrological doom.

I slipped the fish back and put the bait out again, expecting that the swim might have come alive. Almost immediately there were more sharp pulls and little plucks on the rod tip, the sort of activity that gets an angler excited while simultaneously making him question whether the fish are actually feeding or simply taking the mickey.

I sat there watching the tip, willing it to pull round properly, but the promised action never materialised. Whatever was nibbling seemed perfectly happy to sample the menu without committing to a main course, rather like someone at an all-you-can-eat buffet who spends three hours eating the free poppadoms before announcing that they’re not particularly hungry.

The light gradually faded, the temperature dipped and my allotted fishing time began to evaporate. My strict curfew was fast approaching, and although I considered the possibility of ignoring it in pursuit of a barbel, I decided that explaining to the family why I’d disappeared into the night chasing a fish that might not even exist was unlikely to improve domestic harmony.

Eventually, I called time with one decent chub to show for my efforts and absolutely no barbel. It wasn’t the result I’d hoped for, but it was a perfectly enjoyable little session, and on a river looking as poorly as the Avon does at present, I was hardly going to complain about catching a fish.

Besides, barbel are supposed to be difficult, aren’t they? If they simply leapt out of the water, seized the hookbait and politely posed for a photograph, there would be considerably less mystery to the whole business, and an awful lot fewer men sitting in muddy fields looking like they’d misplaced their car keys.

So, another smash-and-grab session completed, another chub in the book, and another evening spent trying to outwit fish that probably possess a better understanding of the situation than I do. The Avon desperately needs rain, the barbel remain elusive, and I still have a smoothhound to catch in Devon, which means there’s plenty to look forward to.

At least Chris and I can agree on one thing: fishing is a wonderful pastime, even when the fish refuse to cooperate, the rivers resemble overfilled puddles and your identical twin is catching more interesting things several hundred miles away. There’s always another session around the corner, another swim to explore and another opportunity to spend good money proving that fish are perfectly capable of surviving without our assistance.

And if the next session produces nothing, I can always console myself with another curry. Although, given my recent lunchtime performance, I suspect the office might be more concerned about my fishing results than my digestive system. Tight lines, and may the rain gods finally take pity on the Warwickshire Avon before we’re all reduced to fishing with a teaspoon and a length of dental floss.

Warwickshire Avon - Gravers and Grandiloquence's

Well, chaps, the news has finally filtered down to the bankside, and it’s fair to say it’s left a bitter taste in the mouth. Sharper than any hop, that's for sure. They’re shutting down Marston's. The historic cathedral of brewing in Burton-upon-Trent is to be boarded up by the summer of '27. Out with the Union sets, in with the corporate spreadsheet.

Now, you might be sitting there, scratching your head, wondering what a boardroom decision by Carlsberg has to do with a bloke sitting on a damp basket at 5:00 AM waiting for a quivertip to slam round. Everything. Absolutely everything.

You see, my quest for that elusive, mythical monster barbel—that double-figure whiskers I’ve been chasing through weedbeds and gravel runs for longer than my lower back cares to remember—isn't just about the fish. It’s about the ritual.

 Fishing, in its truest, most Piscatorial sense, is an ecosystem of tradition. You pack the rods, you obsess over the river levels, you freeze your fingers off threading line through iced-up guides, and you do it all knowing there is a specific reward waiting at the end of the line. 

For decades, that reward was a pint of Burton’s finest. Pedigree, or on those truly special, frost-bitten winter evenings, a sneaky bottle of Owd Rodger (god rest its soul, since they took that away from us prematurely I've stashed a few bottles away).

There’s a spiritual tie between the River Trent and the water that brewed those beers. It’s the same land. The same subterranean alchemy. When you sit on the Trent, targeting a specimen barbel, you are fishing in the shadow of giants—both piscatorial and industrial.
So how does the closure affect the quest?

Logistically, it doesn't change the weight of the fish. A 14-pounder doesn't care if the local brewery is open or closed. It still wants its halibut pellets. It still wants to play keep-away in the snags.
But emotionally? Philosophically? It changes the whole damn landscape. Stripping Marston's out of the Trent valley is like stripping the gravel out of a barbel's favourite feeding shelf. It leaves the whole thing feeling a bit hollow. 

A bit sanitized. If we lose the heritage surrounding our rivers the pubs, the local brews, the history then we’re just men pulling digital scales out of plastic bags in a world that’s forgotten how to appreciate the finer things.

They say they are looking for "independent custodians" to save Pedigree. I bloody hope they find them despite bugger all help from the government as expected. 

Because if I finally net that history-making, net-filling, whiskers-trailing beast of a Trent barbel sometime (Nic we need to sort a date out), and I can't toast it with a proper pint of Burton ale... well, it’ll still be a magnificent fish, but the victory will feel just a little bit flatter.

Keep your lines tight, and your glasses full while you still can.

Anyway another week, another series of dawns witnessed not from the tranquil, reed-fringed margins of the Warwickshire Avon, but through the smeary glass of the commuter bus while clutching a lukewarm travel mug. 

Don’t get me wrong the walk into the office has been surprisingly civilised of late. Sunrise over the office puts on a lovely little vista a fleeting bit of golden-hour drama before the curtain comes down and the day’s drudgery proper begins. 

But as the calendar ticks on and the light shortens, I can’t help noticing a grim piece of arithmetic: the days are pulling in, and my window for slipping away on a proper fishing trip is shrinking by the week.

After thirty-seven solid years in full-time employment thirty-seven years of memos, redundancies, mild peril, and staring blankly at CAD terminals and clay models while pretending to care about cars and vans I'd never buy,

I think we can all agree there are vastly superior ways for an aging chap to spend his finite time on this earth. Which brings me to the grand, glorious nonsense of angling.

It isn't just about fish, is it? It’s the entire coping mechanism. It’s sitting at your desk on a Monday morning, completely numb to a four-way email debate about unfeasible passenger airbag positions, cup holder dimensions and the latest NCAP protocols , while silently planning the next stealth offensive. 

Which stretch of the river? Is the flow right? Do I target those craftily cynical chub under the far-bank willow, or go full optimist for a proper Avon barbel? Then comes the real therapeutic magic: justifying the next vital equipment purchase. You convince yourself that a new centerpin reel, or that delightfully obscure tub of flavoured paste, isn't just a gadget it’s a certified, non-negotiable mental health booster. 

A prescription for the soul, wrapped in bubble wrap and delivered to the front door before the Wife notices.

The older I get, the more this little dose of bankside madness feels less like a hobby and more like a mandatory survival strategy in a world that’s gone completely off its rocker and only Lucy's or Microdots could be the temporary solution for some escapism . 

So, I’ll suffer the day's drudgery for another quadrennium (fingers crossed). But in my head, I’m already bankside, smelling the damp silt, watching a float bob gently in the crease, and letting the madness of the modern world just float right on down to Tewkesbury.

Anyway enough of the waffle !! to the fishing, this stretch of river has been dear to my heart over the years, specifically the swim known in my own personal, highly scientific lexicon as the Tragus. 

You see, the river in plan view has a funny way of mimicking the human body, or maybe it’s just that a lifetime on the banks of the Warwickshire Avon makes you see ears, noses, and questionable anatomical features in every passing ripple. 

If you find a stretch where the bank pinches in a sharp bend, a deliberate flap of clay and reed projecting right out into the flow like the tragus of an ear you don’t walk past it. 

You stop, you drop the heavily laden ruckbag with a thud that dislodges three vertebrae, and you watch. On the Avon, a feature shaped like that is an absolute goldmine for proper, whisker-twirling big barbel. The Tragus Swim is home to my best barbel from the river caught on a huge piece of spam, so it would be downright rude not to give it a go, especially considering I’ve been doing quite well on the barbel front lately.

Now, this spot is located well away from the young’uns, the gatecrashers, and the late-night party people who think a riverbank is a grand place for a Bluetooth speaker and lemon-flavored cider. Back in the day, this very bank was prime territory for the Gravers and yes, I proudly count myself as one of them, with my next rave scheduled for this weekend up in Glasgow alongside progressive house legends Nick Warren and Hernán Cattáneo, an event for which my knees are already filing a formal written complaint in advance. 

Looking at the silent, mysterious water today, I couldn't help but wonder whether the old Gravers were still in residence around here, or if they were all currently at home strapped to heat pads, nursing bad backs, and sipping chamomile tea while debating the merits of orthopaedic insoles. 

Only one way to find out, I suppose: cast a rig right into the crease, collapse heavily onto the unhooking mat, and turn the water quality up to eleven.

I settled into the bankside grass, adjusted my layers, and prayed for the tip to wrap around before the strict curfew called me home to the chaos. 

 It’s a delightfully mental game, angling one minute you're analysing hydrodynamic eddies with the laser precision of a hydraulic engineer, and the next you're practicing your 1992 rave moves in full camo waterproofs just to keep your toes from dropping off while a rogue chub nibbles your boilie blind. 

I better prepare itself for the Glasgow onslaught this weekend, but for now, the deep rhythmic bassline of the river was more than enough, and the wait was officially on.

Now, what I certainly didn’t expect, having barely settled my aching carcass onto the bank and flipped open a lukewarm flask of questionable tea, was a whacking, rod-rest-rattling chub bite within five short minutes of the bait touching down. 

"Here we go," I muttered to the startled reeds, puffing my chest out like a triumphant kingfisher. "I am indubitably on for a fish here."

Alas, the angling gods are cruel, mocking creatures who delight in inflating a man’s hopes only to pop them with a rusty hook.

Despite the swim looking absolutely prime for a bite nestled comfortably along the deep, mysterious outside bend where monsters surely lurked—those promising initial minutes ticked away into absolute, crushing silence. 

Dusk arrived with unseemly haste, creeping across the water like a wet blanket, closely followed by the suffocating gloom of my self-imposed curfew. Before I knew it, I was packing away slinking back to the motor with nothing to show for my misplaced optimism but a blank notebook and cold toes.

I shall return, of course. A glutton for punishment, I’ve already scouted a couple of alternative swims in my endless, quixotic quest to track down that elusive, mythical big barbel. The real snag, as ever with this magnificent stretch of river, is that there is simply too much glorious water to go at and in the convoluted mind of an obsessive angler, having too many good options is the greatest catastrophe of all.

Warwickshire Avon - Caneys and Carnivores

Now every serious predator angler knows that the eve of a big pike expedition requires rigorous preparation. You must check your trace wire, sharpen your treble hooks, oil your multipliers, and, most importantly, line your stomach with enough heavy-duty carbohydrate to survive a December gale.

Which is precisely why the rabble and I found ourselves at Caney’s Cider in Studley less than twenty-four hours before we were due on the water. A recommendation from blog reader and ex blogger Baz I'd been meaning to give it a go, and boy what a place with 20 ciders on offer. We were made to feel instantly comfortable right from the off which was nice and we'll be back because of that. Even the kids didn't seem to mind it and thankfully well behaved including Ben who can be noisy sometimes. 

Apparently they turn out roughly 7,000 litres of nectar a year from local Warwickshire apples, and stepping into their taproom at Victoria Works is like entering a sanctuary for weary bankside wanderers. 

We pulled up four stools and ordered a couple of pints alongside crusty ham and cheese rolls the kind of robust, jaw-straining bakery art that could double as a decent ledger weight if you ran out of lead.

As I managed a crusty Ham roll, the others chewed our their way through cheddar thick enough to draft a house upon, we discussed tactics for the next morning.

[ Crusty Roll ] + 
[ 2 Pints of Caney's ]
 = [ Complete Tactical Readiness ]

Two pints in, the mood was optimistic. The pike didn't stand a chance. The river was clear, the water temperature was dropping, and our confidence was hovering somewhere near orbit. 

Naturally, we couldn’t leave empty-handed. I left with a container filled with four pints of Redstreak—a 7.4% brew that smells like a sun-drenched autumn orchard and hits you with the torque of a twenty-pound crocodilian predator grabbing a deadbait.

"Just a nightcap to settle the pre-trip nerves," as I stowed the liquid gold by my feet in the passenger footwell of the Wife's car.

Whether we actually manage to haul a specimen pike onto the unhooking mat tomorrow morning remains to be seen. But sitting there in Studley, crusty roll crumbs on my t-shirt and four pints of 7.4% Redstreak resting in the kitchen, I reckon the trip is already a resounding triumph.

Anyway to the fishing, well it was hardly the lightning-fast, crack-of-dawn amphibious assault on the riverbank we had meticulously planned over our crusty ham and cheese rolls the afternoon before. The residual, lingering fumes of Caney’s 7.4% Redstreak cider had dictated a considerably more leisurely start to the morning, leaving us thoroughly pickled in autumn air and apple fuel

Yet, by some unholy miracle of the angling gods, Sam and I stumbled down the slippery mud-bank to find the entire sacred stretch glorious, dead quiet, and utterly devoid of competing souls.

The local grapevine had been positively buzzing with whispers that the native Esox lucius population was making frequent, tackle-busting appearances for matches and pleasure anglers alike. Naturally, steeped as we are in the ancient art of bankside paranoia, we both knew in our water-logged bones that every self-respecting pike within a five-mile radius had likely caught wind of our approach and buggered off three miles upstream to hide in the weeds.

Sam led our tactical vanguard, wielding a newly acquired topwater Ali Express Whopper Plopper—bought, I must proudly and emphatically stress, with his very own hard-earned pocket money rather than my rapidly crumbling wallet. The thing chugged through the murky currents with a hypnotic bloop-bloop-bloop like a frantic, confused water-rat, while I fished a juicy deadbait roach underneath an overdepth float into the dark, slacks just off the main channel.

We were only two swims into the campaign when the tranquil morning quiet was shattered by a sharp, urgent whisper from the peg just above me: "Daddy... an otter!" Sure enough, a whiskered river-demon glided right past the tips of our wellies without a single care in the world, casually going about his aquatic business and totally oblivious to the fact that we were supposed to be the undisputed apex predators of the venue.

Before we could recover from the wild beast's intrusion, we were joined by another brave father-and-son duo who were also out hunting freshwater crocodiles in the chill autumn air. They immediately confirmed our darkest tactical fears: the stretch had been insanely fickle of late, swinging violently between epic, legendary hauling sessions and soul-destroying, bone-chilling blanks where even the minnows went into hiding.

With the clock ticking down and despair creeping in like the river fog, Sam wisely scaled down his rig to drag out a solitary, brave little perch to save the family name from total dishonour. But a three-ounce perch does not satisfy a man who has drunk 7.4% cider, so Sam began frantically swapping out lures like a manic machine, testing soft baits, hard baits, and metal spinners to no avail to try and get a nice fish for a blog post for his Dad.

Then came the moment of supreme tactical madness the deployment of the nuclear option. Sam unclipped his gear and snapped on the single largest artificial bait in human history, an absolute behemoth of a soft-plastic monstrosity measuring well over thirty centimetres long that looked less like a lure and more like a submarine with treble hooks attached.

On the third cast, the river didn't just ripple it positively tore itself open as a terrifying, double-figure monster of a pike with a belly like a beer barrel surged out from the abyss. The creature struck the mammoth lure with the blinding speed and raw fury of a freight train, sending water erupting into the air, but somehow by some tragic twist of fate completely missed the steel hooks by a fraction of an inch before plunging back into the black depths.

Both of our hearts violently slammed against our ribs, and I am fairly certain I jumped three feet into the air as the sheer adrenaline surged through our veins. The final half-hour ticked away in a daze of trembling hands and quiet, reverent awe, with the river suddenly falling dead silent as if the monster had dragged the very atmosphere down into its lair.

We didn't land the leviathan, nor did we go home with wet unhooking mats, but as we packed up our rods in the fading afternoon light, none of it mattered in the slightest. With a wild otter passing at arm’s length, a heart-stopping surface explosion, and proper father-and-son time on the bank, it was a legendary outing and we will be back for revenge the moment the river conditions are a little better.