Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.53

So, we're back in business then, although whether that's good news for anyone other than me is open to debate. I have no doubt that several readers have been sitting patiently by their laptops, refreshing the page every six minutes, wondering whether I'd finally run out of things to waffle about, only to discover that sadly I have returned and, rather like Japanese Knotweed, appear to be almost impossible to eradicate.

The first day back at work after the August excesses started reasonably enough, although it wasn't long before I encountered something that reminded me that I'm clearly earning money in entirely the wrong profession. I wandered back from my lunchtime walk towards the main building and there, sitting outside the entrance, was a rather enormous Range Rover that I initially walked straight past without giving it a second glance.

Now apparently, however, this wasn't just any old Range Rover but the new electric one, which explained why several people seemed to be standing around it looking considerably more interested than I was. Once I'd been informed of the specification, I suddenly became very interested indeed, although mainly in the sense that you become interested when someone tells you the price of a bottle of wine after you've already ordered it.

Nearly three tonnes, around 370 miles of claimed range from a 118.5 kWh battery and prices starting somewhere around £150,000 before you've started clicking the options box like a lottery winner. That's a huge battery by the way as it will take approximately 17 to 19 hours to charge from 0% to 100% on a standard 7kW home charger.

Apparently they can wander north of £250,000 once you've ticked enough expensive little boxes, which is quite handy because if you've got that sort of money lying around, you're unlikely to be worrying about whether your bait bill has got slightly out of hand this month.

I have to say, though, it was an impressive thing in the flesh. Massive doesn't really do it justice, and I'm fairly sure you could lose a small family in the back of it and not discover them again until the following Tuesday. 

Cars just seem to be getting bigger and bigger and someone that works in a design studio on cars that will be out in 4-5 years that's not changing !!, at this rate the next Range Rover will require planning permission, a runway and possibly its own postcode.

It did get me thinking about the little Suzuki Jimny which is a 1/3 of the weight, otherwise known as the Mountain Goat, which in a couple of weeks will somehow be seven years old. Seven years! I can still remember writing the first blog post about buying the bloody thing from new, although apparently time moves considerably quicker when you're driving around in something that looks like a Tonka toy with number plates.

It's been absolutely brilliant, though, and hasn't missed a beat. It's probably the easiest vehicle I've ever owned to like, largely because it has absolutely no interest in pretending to be something it isn't, and while the new Range Rover could probably cross the Atlantic with the correct optional extras, the Jimny would be quite happy bouncing over a muddy field while making noises that suggest it needs urgent medical attention.

In fact, I reckon you could probably put the Jimny in the boot of the new Range Rover if you gave it a decent shove and ignored several minor issues concerning dimensions, suspension geometry and the laws of physics. The new Range Rover really is a behemoth, and although I'm sure it's lovely to drive, I think I'll stick with the Mountain Goat for a while yet.

Besides, after a month of considerably more eating and drinking than was strictly necessary, I suspect I am currently approaching the same gross vehicle weight as the Jimny and driver combined. August has been a spectacular success in that department, so with the weather finally looking a little more conducive to fishing and a month off the grog now underway, I'm hoping the waistline will gradually return to something resembling its previous shape.

There are worse ways of doing it than sitting beside a river, although I'm not entirely convinced that consuming several packets of biscuits while waiting for a bite constitutes an effective weight-loss strategy. 

Still, every journey begins with a single step, and mine apparently begins with having a cuppa.

Anyway, back to the fishing, which was the whole point of this particular excursion despite the lengthy automotive and dietary diversion. 

The evenings are drawing in alarmingly quickly now, with dusk arriving at around 8.25pm, which seems ridiculous because I'm fairly certain it was light until about half past eleven last week.

Before we know it we'll be talking about Christmas, which means mince pies will be appearing in the shops, people will be putting decorations up in November and I'll be wondering where another year has disappeared to. 

I therefore decided to make the most of the remaining daylight and fish into darkness, which also gave me a good excuse to sit beside the river for several hours without anyone expecting me to do anything productive.

I'd chosen the syndicate stretch for this one, with the vague intention of catching a fish and the much firmer intention of not doing anything remotely complicated. I had considered targeting barbel, especially as I'd caught one here fairly recently, but if I'm honest I fancied a chub more.

Chub have always been a favourite of mine, proper characters of fish that seem to spend most of their lives looking suspiciously at whatever you've thrown in the river before eventually deciding that perhaps eating it isn't such a bad idea after all. They're also particularly satisfying when you're trying to winkle one out, because there's something rather pleasing about fooling a fish that's spent twenty minutes staring at your bait as though it has just spotted you trying to sell it a timeshare.

There was another reason for fancying the chub, too. I've done particularly well using Robin Red pellets on the Avon, and while the fish obviously don't read my blog and therefore aren't aware that this particular bait is supposed to be irresistible, they've certainly developed a taste for it.

The plan was therefore straightforward enough: a couple of Robin Red baits hair-rigged, a small PVA bag of freebies alongside them, and a decent pre-baited swim to fish into dusk and beyond. Nothing clever, no laboratory equipment, no underwater drones and certainly no bait preparation involving ingredients that require a trip to three different supermarkets.

Before settling down for the evening, though, I fancied a bit of roving. Chub can sometimes give themselves away if you're prepared to look for them, particularly when there's bread involved, and I thought I'd wander through a few swims with a loaf and see whether anything fancied an early evening snack.

There is something wonderfully simple about fishing with bread. You take a loaf, tear some off, put it somewhere near a chub and wait for the fish to either eat it or look at you as though you've insulted its entire family.

Anyway when I got trackside, the farmer had kindly left the track free, presumably because the sheep were in the field and he didn't fancy scraping one off the front of my motor. Halfway down the straight I had to stop anyway, because a bloody great branch had fallen straight across the electric fence, so there I was doing my bit for the farming community and trying not to become the biggest shock of the evening.

Good deed done, I carried on to the first peg and performed a three-point turn which was probably closer to a seventeen-point turn in a Range Rover, before eventually getting myself sorted. Out went a decent helping of my heavy, spicy meat groundbait concoction, which plummeted straight to the bottom and would hopefully sit there quietly for a couple of hours before I put a bait over it, because if something works occasionally there really is no point messing about trying to improve it.

I then mashed up some bread, grabbed the light chub gear and set off roving, priming a few swims as I went that I'd fish on the way back. The Avon was still clear, certainly where I was fishing, and there was a bloody good head of water on, which looked absolutely perfect, although as we all know, rivers have a habit of looking perfect right up until they dump a chublet on your hook every thirty seconds.

The first underarm chuck with the link-ledgered bread hadn't even properly settled before something snatched it on the drop. "Bloody hell, that was quick," I thought, and it turned out the swim wasn't exactly short of residents. In fact it was absolutely rammed with fish, unfortunately they were all the sort of size that could probably swim through the eye of the hook.

That's the problem with bread at this time of year; the bait fish are still knocking around and they're bloody fearless. Give them a decent lump of bread and they'll whittle it down quicker than a bloke at the pub saying, "I'm only having one."

The chublets got stuck into the bread in most of the four swims I fished, and fair play to them, they attacked it as though they'd been waiting all week for a takeaway. Some of the bites were so violent they genuinely felt like barbel, particularly on the little chub rod with its daft little 0.5oz tip, which makes everything feel approximately three times bigger than it actually is.

I missed two BIG chub bites, although "missed" is probably being generous. I basically didn't connect with the fish because the bite was so hard the rod bent all the way round to the joint and by the time I'd worked out what the bloody hell was happening, the fish had buggered off. I wouldn't say I got bored of catching chublets, but that's precisely what happened, and I started thinking about something with a bit more attitude.

Still, I hadn't blanked, which is always a useful phrase to mutter when trying to convince yourself the evening is going brilliantly. With the wind now picking up considerably, I decided to stop poncing about with the light gear and set up stall in the prebaited swim with the bigger rod, with dusk only about forty minutes away.

Two small Robin Red pellets went on the hair, accompanied by a PVA bag of mixed pellets, and after fifteen minutes or so there was a proper whacking bite that came from absolutely nowhere. I lifted into it expecting the heavens to open and a barbel to announce its arrival, only to discover that once again the chub had beaten the bigger boys to dinner.

As the gloom settled and dusk finally arrived, there was another whack on the rod top, followed by another, and this time the fish had done me the enormous favour of hooking itself. I lifted the rod and found another chublet attached, the greedy little sod, and by now I was beginning to suspect there was a meeting of the Avon chub population directly underneath my bait.

Where the hell were the bigger fish? With the pellets mangled beyond recognition, I changed to my default much larger Robin Red pellet, giving the single bait a little more space between hair and hook. After another couple of clangs on the rod tip it seemed to be working, or at least the chub were finally beginning to realise that this particular buffet item was going to be more trouble than it was worth.

Then everything went quiet.

I sat there in the gathering darkness, listening to the river pushing through and the occasional rustle from the bank, when a barn owl appeared on the far side of the Avon. It ghosted silently across the water towards me, barely making a sound, then turned and floated downstream into the gloom, and for once I wasn't thinking about fishing, bites, bait or whether I'd remembered where I'd put the landing net.

You're bloody lucky when you see something like that. You don't get it sitting at home watching Coronation Street or Love Island, although obviously if that's your thing then crack on, I'm not here to judge, but I'd rather watch a barn owl hunting silently over a river any day of the week.

Then it happened.

One pull on the rod top and the whole bloody thing went into meltdown. The rod folded over, the reel started doing something far more interesting than it had done all evening and instantly I knew what was on the other end. "Yeap, barbel," I thought, before immediately adding, "Don't get too confident now, Mick, you've made this mistake before."

Thankfully the fish didn't seem to have received the memo about escaping. It put up a spirited battle, surging around in the darkness and making me work for it, but eventually I got it into the landing net and there it was. 

Oh yes, oh bloody yes! As Carl Cox might say, although I'm fairly sure Carl has never had to say it while standing in the dark with cold hands, a muddy backside and a barbel trying to climb out of a landing net.

It wasn't a huge fish, and in fact it felt a little hollow, but this is the Avon we're talking about. 

More than fifty sessions here and perhaps one in eight or ten produces a barbel, and most of those seem to turn up once it's properly dark, so when one does eventually come along you don't start worrying about whether it's going to break some personal best.

I didn't weigh it. There was no need. I was just chuffed to bits to have another Avon barbel in front of me, because sometimes the fish itself is the bloody trophy and the number on the scales is completely irrelevant.

I fished on for another twenty minutes or so, but nothing else happened, which was probably just as well because I was beginning to get that smug feeling that usually precedes something going horribly wrong. 

Eventually I packed up and headed back along the track, leaving the Avon behind in the darkness. It had been one of those evenings where nothing particularly spectacular happened for most of the session, yet somehow everything felt right. 

A few chublets, a barbel, a load of water, a fair bit of wind, a tree sacrificed to the electric fence and a barn owl drifting silently downstream as the light disappeared.

Not bad at all.

I drove home with a stupid grin on my face, already thinking about the next visit and wondering how long I could realistically pretend that this was all part of a carefully planned fishing campaign rather than me disappearing off to sit beside a river in the dark because I've got absolutely no sense.

Lanzarote - Balconies and Ballistocardiographs

Being off work for most of August has been very, very nice indeed, although apparently there is a limit to how much relaxation the human body can cope with before it starts to resemble a sack of potatoes that has been left in the sun. 

I discovered this when I walked into the office after the bank holiday, still carrying the general demeanour of a man who had recently been rescued from a flotation device, only for a work colleague to look at me and say, “Mick, welcome back, you look tired.” Well, thank you very much, that’s exactly the sort of warm welcome you want after spending several weeks convincing yourself that doing absolutely nothing before midday is a perfectly legitimate lifestyle choice.

There was, however, a very good reason for looking tired because August had been rather full, despite the fact that technically I had been doing very little that could be described as work. We started after a week in Devon with the Canaries, which, as regular readers will know, have become something of a second home to us, although thankfully without the mortgage, council tax or bloke from next door asking me to move my car. 

After visiting various holiday resorts over the years, we keep coming back because the Canaries give us pretty much everything we require from a holiday, namely sun, sea and sangria, preferably in quantities that would make a sensible person question their life choices.

The kids still absolutely love a beach holiday, particularly when there is a decent pool involved, because apparently the presence of an ocean stretching to the horizon isn't quite enough water for today's youth. This particular trip involved the Gold level accommodation, which came with a separate pool away from the main pools, meaning that for once we could actually hear ourselves think, although admittedly after a few days of all-inclusive drinks I’m not sure there was much thinking going on anyway. 

We got to know loads of the other Gold members surprisingly well, to the point where first names were being exchanged and people were greeting each other like we were members of some exclusive Mediterranean retirement village rather than a collection of sunburnt British tourists fighting over the last decent lounger.

The staff were superb as well, which is always dangerous because you very quickly start developing emotional attachments to people whose job it is to bring you drinks. The Gold restaurant was particularly good, with Maria the Spanish chef producing all manner of culinary delights that made the prospect of returning to the kitchen at home seem frankly barbaric. 

By the end of the ten days we were genuinely sad to leave the island, although my liver had begun writing strongly worded letters to management and my waistline had apparently joined a union.

Ten days of all-inclusive living is one of those things that sounds fantastic when you book it and slightly less fantastic when your body is asked for feedback afterwards. 

My liver, in particular, would like to make it absolutely clear that it never agreed to participate in the “world’s biggest Godfathers” initiative and would now like several weeks to recover from the administrative burden. 

There is something wonderfully irresponsible about walking to a bar, ordering a drink, forgetting you have already had three, and then ordering another because technically you are still on holiday and therefore normal rules no longer apply.

Things became even more dangerous when, a few days into the holiday, we noticed that there was an unoccupied room above reception.

Now naturally, rather than leaving well alone like sensible people, an inquiry was made regarding the possibility of an upgrade, because apparently once you have experienced a Gold bracelet you immediately develop the negotiating skills of a property developer. 

A few quid later and a conversation with the manager had resulted in us moving into a huge two bedroom room with the biggest balcony I have ever stayed in, which was roughly the size of a small British housing estate and came with the added bonus of being large enough to accommodate several chairs and tables, a Bali bed and my rapidly expanding holiday belly.

Some of the nightly entertainment was directly opposite the room, which meant that if the kids weren't particularly interested in venturing out, the wife and I could retire to the Bali bed and enjoy the atmosphere from our own private grandstand. This sounded sophisticated until you realise that “enjoying the atmosphere” generally involved another drink from the bar and me shouting occasionally about how good the singer was. 

There is something strangely satisfying about sitting on a massive balcony in warm evening air, listening to live music, watching everyone else enjoying themselves and slowly convincing yourself that this is actually what retirement is going to be like.

Fishing, meanwhile, had rather taken a back seat, which is unusual for me but probably healthy for everyone concerned. The plan had been to fish a scratching rig with bait and hopefully connect with something a little more substantial than the usual holiday micro-species, but the practicalities of fishing a busy resort turned out to be somewhat different from the fantasy I had constructed in my head. 

I was trying to fish before the masses descended for snorkelling, paddle boarding and kayaking, which meant being out ridiculously early, and after losing several lots of gear I decided that perhaps the sea was trying to tell me something.

The sea was basically saying, “Pack it in, Mick, you've had enough.” So the serious scratching campaign was quietly abandoned and I returned to float fishing for the smaller species, which at least had the advantage of being considerably less expensive and requiring considerably less effort.

A couple more species were added to the tally from Lanzarote, where bread fished on small hooks seemed to be the answer, proving once again that sometimes the most sophisticated fishing technique available is essentially sticking a bit of your sandwich on a hook. I did hook and lose two bream, which was particularly frustrating because they were clearly considerably more interested in my bait than the smaller fish were. 

Unfortunately, my chosen tackle consisted of a Temu multi-piece carp rod and a size 16 treble hook, which, when written down like that, should probably have been enough to alert me that this wasn't exactly the setup recommended by the International Association of People Who Know What They Are Doing. The bream appeared to disagree with my tackle selection and both managed to escape, presumably swimming away afterwards and telling their mates about the idiot with the bargain-bin carp rod.

The damsel fish would arrive first for the floating bread, behaving like they hadn't eaten for six weeks despite the fact that there were probably hundreds of tourists dropping food into the water every five minutes. Then, once the bread had been attacked sufficiently, the bream would appear and smash the remaining pieces to bits, which was great entertainment but less impressive from a catch-per-bite perspective. 

I experimented with hook sizes, presentation and various other things, eventually discovering that if you use a bigger hook the bites simply stop happening, which is exactly the sort of scientific breakthrough that fishing blogs are built upon.

Slow-sinking pieces of Isome worms worked surprisingly well too, although I suspect the fish regarded the whole thing as some sort of elaborate Japanese buffet rather than fishing tackle. The best entertainment came when a swimmer was just about to get into the water beside my feet and a puffer fish decided to demonstrate one of nature's more ridiculous party tricks. 

One second it was a perfectly ordinary-looking little fish and the next it had transformed into Mr Creosote, inflating itself into a bizarre aquatic football while the swimmer stared at it as though I'd personally performed some sort of marine magic trick.

If you've never seen a puffer fish inflate itself, it really is something to behold, particularly when they make that rattling noise while doing it. I caught two of them and both inflated nicely before being returned safely, and thankfully both managed to expel the air without any apparent problems once they were back in the water. 

There is something very satisfying about catching a fish that looks perfectly normal, watching it suddenly turn into a cartoon character, and then putting it back so it can presumably go and frighten somebody else.

Anyway, it was nice to have a proper break from fishing, although naturally the moment I got back I immediately did something that made a sensible person question whether I actually understand the concept of rest. 

 The day after returning from Lanzarote I flew out to Edinburgh on a delayed flight, took a coach to Glasgow and then literally dropped my bag at the hotel before heading straight out to a gig. 

Because apparently ten days lying around in the sun had left me desperate for seven hours of loud progressive house music in a sweaty room full of people just as old as me.

The venue was a small place called the Box Hub, and Australian progressive house DJs Anthony Pappa, Jamie Stevens and Kasie Taylor were there for what turned into seven hours of absolute musical carnage. 

It was one of the best gigs I've been to in years, with a brilliant crowd, a sweaty and intimate atmosphere and bass frequencies that could probably be detected by fishermen several miles down the Clyde. 

Despite being, as I prefer to describe it, an old git, the raving feet have clearly never left and within minutes I was behaving like somebody had accidentally released me from a care home.

Anthony Pappa has been a hero of mine for years, so getting to meet him was a real highlight. 

What made it even better was that he was incredibly friendly, which is always nice because you spend years building up an image of somebody in your head and then occasionally discover that they are actually a miserable sod who looks at you as though you have asked them to personally rebuild the M25. Thankfully Anthony was nothing like that and meeting him made an already excellent night even better.

The music was absolutely immense, the sort of bass that you could hear from a mile away and possibly use to locate shoals of fish if you happened to have the right kind of sonar. 

Seven hours of dancing after ten days of all-inclusive eating and drinking may not be the recommended recovery programme for a middle-aged man, but apparently my body had decided that moderation was for people who hadn't booked annual leave. By the end I had danced my socks off, although technically I was still wearing them, and several internal organs were considering whether they had grounds for constructive dismissal.

The following morning was less glamorous. There is a particular type of silence that arrives after seven hours of progressive house, several drinks and very little sleep, and it is the sort of silence where you can hear your own bloodstream asking why you've done this. After a lazy morning I eventually checked out of the hotel at midday and headed off in search of food, because apparently the correct response to burning thousands of calories dancing is to replace every single one of them immediately.

This brought me to Iron Duke, where I knew that September was going to be a month of abstinence, or at least that was the theory, so I decided to stuff myself stupid while I still had the opportunity. The service was excellent, the food was top drawer and the owner and chef even came over for a chat, which was a lovely touch and made me feel slightly less like a bloke who had turned up solely to see how much food could be fitted into one human being. I left feeling considerably better, although the concept of abstinence suddenly seemed like a particularly unreasonable idea.

And then, just like that, August was over. The holiday tan is beginning to fade, the liver has requested compassionate leave, the dancing feet have finally stopped twitching and my body is still trying to work out why I thought a seven-hour rave immediately after a family holiday constituted sensible behaviour. 

But despite all that, I wouldn't change any of it, because sometimes you have to make the most of the time you've got, whether that's sitting beside a pool with a drink in your hand, watching a puffer fish inflate itself into Mr Creosote, or dancing until your knees start sending formal complaints to your brain. The best thing, though, is that I have returned at exactly the right time for the rivers. 

The rain has finally arrived and given them a much-needed boost, turning those low summer levels into something that looks considerably more promising, and after several weeks of sunshine I'm actually quite excited to see some proper moving water again.

September might involve less sangria, fewer balconies, considerably fewer DJs and absolutely no all-inclusive cocktails, but if the rivers continue to rise then there is every chance I'll be replacing the holiday hangover with a fishing-induced one, which, as regular readers will appreciate, is really just another form of poor decision-making with a rod attached.

The River Severn - Moles and Melee's

Saturday was one of those days where my twin brother Chris was living his best life somewhere down in Westward Ho! attending an all-day rave. Apparently the bass was so loud he could hear it while walking to the venue, which is more than can be said for the fish hearing him on his last three fishing trips. Three blanks on the bounce now, Chris, and even the rave had more bites than you've had recently.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind a bit of Morris dancing either. They just don't seem to wallop the pavement like they used to, probably because someone complained that clattering sticks together was offensive to nearby pigeons. William Kempe danced all the way from London to Norwich in Shakespeare's day, whereas nowadays they'd probably stop him after half a mile for not filling out the correct risk assessment.

Still, every cloud has a silver lining. Chris may have spent Saturday bouncing around to music loud enough to frighten submarines, but I could at least remind him that I occasionally catch fish. Brothers are there to support each other, obviously, although reminding him he's blanked three trips running is what I'd call emotional support.

My holidays have finally started 'again' !!, which as a self-employed jobber is a bigger event than Christmas. Holidays without holiday pay make every day off feel like someone is quietly removing twenty-pound notes from your wallet while smiling politely. Still, the plane doesn't leave until the early hours of Wednesday morning, so Monday was far too valuable to waste on sensible behaviour.

Instead, I had a guest ticket with Nic from Avon Angling for a crack at a completely unknown stretch of the River Severn. Forty-five minutes of winding country lanes later we rolled into the car park at six in the morning looking suspiciously optimistic. You know you're getting old when a sunrise over a muddy river feels more exciting than Ibiza.

The weather had finally cooled down as well. Standing in the river with my open shoes actually felt refreshing instead of like slowly boiling in your own trousers. Even the cows looked jealous that we'd found air conditioning.

The weir itself was absolutely enormous. It looked less like a fishing venue and more like somewhere Bond villains dump expensive sports cars. Standing there listening to thousands of gallons of water crashing over concrete makes you realise shouting "I've got one!" is largely an exercise in mime.

Neither of us had fished it before, which meant we were making it up as we went along. I had a float rod, a ledger rod, enough terminal tackle to supply a small tackle shop and absolutely no clue where the fish were. Standard operating procedure really. A lead about suggested three or four feet of water in places. Everywhere else seemed either ankle deep or capable of swallowing a family hatchback whole. River fishing does like to keep you humble.

We'd barely settled in before Nic's rod tried to leave for Birmingham. The first fish promptly charged into a snag, proving that even barbel know where the dangerous neighbourhoods are. It escaped with all the confidence of someone who'd done this before.

Nic wasn't having any of that nonsense though. He shifted his cast a few metres to the right, the rod slammed round again and this time everything stayed attached. Moments later a cracking Severn barbel of around seven pounds slid into the net, and judging by Nic's grin you'd have thought he'd just won the lottery and inherited a tackle shop.

The culprit was a humble 10mm banded halibut pellet. I had turned up with all sorts of fancy robin red concoctions because anglers love making life difficult for themselves. The fish looked at my expensive pellets, laughed quietly and queued up for Nic's bargain buffet instead.

Within minutes I shamelessly raided Nic's pellet stash. Friends share bait, especially when your own bait is being treated with the same enthusiasm as Brussels sprouts at a children's birthday party. I even helped myself to his Scaled pellets while pretending it was all part of the tactical discussion.

Things then descended into complete chaos. Every time one of us settled down for a chill, a rod would wrench round like it had been connected to a passing tractor. We spent more time standing up than sitting down. 

By lunchtime we'd somehow managed two barbel apiece. My second fish tipped the scales at exactly ten pounds, which naturally meant it instantly became even bigger once I'd told the story three times. By Christmas it'll probably need its own postcode.

The chub fancied joining the party as well. Every cast seemed capable of producing another solid fish. It was one of those magical sessions where you almost expect the ducks to start asking for pellets.

Then Nic hooked an absolutely colossal roach on a 10mm pellet. It looked immaculate, gleaming in the sunshine like someone had polished it overnight. Somewhere nearby every match angler simultaneously developed an unexplained twitch.

Just when we thought we'd seen everything I wandered off for five minutes to ring the wife. I came back to find Nic quietly holding what looked suspiciously like a wardrobe with fins. It turned out to be a bream over six pounds, because apparently the river had completely abandoned any sense of normality.

I genuinely looked around expecting Jeremy Beadle to leap out from behind a bush. Unknown venue, fishing blind and we'd landed barbel, chub, a monster roach and now a giant bream. If someone had then caught a salmon wearing a wristwatch I wouldn't have questioned it.

Just when we thought the day couldn't get any stranger, the River Severn decided to introduce us to one of its less celebrated residents. Out of absolutely nowhere a mole appeared, busily tunnelling around behind us as if he'd heard there were free halibut pellets on offer. It was the first time I'd ever seen one properly up close, and they're far bigger than I'd imagined, looking like a furry potato fitted with a shovel.



The little chap seemed completely obsessed with the pellets we'd scattered on the bank. We reckoned he could smell the fishmeal because he kept burrowing in and around them like a tiny black truffle hunter that had taken a wrong turn somewhere near Worcester. Trust anglers to spend a fortune attracting fish only to end up feeding the local wildlife instead.

The funniest moment came when I knelt down to rebait my hook. I suddenly felt something pushing up underneath my knee and nearly launched myself into the Severn thinking I'd discovered some previously unknown species of river monster. It was only our furry excavator tunnelling directly beneath me, and I swear the mole looked more startled than I did before disappearing underground, probably wondering why idiots with fishing rods kept dropping perfectly good pellets everywhere.

Nic kept swapping between a conventional feeder and the method feeder. When the swim slowed down the method feeder seemed to keep nicking bites while everything else went suspiciously quiet. Fish clearly enjoy making us spend hundreds of pounds on tackle only to decide one method works today because reasons.

The bites themselves were utterly ridiculous. Some of them nearly pulled the rod into Gloucestershire before somehow failing to hook themselves. Others looked like someone had simply sneezed near the rod tip before developing into absolute mayhem.

Nic was filming the whole lot for his YouTube channel. This naturally meant every fish behaved perfectly while the camera was rolling and every one I lost happened just after he'd pointed the lens somewhere else. Fish are experts at television production.

At one point I was convinced the next bite would probably be a passing seal. Given the way the day had gone I wouldn't have been remotely surprised if Nessie had popped up asking whether we had any spare halibut pellets. It was that sort of session.

Eventually we looked at one another and agreed we'd had enough. Not because the fishing had gone quiet, but because we'd reached that happy stage where your arms ache, your face hurts from smiling and you've run out of believable excuses for why you need another cast. Sometimes it's better to walk away while the river is still applauding you.

Driving home I couldn't wipe the grin off my face. Every angler dreams about those sessions where everything somehow falls into place despite having absolutely no plan whatsoever. They don't happen often, which is precisely why we spend so many hours sitting behind motionless rod tips convincing ourselves the next cast will be different.

Meanwhile, somewhere down in Devon, my twin brother Chris was probably staring mournfully at another motionless rod wondering what crime he'd committed against fish. Don't worry, Chris, your luck has to change eventually because statistically even shopping trolleys occasionally catch carp. Until then, if you start hearing loud bass music while you're fishing, don't follow it because the rave has caught more than you have this week.

Anyway, I've got packing to do before we head off on holiday. The suitcase is currently empty apart from enough fishing gear to invade a small country, and my wife keeps reminding me that flip-flops apparently deserve luggage space as well. Catch up soon, tight lines everyone, and if you happen to bump into my brother Chris, please be kind and point him gently in the direction of the nearest fish because at this stage even the Morris dancers are starting to outfish him.