Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.45

I must be, as they say in the old country, a glutton for punishment, because there I was again young Michael, trudging down to the syndicate stretch like some sort of half-hopeful, half-delusional Dickensian urchin with a rod. You’d think the repeated blanking would’ve put me off by now, but no this time I’d brought reinforcements: a pint and a half of maggots so past their best they were practically applying for a pension.

But the Avon looked a picture just that perfect height for trotting, the colour easing out like a teabag on its second dunk, and I thought, Surely this is it. Surely even I can’t mess this up. After all, every fish loves a maggot, especially one that smells like it’s been fermenting in the glovebox of a Vauxhall Astra since ‘98.

Now, there’s something almost spiritual about trotting a float down an English river therapeutic, even. A sort of piscatorial mindfulness. You cast, you mend the line, you watch the float glide downstream like a lazy waiter carrying your hopes and dreams on a red-tipped tray. It forces you to focus, to be present, to ignore life’s usual concerns like electricity bills, existential dread, and the lingering smell of those aforementioned maggots.

The rhythm does something to you. Cast… mend… drift… hope… despair… repeat. It’s basically yoga for anglers, except with more layers, more mud, and fewer people called “Saffron.” And the river, being a proper blue-space oasis, works its magic; cortisol drops, serotonin rises, and before long you’re smiling to yourself like a man who’s either at peace with nature or has finally lost the plot entirely.

Of course, catching a fish would help the whole experience along nicely, but even blanking has its charm. There’s a sense of purpose in the trying, a strange satisfaction in the persistence, and a feeling of accomplishment when you eventually remember where you left your rod rest. Besides, it’s the ultimate digital detox no screens, no notifications, no doomscrolling. Just you, the river, a float, and a pint of semi-sentient maggots plotting their escape.

Before the session even began, I decided to unleash my inner Heath Robinson and knock together a trotting pod from the sacred Box of Bits you know the one. Every angler has it: a chaotic archaeological dig of metal doodahs, plastic whatsits, and mysterious components you’re certain will be useful one day, even though you’ve no idea what they originally belonged to. And no, before you ask, I’m not throwing any of it away. That’s how civilisations collapse.

So there I was, rummaging through this angling Bermuda Triangle, emerging occasionally with relics like an Allen key last used in 2003 or a bankstick thread that may or may not have been part of a lawnmower. With the ingenuity of a man who refuses to spend 40 quid on a branded gadget, I cobbled together my masterpiece: bucket of bait steadfastly on the left for balance, rod support precariously on the right for ambition. A system so perfectly aligned that NASA would’ve asked for the blueprints if they didn’t look quite so… improvised.

But I tell you what job’s a good ’un. It stood there proud as punch on the bank, like a budget version of the Starship Enterprise, ready to guide my float serenely down the Avon. And as I stepped back to admire it in all its utilitarian glory, I felt a warm glow inside the kind that only comes from knowing you’ve built something with your own two hands… in, ok, 5 minutes. 

Whether it actually helps me catch anything is another question entirely, but between us, that’s never really stopped me before.

Now the frost had welded itself to the windscreen like a bailiff with a warrant, and scraping it off felt very much like I was being punished for crimes committed in a former life. Still, once mobile, I pointed the car down those fog-sodden country lanes where visibility is more a matter of faith than eyesight. Arriving at the syndicate stretch with fingers already numb and optimism slightly dented, I was greeted by that special winter stillness which suggests either piscatorial glory… or a thorough doing-over by events yet to unfold. A lovely morning, mind you. Absolutely lovely. Just cold enough to make you question your life choices.

Winter chub usually means bread for me, accompanied by my fetching marigold gloves haute couture for the serious angler but today had “maggot morning” written all over it. The river had shifted from that ghastly battleship grey to a pleasing olive green, the sort of colour that whispers possibility rather than screams despair. A handful of maggots deposited on the edge were clearly visible a couple of feet down, which is always encouraging, unless you’re the maggots. Trotting conditions looked spot on, so naturally I also put out a sleeper pike rod in the margin because, as we all tell ourselves, “you never know” which usually translates as “nothing will happen, but I’ll feel better for doing it.”

Tea was consumed initially. Maggots were catapulted little and often with the sort of discipline normally reserved for monks. The float began its steady, obedient journeys downstream, dipping and gliding as if rehearsed. 

This swim, I know, tends to deliver its bites right at the tail of the run, and so I waited… and waited… and waited some more. Half an hour passed before the float finally buried itself with conviction and I struck into what can only be described as a presence. Solid. Heavy. Sulking low in the water like it had an argument with the riverbed and refused to move.

What followed was a short but emotionally scarring encounter. Instead of charging left as all decent fish should, this thing powered right, heading with malicious intent towards a colossal snag and tree roots clearly designed by Satan himself.

I applied as much pressure as a size 20 hook and my nerves would allow, the 15ft Daiwa Connoisseur bending heroically and doing everything except filing a formal complaint. For a moment, just a moment, I thought I had it. 

Then — ping — and that was that. Done. Properly. Utterly. The river resumed its innocent flow, and I stared at the end tackle like a man examining the ruins of a once-promising relationship.

And that, dear reader, was that. No more bites. Not even a sniff. The pike rod may as well have been attached to a brick. By eleven the sun had burned off the fog and shone down on the river like some cruel celestial spotlight, illuminating my blank with brutal clarity. Another zero in the book. And yet… I packed up with a smile. Because I’d been out. In the frost. In the fog. There had been a fish. A real one. And hope, like maggots, is best introduced little and often.

But it got better,

Christmas, as any thinking angler knows, is a dangerous time. Not because of the cold, nor the enforced proximity to relatives who smell faintly of mothballs and regret but because it lulls a chap into thinking he’s “just popping out” when in fact he’s embarking upon a full-blown campaign of logistical chaos.

Thus it was that I found myself “with the rabble” a phrase which here denotes a loose flotilla of family members, hangers-on and those who appear whenever food or alcohol is mentioned allegedly to “sort the Christmas tree”. A noble errand. A wholesome errand. An errand which, through no fault of my own, required a stop at Wetherspoons.

Specifically The Dictum of Kenilworth Wetherspoons, which sounds less like a pub and more like a stern medieval ruling involving land rights and the beheading of lesser nobles. Inside, however, it was the usual festive Spoons tableau: sticky carpets, shouting televisions, and the unmistakable air of men who have been there since breakfast and intend to see Christmas through from the same barstool.

And then — reader, brace yourself — I saw it.

Byatt’s XXXmas Ale. £0.99 a pint.

Yes. Ninety. Nine. Pence.

At which point my internal risk-assessment committee (normally a robust and well-regulated body) immediately resigned en masse. I mean, what is a man to do? Walk past it? Pretend he didn’t see it? Leave value on the table? That way madness lies.

Now, I should clarify that Byatt’s XXXmas Ale is less a beer and more a seasonal suggestion. A dark and moody pint-shaped hint of malt, with undertones of “you’ll regret this later”. Still, rules are rules, and for under a pound one must conduct due diligence.

One pint became two. Two became three. Three became four at which point I realised I was in no fit state to drive, operate heavy machinery, or convincingly argue about fishing tackle on the internet.

Thankfully and here we pause for respectful silence The Wife intervened.

Sensing my predicament, she offered to drive. An act of seasonal generosity so profound it deserves its own stained-glass window. I accepted with grace, humility, and the slight wobble of a man who has done very well out of Christmas.

So yes, a round of applause if you please. Not for me I merely fulfilled my duty as a citizen faced with sub-quid ale but for sensible spouses everywhere who quietly save Christmas while we’re busy “just having the one”. The tree was sorted. The errands were completed. No laws were broken (that we know of). And peace descended upon the household, accompanied by the faint echo of Wetherspoons and the lingering warmth of ale that cost less than a Freddo.

Merry Christmas to all and to all designated drivers.

The Tiny River Alne - Rumgudgeonry and Roses

Funny how a team can go from fifty dreamers to over four hundred engineers, turning a sketch into the Polestar 5 a 900-horsepower aluminium bonded body GT monster going down the production line then poof the hatchet CEO decides it’s all a bit too ambitious and back to rebadged Volvos and Zeekrs we go. Last night’s farewell was a proper knees-up though, a final lap with the usual suspects before everyone drifts off to new pastures, I escaped a few months ago after taking voluntary redundancy but some were happy to stay to find out what came next, and sadly what came next was the announcement that the whole UK operation was shutting down at Christmas. 

I reacquainted myself with body weight amounts of Rum Bongo cocktails Malibu, Wray & Nephew, Appleton Estate and enough tropical fruit to qualify as one of your five-a-day. Close cousins to the Painkillers I first met sailing around the BVIs in a Lagoon 440 catamaran… and nearly as dangerous. 

I grabbed an Uber back from Brum at 2:00am at the exact moment the DJ should’ve taken a long, hard look at his life choices. Cotton Eye Joe. Cotton. Eye. Joe. At that hour. Honestly, no repetitive beats to be seen all night, a wedding disco on steroids .I was still mostly compos mentis, to be fair but then my liver is a seasoned veteran at this point. Proper war-torn. Dunk it in a cup of tea and it’d hold together better than a hobnob.

That was all well and good, however I woke up this morning with a head like wet cardboard, craving fresh air and forgiveness. But for a send-off to six very good years and some of the best work parties I’ve known it was worth every fuzzy minute.

Fresh air required !!!!

I still remember that dace. Twelve ounces of pure Alne perfection a proper bar of silver, glimmering in the net like it had just escaped being made into jewellery. 

For a brief, shimmering moment, I genuinely believed I’d cracked it. Me, the Dace Whisperer, the man with the magic touch, the chap who could pluck specimen fish from a river barely wider than the average driveway.

Of course, the river had other ideas.
It always does.
It’s the Alne. 

Now, anyone who’s fished the Alne knows it’s basically a trout stream desperately pretending to be a proper river, wearing its best “No really, I am running water!” hat. But it’s my local, and like all questionable relationships, I kept coming back. 

I knew every bend, every undercut, every spot where a chub might lurk, plotting domestic terrorism on my end tackle. It was practically mine seeing another angler was rarer than seeing Bigfoot piloting a UFO.

And then came the predators.

Not the elegant, nature-in-balance ones you see in BBC documentaries narrated by morally upright people with warm tones. No, these were the type that roll up uninvited, eat everything that isn’t nailed down, and treat your carefully nurtured stretch of river like an all-inclusive buffet.

Not just otters and herons, but now Cormorants !!!

On the Alne.

I mean, honestly. That’s like seeing a giraffe in a corner shop.

They stuck out like black hoodie wearing teenagers at a village fete dark, sulking, and clearly there to ruin someone’s day. Before long the bites dried up. Dace sightings became about as common as winning scratch cards. And after an entire season of soul-sapping blanking, even my stubbornness gave in. I gave up the syndicate ticket before it finished the job of crushing my spirit.

But anglers never really quit, do we? We just redirect the madness.

So I picked up a new club book after given the lowdown from @BuffaloSi, it was one of those impulse purchases that sits unread for months while you sulk about fish that don’t know how good you are. I’d dipped a toe at the start of the season, but the conditions were biblical: hot, bright, low, gin-clear, minnow riddled and entirely designed to amplify my failures. So I did what any responsible angler would do…

 …I ignored it and went home.

But now — NOW — the rivers have colour. The sort of perfect, turd hue that makes you believe anything is possible. Except catching barbel. Never barbel. But still it’s the sort of colour that puts a little swagger in your step and a lot of hope in your over-stuffed ruckbag.

And with the Christmas holidays approaching, spirits high, motivation semi-functional, and bladder capacity reduced by festive ale, I decided I’d better give the new stretch another seeing-to. A post-working from home roving session. Nothing too ambitious we know how those end but enough to scope out swims and see if any dace were willing to give me so much as a hint that I wasn’t wasting my life.

Enter: the bread feeder approach.
Simple. Pure. Classic.
Also the angling equivalent of turning up at a nightclub in trousers from M&S and hoping for the best.

Liquidised bread into the feeder. A thumbnail flake on the hook. Wander, cast, wander, cast, mutter something inspirational to yourself, repeat. Perfect for covering water, or for looking productive when you’re actually just faffing about hoping someone upstream has fed the fish already.

Now there comes a moment in every angler’s life when you realise you’ve finally lost the plot. For some it’s when they start talking to barbel as if they’re rescue dogs. For others it’s when they begin carrying more glugs, dips and potions than the average medieval apothecary. For me, blog readers, it was when I found myself at the kitchen table, eyed suspiciously by the wife, dripping geranium essential oil into a bag full of liquidised bread like a budget aromatherapist with a questionable sideline.

This all started, of course, with Fishflix. I blame them entirely. One minute you're innocently binge-watching Martin Bowler catching roach the size of dinner plates, the next thing you know he’s whispering sweet nothings about “geranium rose oil” turning fish heads like it’s Gordon Gino and Fred visit the Avon. Well, if it’s good enough for Bowler and a roach with an unfortunate appetite, then it’s good enough for me. Eight quid on eBay. Bargain. Or madness. Hard to tell these days.

So there I was, rocking up to the first swim on the River Alne, armed with my rose-scented liquidised bread for the feeder and smelling faintly like I’d spent the night locked in the ladies’ aisle of Boots. Cast into a slack bit of water by a snag, sat back, breathed in the perfume, contemplated my sanity… and bang nibbles. Actual, honest-to-God nibbles within five minutes. Then carnage. Chaos. Tip-tapping, rod-bending drama. My first fish: a chublet. But a chublet that absolutely reeked of success (and possibly geranium).

Now what I didn’t expect  what nobody expects  is to hit the Alne on one of its rare “Yes, alright then, have some fish” moods. Because as rivers go, the Alne is moodier than a teenager asked to empty a dishwasher. Normally I’m lucky if I get a single disgruntled tap that feels more like a leaf having second thoughts. But on this day? Every swim had that electric feel, that whisper of possibility, that quiver in the rod that makes you sit up straighter like a dog hearing a cheese wrapper open.

And the chub the gluttonous, greedy, “we’ve not fed since 1997” chub were absolutely having it. I lost count after ten. Ten! Me! On the Alne! Usually the Alne gives me one fish and a lecture on humility. But I was into fish after fish, like some kind of budget-range Matt Hayes with slightly worse hair and a suspicious floral odour.

The dace, of course, were nowhere to be seen. They didn’t stand a chance against the chub that were piling in like it was the early-bird buffet at a garden centre. The biggest went 3 lb 8 oz, which on most rivers doesn’t warrant a parade, but on the Alne? That’s practically a local celebrity. A fish worthy of a plaque. Perhaps even a small statue.

Was it the geranium oil? The mythical snake oil? The essence of “SAGA reader on date night”? Who knows. But I tell you what: when the angling stars align, when the river mood swings in your favour, and when your bait smells like an elderly lady called Maureen who says “Ooh that’s lovely” a lot sometimes, just sometimes, magic happens.

And magic it was. One of those sessions that reminds you why we lug tackle bags through mud, why we tolerate the odd blank that bruises the soul, and why we occasionally smell like we’ve been hugged by a florist.

The river gave. The chub gorged. And I left grinning like an idiot, smelling faintly of roses, and wondering if maybe just maybe I’m onto something.

Warwickshire Avon - Minnows and Meatloafs

Now it’s strange returning to a stretch of river that once felt like home. The kind of place where the banks used to buzz with anglers, gossip, and that one bloke who always claimed he “almost had a seventeen last week,” even though his landing net was drier than my humour. 

Now it feels more like walking through a forgotten chapter of a book no one remembers writing overgrown paths, quiet water, the faint smell of old bait tubs and broken dreams. Idyllic, really. The matches, still go on mind you, those keepnets not as full as they used to be !!.

Of course, the tragedy of 2023 still hangs over the Warwickshire Avon like a dodgy chip-shop curry. The “oxygen crash” or as I like to call it, The Great Fish Apocalypse That Everyone Talks About Except the People Who Should Probably Have Investigated It. 

Miles of dead fish, the press involved, and an “apparently” that does a lot of heavy lifting. Pike the size of retired greyhounds, barbel shaped like torpedoes, chub with expressions of eternal disappointment... all belly-up. Grim times. Even now, when the river gives you a nibble, you almost want to whisper, “thanks for sticking around.”

Still, restocking happened, and floods do what floods do shuffle fish around like drunken tourists trying to find their hotel at 2 a.m. Little by little, life returned. Even the minnows returned more accurately, they multiplied into a biblical plague of finned pickpockets.

Which brings us to today.

The river was bowling through like it had somewhere important to be, brown and foamy like a giant latte made by an angry barista. Perfect conditions for a barbel if you believe everything written in fishing folklore and the back pages of Angling Times between mattress adverts.

 Armed with a lump of spam the size of a couple of boxes of matches and groundbait so krill-infused it could probably summon a blue whale, I set up. The thermometer told me the water was 8.4°C warming nicely. A sign of hope. A sign of life. A sign that I should continue ignoring the mounting evidence that I’ve no idea what I’m doing.

What I hadn’t accounted for was the leaf debris. Oh, the debris. More debris than the leaf pile in my garden that's always staring at me, and that’s saying something because I’m still convinced there’s a tent in there under them or something. 

Leaves were hitting my line like angry fan mail. Even with the rod tip high enough to make the bloke in the ISS raise an eyebrow, I was recasting every fifteen minutes, a right royal pain in the backside. 

But the feeder landed with a satisfying thud each time like dropping a brick onto a wobble board. That’s how you know the bait’s fishing well. Or at least that’s what I tell myself to justify the mechanically separated meat outlay.

The spam came back every cast absolutely rinsed by minnows. Minnows everywhere. Millions of them. I’ve seen fewer people at a free beer festival. They must hold monthly council meetings discussing how best to strip my bait before an actual fish gets near it.

Two hours, not a chub pull. Not even one of those cheeky little taps that gives you false hope before turning out to be a drifting shoal of leaves shaped like disappointment. So I moved swims. Because that’s what proper anglers do when nothing is happening they relocate, re-strategize, and ultimately fail somewhere else.

The new swim lasted thirty minutes. The flow was faster, the debris was worse, and the line looked like it had been decorated for Christmas by someone with a personal vendetta against me. So back I went to the original swim. The one that had produced that double-figure barbel just weeks earlier. My “hero swim.” My “golden memory spot.” My “please work again because I’m emotionally invested in you now” swim.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The river looked bang on. Moody and atmospheric. A nice slick glide. A bait presented so well it should’ve come with a Michelin star. Yet the rod remained as lifeless as a pub garden in February.

And here’s the weird thing: I still loved it.

There’s something deeply satisfying about fishing in conditions that most right-thinking people would describe as “utterly pointless.” Something calming in the futile battle against nature, minnows, and the creeping suspicion that every barbel in Warwickshire has conspired against you personally.

Because that’s fishing, isn’t it?
Ninety percent stubbornness, five percent misplaced optimism, four percent spam, and one percent actual success. I packed up with cold hands, a muddy arse, and zero bites but a big stupid grin because challenging days on the river are still better than good days doing anything else.

Besides, the minnows need someone to feed them.

I’ll be back, where are all the other anglers ? answers on a postcard.