Warwickshire Avon - The Untrodden Pt.48

Dry January is now safely in the rear-view mirror, crushed beneath the mud-terrain tyres of February, and I emerge blinking into the daylight with the faint realisation that sobriety, while technically survivable, is not something I would ever choose recreationally. 

Still, it must be said, it passed with suspicious ease. No white-knuckle cravings, no midnight bargaining with myself in the kitchen, just the quiet satisfaction of knowing that I am, above all else, a stubborn old git. Dry January for me is not wellness; it is resistance training. A ritualistic breaking of the festive feedback loop where Christmas becomes a month-long pub crawl lubricated by mince pies and poor decisions.

Naturally, the Wife did not share my monk-like resolve and required taxi services on a couple of occasions. I provided these with magnanimity, smugness, and the faint moral superiority of a man clutching a bottle of sparkling water while surrounded by slurred karaoke. Willpower, it turns out, is hereditary, and sadly she married into the wrong bloodline. LOL, as the youths say, though they say it without irony and usually while being deeply disappointing.

With the calendar flicked over and the seal broken, it was only right to reacquaint myself with the pub, where a couple of pints of 6.6% Exmoor Beast’s awaited a beer that tastes like it was brewed by someone who hates you personally. 

A proper pint and less than 3 quid in spoons. The kind that doesn’t so much refresh as challenge. This was merely a prelude, however, because Sundays in this house are less “day of rest” and more “low-level endurance event”.

By sunrise I was vertical, and from that moment until six in the evening I did not sit down once. There was fishing to do, errands to run, a pub to attend, football to half-watch, and a Sunday roast to cook for six people which in reality means twelve opinions and zero help. 

Sam’s mate Matthew was present, along with his mother, who had been visiting friends the night before and had somehow wandered into this culinary hostage situation. She looked vaguely alarmed but game, like someone who’d accidentally joined a cult but liked the biscuits.

Before all that domestic theatre, though, there was the river. The Warwickshire Avon a river which, of late, has been performing like a pub band that peaked in 1994. Still there, still capable, but mostly going through the motions. I had hopes for chub, real hopes, the kind that make you ignore recent evidence and tie rigs anyway.

The track down to the syndicate stretch was waterlogged, though I didn’t give it much thought until I was already committed. This is where the Jimny comes into its own. 

Narrow all-terrain tyres, selectable four-wheel drive, low ratio if things get biblical, and weighing approximately the same as a family-sized box of cornflakes, it simply doesn’t care. It revels in adversity. Mud? Puddles? Ruts deep enough to lose a Labrador? Excellent. It scampered through like a mountain goat with a mortgage.

At the top of the stretch I parked, mashed some bread like a medieval peasant, and walked the bank depositing freebies into every slack, crease, and fish-shaped suspicion I could find. The river was still high and coloured oddly not the reassuring brown of honest rain, but that unsettling hue that suggests paperwork and a corporate apology are imminent. 

Then came the foam. Suspicious foam. The sort of foam that doesn’t belong in nature unless something has gone very wrong. No doubt a gift from Severn Trent, who recently hiked my water bill to such a degree that I briefly considered whether the neighbour behind me had been siphoning off my supply to top up a duck pond under cover of darkness. 

We are apparently “heavy users”, which sounds less like a billing category and more like a support group. Dishwasher daily, washing machine constantly, two teenage boys who emit smells previously unknown to science —yes, fine, but £100 a month? Jesus wept. Infrastructure investment, they say. Shareholder dividends, they mean.

This stretch doesn’t see much bait, and the chub, when present, are usually a better-than-average stamp. What I didn’t expect was that after five swims without so much as a tremor, the first fish would be… well… disappointing. Not a monster. Not even pretending. A chub that looked like it had been printed on reduced-quality paper. Another followed, same size, as if they were being issued in pairs.

So, plan B. Or rather, plan Z the last-gasp, most awkward, most swear-inducing swim on the stretch. A snag-ridden horror show where fish go to test your mental resilience. I’d caught chub here before, so I switched to cheesepaste, reasoning that if nothing else, it smells like regret and ambition.

Ten minutes in, a couple of plucks on the one-ounce quiver tip. Then it went properly round, pulling left with intent, and I struck… immediately clouting the large branch to my right like a man fencing an invisible opponent. 

The fish, meanwhile, made a determined bid for the roots on the left. What followed was less “playing a fish” and more “hostage negotiation with violence”. I bullied it, unapologetically, because snag fishing is not the time for politeness.

Eventually it rolled, popped its head up, and slid into the net with all the grace of a defeated tyrant. I thought it might scrape four pounds, but it didn’t quite. Still, a proper chub. A fish with shoulders. A satisfying full stop to the session.

Then it was back to civilisation. Pub visit with the rabble. Errands. Home. Apron on. Dave Seaman on the speakers one of my all-time favourites, a man whose sets have soundtracked more questionable life choices than I care to admit. 

Seladoria parties, Seaman and Steve Parry, conversations that wandered everywhere and nowhere. Three hours and forty minutes of exactly my kind of beats, football murmuring in the background, roast aromas filling the house.

By the time I finally sat down, plate in hand, pint poured, the day felt perfectly complete. Fishing, family, food, music, mild outrage at utility companies all the essential food groups.

And that, really, is what Sundays are for.

The River Leam - Quivertipping and Quasi-philosophising

I fancied a change of scenery for this short morning session, which is angler-speak for “I was bored of the usual places and deluded myself into thinking novelty alone might improve my catch rate.” Thus, I found myself once again standing beside the River Leam, a river I’ve not fished for ages, mainly because of a change of job and the inconvenient reality that I no longer finish work, leap into the car like an escapee from a low-security prison, and arrive at the river fifteen minutes later just as the light begins to fade and the fish presumably alerted by some ancient piscine WhatsApp group decide to feed for precisely fifty-eight minutes before going on strike again. 

Back then, nothing of particular note was caught: a few chub with expressions of mild irritation, the occasional roach that looked as if it had been interrupted mid-thought, and a general sense that I was participating in something deeply traditional and profoundly pointless, which of course is the very essence of river fishing.

The plan, if it could be dignified with such a term, was to fish two of the WBAS stretches and stretch my ageing legs, which much like my tackle still function but occasionally make worrying noises. Last year I averaged 10,000 steps a day over the entire year, which isn’t bad at all for someone who spends a significant portion of life welded to a chair, staring at a computer screen and wondering if this is really what evolution had in mind. 

Roving tactics were therefore employed, partly for fish-finding purposes and partly because standing still for too long now results in joints seizing up like forgotten bait tins. A small feeder filled with liquidised bread was deployed, along with a modest piece of bread on the hook a bait that has fooled fish for centuries and continues to fool anglers into thinking it will solve everything.

The river itself was fining down nicely after having recently been in the fields, which is the riverine equivalent of saying it had been out drinking heavily but was now pulling itself together. The Leam, to its credit, drops fast, and on this occasion it was perfectly fishable a phrase that always sounds optimistic but usually just means “not actively impossible.” The slack by the bridge swim, however, was utterly devoid of interest, life, or any indication that fish had ever existed as a concept, so I roved onwards, performing the familiar angling march of quiet hope interspersed with exaggerated care not to fall in.

In the next swim, something interesting almost happened. A chub or possibly a figment of my imagination appeared to grab the bread on the drop, because the feeder refused to settle properly. I struck heroically into absolutely nothing, which is a skill I have perfected over many years, but the very next cast produced a bite in under a minute and suddenly a fish was on. 

Not the biggest fish, not a river-defining leviathan, but a chub nonetheless, and as all anglers know, scores on the doors. There is something deeply reassuring about actually catching a fish, if only to confirm that one has not completely misunderstood the basic premise of angling.

What followed was a sequence of swims that could best be described as extremely quiet indeed. The sun, however, was rather nice, and this is how rivers get away with things. You forgive them everything when the light hits the water just right and the world briefly looks like a brochure. I settled into the big, deep bay swim the very same swim where I once won a syndicate match, an event that now exists mainly as a personal legend trotted out whenever morale is low. 

After twenty minutes without so much as a twitch, I decided that destiny was clearly elsewhere and headed to the other stretch, only five minutes away, because nothing says optimism like repeatedly uprooting oneself.

That’s the thing with the River Leam: it’s a lovely river, moody and understated, but it’s a 25-minute drive for me, and I’m spoiled by the Arrow and the Alne being less than fifteen minutes away and generally more inclined to provide bites rather than philosophical reflection. Still, variety is the spice of life, or at least the mild seasoning of angling disappointment. 

On the next stretch, I managed a nice chub first cast, following a series of tentative nibbles and quivertip tremors that suggest a fish deeply conflicted about its life choices. I struck more in hope than expectation and discovered a chub was indeed on, leading to a spirited battle in which it attempted to bury itself under my feet amongst some dead reeds, presumably in an effort to end the whole affair quickly. Eventually, it was persuaded otherwise, and that, sadly, was my lot.

I fished several more swims, introduced cheesepaste at one point the olfactory equivalent of shouting into the river but the remaining fish were resolutely uninterested. 

Eventually, I packed up, legs stretched, soul mildly soothed, and expectations once again recalibrated to a sensible level. The Leam hadn’t produced miracles, but it had delivered sunshine, movement, and the comforting reminder that fishing isn’t always about catching although it does help. And besides, there’s always tomorrow… or at least somewhere closer.

The River Arrow - Thermoregulation and Theatrics

Sam the Lucky One was on a teacher training day, which in real-world terms means he was “off” while I was “working,” though my version of working on a Friday involves finishing at midday-ish and making solemn promises to myself that I’ll “crack on in the afternoon maybe next week,” promises which have the structural integrity of a Rich Tea biscuit dunked twice. 

Fate, clearly an angler, had decided that this was not a day for CAD bashing but for piscatorial enlightenment, and so Sam and I found ourselves aligned like planets, or at least like two blokes with a rucksack full of bait and wildly unrealistic expectations.

Totally unlike Sam, he was keen to go fishing. This alone should have been logged with the Met Office or at least written down for future disbelief. Sam, you see, does not do cold. He doesn’t tolerate it. He doesn’t negotiate with it. 

Sam 9 years ago when he was 5 we left shortly after 😂!! 

He simply shuts down, like a mobile phone at 2% battery, and wanders off to find central heating, soup, or the overly large bosom of his mother. 

Yet here he was, voluntarily suggesting fishing in winter, which is normally about as appealing to him as licking a frozen gatepost. 

I, on the other hand, am quite lucky. I don’t feel the cold that often, possibly because I am generously insulated, possibly because I am too stupid to notice discomfort, or possibly because my internal thermostat is set permanently to “boil.” Sam, however, has inherited his mother’s genes, and she feels the cold ALL the time. 

This is despite the central heating being cranked up to a level normally reserved for incubating fertile eggs or encouraging tropical amphibians to breed. One can stand in her living room and watch the curtains wilt, and boy I have the bill to show for it.  

This raises important scientific questions. Is it the hypothalamus, the body’s thermostat? Or is it simply subcutaneous fat? Do they both have less of it than me? Sam certainly does. 

He has less meat on him than a butcher’s pencil, which means when the wind blows it goes straight through him like a badly sealed bivvy. 

His mother definitely not though I’ll add here, purely for my own safety, that she doesn’t read my blog. Who knows. Science is a mysterious thing, best left to men in white coats who don’t fish the Warwickshire Avon.

During the colder months, despite my repeated encouragement, pleading, bribery, and occasional emotional blackmail, Sam usually loses interest big time. 

He knows he won’t enjoy it. He knows his fingers will go numb, his feet will turn into ornamental ice blocks, and his enthusiasm will leak away faster than maggots through a split bait box. And yet here’s the thing he’s been noticing I’ve been winkling out a few chub on the Arrow of late.

Every time I get home he asks, casually, as if he doesn’t care, “How’d you do?” This is the fishing equivalent of someone saying they’re “not hungry” while staring intensely at your chips. 

The Arrow has been kind, and the chub have been cooperative enough to fuel dreams. And dreams, as we all know, are far warmer than reality.

So yes. To the Arrow forthwith. The mission: get Sam a chub of his own. Get him a proper bend in the rod the sort he loves, the sort that briefly makes you forget that your nose is numb and your fingers feel like borrowed items from someone else’s hands. I’d recharged the hand warmers just in case, ready to offer some temporary relief. It’s always his extremities that suffer the most, as if the cold targets him personally, like a sniper.

The air temperature definitely felt colder than where the mercury settled at 8 degrees, it was a chilly wind. That’s winter for you: the thermometer says one thing, your face says another. Even I, on my lunchtime fast walk, had increased the pace to try and warm the cockles. This is never a good sign. When you, a man built for thermal efficiency, start walking like you’re late for a train, you know it’s Baltic.

So anyway, enough analysis, enough physiology, enough excuses. We’d better get fishing, hadn’t we!!!

The Arrow greeted us with that familiar winter indifference, sliding past quietly, pretending it hadn’t seen us. The sort of river that makes you whisper, not because you’ll spook the fish, but because it feels like a church where chub are the congregation and you’re very late. Sam, blew on his hands, and looked at me with the expression of a man who has made a terrible but educational mistake.

It didn’t take long to catch the first chub, which was mildly annoying because I’d barely settled into my role as Supreme Commander of Excuses. A couple of missed pull rounds in the opening swim didn’t help matters, nor did the swim feeder, which shot past the chub’s noses like a low-flying missile and almost certainly sent them off for counselling. 

Still, optimism lingered like the smell of damp canvas and crushed hemp, so we did what all sensible anglers do when things go slightly wrong: we legged it up the river pretending it was all part of a cunning master plan.

Roving upstream, we fished every swim that looked remotely chubby—under overhanging branches, near slack water, beside mysterious bubbles that were definitely fish and not, as history suggests, something decomposing. 

It didn’t take long to find them. The first fish nudged the scales at a pound, which is the angling equivalent of a polite handshake. But as we pushed further up the Arrow and onto the Alne, the fish improved, as did Sam’s smugness, which grew with each bend of the rod and each theatrical sigh. At this point, Sam more or less annexed the rod. He manned it. He captained it. I was demoted to net boy, commentator, and occasional provider of tea. 

Five chub came to hand, all his, bar one for me, plus one that came off mid-battle after giving him a proper runaround, darting about like it had an urgent appointment elsewhere. I offered words of wisdom throughout, mostly beginning with “What you should have done is…”, which were ignored with commendable discipline.

They weren’t monsters, these chub, but they were proper river fish, and the afternoon slipped by in that agreeable way that only happens when the light softens, the bites keep coming, and your fishing buddy is having a genuinely cracking time.

Sam certainly was, which was good though I couldn’t help noticing that his best mate and angler Matthew is arriving Saturday lunchtime and they’re off magnet fishing on the local canals. Staying over, too. Apparently, I’m now second best to rusty shopping trolleys and Victorian padlocks.

Still, all things considered, it was a fine afternoon. Good company, obliging fish, and the comforting knowledge that while I may have lost the rod, the glory, and possibly my standing in the friendship hierarchy, I retained the most important thing of all: the blog post. And as every angler knows, that’s where the real trophies live, shame those other bloggers that have fallen off the radar don't think the same way 🎣