Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.55 (Big Barbel)

There are certain news stories that make you stop what you’re doing, read them again and wonder if someone has accidentally put the wrong location on the press release. Five Mexican men, a secret meth lab and remote farmland near Furnace End in Warwickshire meanwhile I’m sat here preparing to go barbel fishing on the Warwickshire Avon, which suddenly feels like a slightly more questionable evening activity than it did this morning. 

I had been looking forward to a peaceful few hours by the river, watching the light fade over the Avon while waiting for a chub or barbel to do something vaguely interesting. 

Now, having read about Furnace End, I’m wondering whether every unoccupied farm building in Warwickshire has a secret second purpose and whether I should be checking the postcode on my fishing ticket before setting off. 

The timing is particularly unfortunate because I’ll be fishing into dusk, which is normally one of my favourite times to be beside a river. The planes from the local airfield and wildlife quieten down apart from the resident barn owl, the river takes on that lovely evening glow and, if you’re lucky, a fish comes charging through the swim like it’s just remembered it left the oven on.

But suddenly every rustle in the hedge is going to sound suspicious. Normally I’d assume it was a rabbit, pheasant or someone else fishing illegally close enough to me to become personally irritating, but now I’ll be wondering whether I’ve stumbled across Warwickshire’s answer to Breaking Bad while trying to catch a fish.

The irony is that fishing in to dusk requires a certain amount of preparation. Rods, reels, leads, bait, landing net, unhooking mat, headtorch and enough other assorted fishing paraphernalia to make a casual observer wonder whether you’re actually going fishing or preparing to establish a small outdoor branch of Angling Direct.

I can imagine the conversation if the authorities happened to wander past. “What are you doing here?” they’d ask. “Barbel fishing,” I’d reply. “And what’s in those bags?” “Pellets.” A pause. “What sort?” “Halibut.” Another pause. “Right, carry on.”

The real problem is that fishermen already look slightly suspicious when sitting motionless beside a river after dark. Add a headtorch, a couple of bait tubs and an unhealthy interest in secluded stretches of countryside and suddenly you’re only one clipboard away from needing to explain yourself to several different government departments.

Still, there is one reassuring difference between me and the unfortunate occupants of the Furnace End operation. I’m hoping to produce a barbel, whereas apparently they were hoping to produce something rather less desirable. My only chemical reaction this evening should hopefully be the one that occurs when a strong Avon barbel picks up a pellet and converts my peaceful evening into several minutes of frantic rod-holding.

So off I’ll went, into the Warwickshire dusk, armed with fishing tackle and a slightly heightened awareness of remote farm buildings. If the fish were feeding, I’ll be perfectly happy; if they aren’t, I’ll probably pack up early rather than sit there wondering whether that distant generator is agricultural machinery or something that definitely isn’t mentioned in the Angling Trust rulebook. Because there’s nothing quite like a relaxing evening beside the river. Although after this week’s news, I might stick to the swims with good mobile phone reception. You know, just in case, don't want any agro now do we !!

I rocked up at the syndicate stretch at around 6.40pm, which, when you consider dusk was allegedly somewhere around 8.10pm, didn't leave me with an enormous amount of time to actually do any fishing. Still, this is the Warwickshire Avon and when it's low and clear like it is at the moment, there's absolutely no point rushing about like a caffeinated meerkat because nothing much tends to happen until the light starts disappearing.

I lobbed a couple of cricket-ball-sized balls of groundbait into the swim, each one liberally seasoned with a few freebie pellets, and then retired to the car to avoid the rain. At one point it was absolutely hammering down with such enthusiasm that I briefly contemplated the sort of sensible decision that normal people make, namely driving home, putting the kettle on and pretending I'd never been fishing.

Thankfully, after about ten minutes the biblical deluge subsided and I got the gear sorted out. The plan was a PVA bag of freebies, a large 15mm Robin Red pellet on the hair and the whole lot wrapped in a homemade paste which smelled strongly of spicy, savoury meat, or possibly the contents of a particularly questionable butcher's bin.

By about 7.30pm the rod was finally out, at which precise moment the heavens decided that my waterproof clothing needed a proper field test. Fortunately, the waterproof trousers and soft-shell jacket appeared to be doing their job, so I settled down beneath a very overcast, slightly peculiar-looking sky, with a decent breeze rattling through everything.

And despite the weather, it was actually rather pleasant. There's something about being sat beside a river in miserable conditions, with the rain in your face and everything smelling damp, that seems to amplify the senses, probably because you're concentrating very hard on not getting wet.

As darkness approached I was expecting the usual Avon nocturnal shenanigans to begin. The resident owl made an appearance and then disappeared off to conduct more important owl business, the bats milled around for a while before gradually thinning out, but the fish appeared to have collectively agreed that tonight was going to be a sponsored silence.

In fact, even 45 minutes after dusk it was still surprisingly light. I could probably have walked to the end of the field and back without a headtorch, although obviously I wasn't going anywhere because I'd imposed a strict 9.00pm curfew on myself and, unlike most of my fishing plans, this one appeared to have some vague connection with reality.

Then, approximately 30 seconds before my self-imposed bedtime, the rod absolutely detonated.

It was one of the most violent bites I've ever had, catching the baitrunner completely by surprise and sending me into action with all the grace and composure of a man who has just discovered he's left the oven on. The fish made an alarming amount of ground almost immediately and I could actually feel the line grating as it headed for somewhere considerably more solid than where I wanted it to be.

Initially I thought it might be a big chub, which would have been lovely, but as I kept the line tight and tried to get another angle on it, the fish eventually came out from the snag. Under the beam of the headtorch I finally got a proper look and thought, in the highly articulate manner fishermen adopt in moments of excitement: "Errrrrrrrrr... that's not a chub."

It was a big barbel.

At this point the peaceful evening descended into complete chaos. The fish was absolutely determined to return to its snag, I was equally determined that it wasn't going back there, and somewhere in the middle of this argument I managed to convince myself that I had everything completely under control.

I didn't.

There was a particularly hairy moment during the netting attempt when things went spectacularly wrong, the sort of moment where time slows down and you can see your carefully prepared fish of a lifetime swimming off into the darkness while your landing net is apparently working for the other side. Somehow, though, the fish remained attached and eventually I managed to get it safely into the net.

Result.

It was clearly a double, so I let the fish rest in the extended landing net while the C-shaped snag rest stood guard like some sort of aquatic security officer. I packed the car away, sorted myself out and then, with the adrenaline beginning to subside, finally got the fish onto the scales.

11lb 15oz.

Not quite twelve pounds, which is obviously a devastating blow to its self-esteem, but close enough to make absolutely no difference whatsoever to the grin that was spreading across my face.

A few trophy shots followed before I gave the fish another good rest and then watched it disappear back into its lair under the beam of the headtorch. And just like that, the syndicate stretch had once again produced one of its big residents, 30 seconds before I was due to pack up.

So there we have it: less than three hours of preparation, groundbait, pellets, paste, rain, bats, owls, darkness and absolutely nothing happening, followed by thirty seconds of complete mayhem and an 11lb 15oz barbel. Sometimes the river doesn't just test your patience; it waits until you're literally reaching for the car keys before reminding you who's actually in charge.

I drove home with a grin from ear to ear, which is generally considered a perfectly acceptable symptom of having just landed a cracking barbel. The 9.00pm curfew had been obeyed to the second, the fish had gone back safely, and once again the Warwickshire Avon had demonstrated that if you're prepared to sit there looking miserable for long enough, it may eventually reward you for your stupidity.

Warwickshire Avon - Thermometrographs and Thanatophilia

Well, a week off the booze thus far after August's excesses and I must admit, I'm already sleeping better. Which is probably a good thing, although I'm beginning to wonder whether sleep itself is the problem, because my subconscious appears to have developed a taste for the frankly disturbing.

There's an old rumour that eating cheese before bed gives you wild dreams, and as somebody who occasionally likes to experiment with lucid dreaming, I thought I'd put this ancient dairy folklore to the test yet another time. Cheese contains tryptophan, which the brain uses in all sorts of clever ways involving serotonin, sleep and dreaming, although quite why my brain decided to interpret this as an invitation to produce something involving necrophilia (yes really 💤🙈) is a question I'll leave to considerably more qualified people.

The culprit, on this occasion, was a rather innocent-looking chunk of Bleu d'Auvergne. I went to bed expecting perhaps a vivid dream involving a tropical island, a large barbel and possibly Scarlett Johansson if the subconscious was feeling generous, but instead it served up something so profoundly wrong that even I woke up thinking, "Blimey, steady on."

I'm not easily shocked, as you may have gathered, but even I felt that Bleu d'Auvergne had crossed a line. So it's back to Stilton for me, because clearly the French cannot be trusted with the delicate workings of the English subconscious.

Perhaps I've simply trained my brain over the years, courtesy of Albert Hofmann and his rather more adventurous contribution to human consciousness. Whatever the explanation, I thought the sensible thing was to give the whole bizarre psychological experiment a rest and find myself a distraction.

And what better distraction is there than fishing? Fishing has the enormous advantage that, once you're beside the river, your brain has very little opportunity to worry about anything other than where the fish might be and whether you've got enough bait, which in my case is particularly useful because I can barely think about two things simultaneously without something going catastrophically wrong.

I had an hour to spare after work before the demands of domestic diary-making called me back to civilisation, so I decided on a quick visit to one of my local smash-and-grab spots. I'm lucky in that it's virtually on the way home from work, meaning I can get my fishing fix without requiring the logistical planning normally associated with an Arctic expedition.

When I say minimal gear, I really do mean minimal gear. Rod, reel, size 6 hook and that's about it; if I need anything else, I've clearly misunderstood the assignment. This little stretch is one I know reasonably well, particularly at the beginning of the season when the chub have a habit of hanging around. I'd visited before my holiday, though, and the chub had apparently decided that my company was beneath them and relocated themselves into the pool upstream.

Unfortunately, that particular pool is about as accessible as the vault at Fort Knox. 

You could probably reach it in waders up to your armpits ,but getting a decent chub out once hooked would involve the sort of aquatic gymnastics for which I'm neither sufficiently young nor sufficiently enthusiastic. Still, there was a bit more water in the river now, and that can make all the difference. So I thought I'd have another go and see whether the chub had returned or whether they'd taken permanent residence somewhere with better security.

I started with surface bread, which is always a pleasing way to fish because it makes you feel slightly like a Victorian gentleman feeding ducks, only with considerably more concentration and a hook concealed somewhere in the bakery department. The trouble with chub is that they know exactly what bread is, and they also know exactly what a hook is, which makes them rather less cooperative than the pigeons.

Those pieces of bread were going down completely unhindered, which suggested one of two things: either the chub weren’t in residence, or they were there but had collectively decided to observe a strict carbohydrate-free diet. Then, right at the very tail end of the swim, there was a swirl  not exactly a biblical revelation, but certainly enough of a fish showing to make me wonder whether I’d been prematurely writing the swim off.

The problem was that getting a fish out of there would have been difficult, to put it mildly, with enough snags lurking about to make the swim look less like a fishing opportunity and more like an obstacle course designed by someone who genuinely disliked anglers. Still, I bookmarked it mentally, because if there is one thing fishing teaches you, it is that the places you convince yourself are impossible are invariably the places you spend the next six months thinking about.

So I made my way downstream to a few swims that normally produce fish, although with the extra water on, the river had a bit more flow and those little areas where the chub usually hang about were conspicuously devoid of chub. I peered into likely spots, stared into dark corners, and generally behaved like a man who had misplaced something expensive, despite the fact that I was actually looking for a fish that had absolutely no obligation whatsoever to be there.

Then, just to add a touch of rural theatre to proceedings, a horse decided to follow me down towards the bridge swim. I was half expecting it to ask whether I’d seen any chub, but instead it got knee-deep into the water and began enthusiastically harvesting the rich pickings from the reeds and bullrushes downstream, apparently having worked out the fishing wasn’t going particularly well and deciding to get on with something productive.

I did manage a chublet, which after four or five tentative nudges at the bread finally decided that one more go was going to be its downfall. Unfortunately for it, this time it found a hook rather than the usual free lunch, although it was hardly the stamp of fish I had travelled through the countryside expecting to meet.

It was, however, perfectly respectable, and after a brief encounter I returned it to its watery abode, where I assume it immediately went back to telling its mates about the terrifying near-death experience involving a suspiciously fluffy piece of bread. I meanwhile stood there wondering whether this was genuinely how the session was going to end, with my fishing ambitions reduced from “proper chub” to “something that could probably fit through a letterbox”.

With my tail firmly between my legs, I decided on one final attempt in the first swim, because apparently disappointment makes you more determined rather than more sensible. This time I concentrated on the snag pit away from the main river, where there was a much slower piece of water, which was encouraging, although the word “snags” was doing an awful lot of heavy lifting in that description.

I flicked a few pieces of crust onto the surface and, wearing the polarised sunglasses that make every angler feel briefly like Jacques Cousteau, I could see the silhouettes of several chub milling around below. 

They were definitely there, which was encouraging, although their attitude towards my carefully presented floating bread was roughly equivalent to mine when someone offers me a spotted dick with gloopy cold custard.

They simply weren’t interested in taking it off the surface, so I decided to change tactics. 

Now, I assume chub are rather like us although hopefully with fewer problems concerning council tax and the price of petrol in that they possess both animal instinct and a more rational side capable of assessing whether something looks suspicious.

On one side are our animal instincts, developed over millions of years of evolution and designed to keep us alive, while on the other sits the rational brain, constantly calculating, cogitating and occasionally wondering why on earth we thought buying another fishing rod was a sensible financial decision. The chub, presumably, had arrived at the conclusion that floating bread was suspicious, but perhaps had yet to develop the ability to question its own existence, mortgage rates or whether it had chosen the correct swim in life.

So a piece of bread went onto the hook, dipped into the water and was squeezed, and squeezed again, until it became something resembling a small soggy dumpling with a criminal record. This time it was slow sinking, and after a strategic and, I thought, rather magnificent underarm flick, I watched it disappear underneath the raft while using my forefinger to feel the line.

About ten seconds passed, during which I became increasingly convinced that absolutely nothing was happening and that I had once again managed to turn a straightforward fishing exercise into an unnecessarily complicated experiment in disappointment. Then I felt the line tighten, struck, and immediately discovered that the fish at the other end had considerably more enthusiasm for the proceedings than I did.

Now, you only had to look at the swim to realise that this wasn’t going to be a polite little fight conducted in open water with the fish eventually swimming obligingly into the net. This was going to be carnage, and with a tippy barbel rod in my hands I was going to have to bully the fish away from every branch, root, twig and other item of aquatic furniture it had thoughtfully positioned itself beside.

“YOU HEATHEN, MICK,” I could almost hear the traditionalists shouting from the bankside hedges, horrified that someone had dared use a tippy barbel rod for a chub. But at this point I wasn’t particularly interested in conforming to angling etiquette, because etiquette is generally of limited use when a decent chub is attempting to introduce itself to a snag at high speed.

The ensuing battle would probably have earned an audition for Best Fighting Chub on Britain’s Got Talent, assuming there is a category for fish that spend several minutes trying to make an angler question every decision that led them to that particular stretch of river. Eventually, however, it gave up, rolled over and seemed to say, “Please net me, I’ve had enough of this,” which was an offer I was more than happy to accept.

So I did exactly that, because there are some things you simply don’t argue with when fishing decent fish, snag-infested swims and the sudden appearance of a net in front of a chub that has just spent several minutes trying to dismantle your tackle. Things you do to catch fish, eh?

And there it was, a proper chub, and suddenly the earlier chublet seemed less like a disappointing consolation prize and more like an important piece of narrative development. From a little chublet nibbling at bread to a proper chub trying to rearrange the underwater architecture, the session had somehow managed to redeem itself.

It had taken little more than an hour, but that was all the fishing fix required, really. No epic twelve-hour campaign, no bivvy, no alarms screaming through the night and certainly no need to explain to anyone why you have spent half a day sitting beside a river staring at a piece of bread.

Just a river, a few pieces of crust, a horse, a handful of suspicious chub and one fish that eventually decided to cooperate after being subjected to what was, frankly, an unnecessarily stressful audition for Britain's Got Talent. Sometimes that’s all you need, well maybe a tussle with Sofía Vergara might be nice, a memorable fish, a ridiculous little adventure and enough material to convince yourself that the next session will obviously be even better.

Warwickshire Avon - Perambulation and Perturbation

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 !!