Now there’s a certain art to tactical child abandonment, especially when it’s dressed up in the wholesome veneer of “fishing with your son.” And so it was, armed with a tackle box, a float rod, a landing net, and a kilo of wriggling optimism (also known as maggots), I deposited young Sam with a couple of his mates at Lucy’s Mill in Stratford. I say “deposited” because it had all the grace and ceremony of unloading a barrow of turnips only these turnips can tie a half blood knot and demand sausage rolls every hour.
With Sam safely ensconced and fiddling with floats like a young Izaak Walton with ADHD, I found myself with a rare and golden sliver of time what one might call The Dad Window. It’s that brief period when you can fish guilt-free, knowing the offspring is similarly engaged and unlikely to fall in or be swept off downstream by a belligerent swan.
Now, the air was thick. Not just “warm-summer's-evening” thick, but thick like a chip shop's back room, the kind of weather where clouds loiter with intent and the sky crackles like a poorly wired toaster. You didn’t need a barometer; your knees knew the rain was coming. Possibly sideways.
So with urgency in my step (and a slight whiff of wet maggot juice in my car), I set up a light float rig one of those elegant, simple affairs that feels like poetry until your line gets caught in a hawthorn and flicked a couple of maggots out into what can only be described as gin-clear water. Honestly, I’ve seen less transparency in Stamers government briefings. You could read the small print on a submerged Rizla.
It wasn’t long before I skylined the swim like an absolute amateur and spooked a group of chub that looked like they’d been training for the River Olympics. They vanished upstream in a flash, probably muttering something about “bloody humans” and “float rods on a Sunday.”
But all was not lost. The bites came thick and fast dace, bleak, roach, and chublets so small they’d struggle to pull the skin off a rice pudding. It was fun, frenetic, and had all the subtlety of a toddler on a trampoline. Forty-five minutes in, my wrist was aching, my bait box resembled the floor of a popcorn factory, and I was starting to wonder whether all the big fish had taken a day trip to Evesham.
Then, just as I was contemplating a premature tea and a dry sock change, the float buried. Not dipped. Not bobbed. Buried. Gone. Submerged like it owed the river money.
And it was clear immediately this wasn’t one of the tiddlers. No, this had shoulders. It headed straight for the opposite bank with all the subtlety of a tipsy rhino, and I knew, with grim certainty, that I was connected to a proper chub. The Drennan Acolyte Ultra bent beautifully (some might say heroically, others might say expensively) and after a spirited tussle full of sideways lunges, boil-plumes and choice words, the fish slipped into the net like it had just remembered a prior engagement.
A proper chub. Not a record-breaker, but one of those river fish that makes you grin like you’ve just reversed into a lamppost and realised it was only your bumper.
I was just about to have another trot when the clouds finally made good on their earlier threats. A fork of lightning cracked in the distance close enough to raise hairs and make you regret every carbon fibre item on your person.
Session over. But as I squelched back to the car with the chub memory warming my chest and the weather trying to soak my pants, I had that unmistakable feeling: Fishing Fix Achieved.
And Sam? He caught nothing but small fish like me, and stories. Which, let’s be honest, are the most important fish of all.
0 comments:
Post a Comment