Warwickshire Avon - Bad Knots and Baculiforms

The little Jimny stood there, lonely as a wet spaniel in a thunderstorm, parked dutifully on the desolate third floor of the multistorey staff car park. No other cars in sight. Not even the chirpy red Fiat 500 with the missing hubcap or that dubious Skoda that smelled like old ham and regret. Just the Jimny. Just me. Just corporate decay.

You see, when you’ve had three rounds of redundancies in six years, it doesn't take a spreadsheet wizard to realise the writing is probably not just on the wall it's been etched in with a Dremel and underlined in red marker by the lovely Katie from HR with no soul and a collection of novelty mugs. The "Fun Committee" stopped funning years ago, and even Julien from operations, usually an eternal optimist with a drawer full of biscuits, had recently started referring to life as "a long wait for cake and disappointment."  

So, yes, working from home seemed a more appealing option, especially when your office resembles a library post-apocalypse and the vending machine only stocks stale crisps and those monster energy drinks. But I’m not bitter. Not me. I’m off soon  to pastures new! A new job! A design studio again! People who actually want you around. I might even have a chair and my OWN desk that doesn’t slowly descend of its own accord during Team's meetings.

9lb 11oz River Wye 

But until then, a couple of days a week in the office suits me just fine. Gives me a chance to say goodbye to the survivors, exchange awkward half-hugs and “we must stay in touch” lies, and spend a few last moments with the Jimny, who, like me, enjoys solitude and making unwise choices in mud.

Now, last weekend's salvation arrived in the form of the River Wye, which for me is like a warm bubble bath for the soul, albeit one full of silt, chub, and the occasional crisp packet. 

Honestly though, if heaven had a postcode, it’d be somewhere near Hereford with a tackle shop just down the road and a tea van that did bacon rolls so strong you could re-attach scaffolding with the grease. That said, the fishing's not just a hobby anymore. 

It's a necessary form of mental therapy cheaper than a psychologist and sometimes comes with a slug of tea. Retirement dreams may be a little way off, but I’ve been chipping away at the pensions, like a squirrel stashing nuts and occasionally checking the value with all the wide-eyed optimism of someone opening their electricity bill.

The property’s 'almost' paid for, and if it weren’t for the fact I’ve got mouths to feed and a lawn that still needs mowing, I’d probably sack it all off now, buy a battered old campervan do a Phil Smith, and follow the barbel runs like some sort of leathery-skinned fish-obsessed roadie ready to swim jump at every available opportunity. 

But alas, here I remain. At least for now.

The plan was simple after raiding the freezer and getting a Crosta & Mollica Stromboli Pizza at the parking place of convenience, scalded pellet and method feeder the same method that had done the business down the Wye. 

Light gear, subtle approach, and the tactical deployment of a chair that had seen better days. Down on the Avon, the water was low, slow, still, I was hopeful for a bite, there seems to be some good fish here. 

It's only 20 minutes away this stretch which is about the same as the WBAS syndicate stretch where those barbel are few and far between and ok I've caught them on the stretch before, but not for a while. It's nice to have one's string pulled once or twice now isn't it. Anyway those other anglers on this stretch, you know who you are, ta for the info, it's always appreciated. 

Now there’s something about a quiet river at dusk that whispers of promise, especially when you’ve spent the best part of two hours sat behind rods that might as well have been in the garage, for all the interest they’d had. Not a tremble. Not a twitch. Nothing. I’d have had more action watching paint dry in a wind tunnel. But optimism is a dangerous thing in angling, and mine was beginning to feel like a bad investment.

Now, it’s one thing to fish poorly quite another to start lobbing gear into trees like some overzealous chimp at a casting competition. One enthusiastic swing too many and off goes one of my prized method feeders, soaring majestically into the nearest sycamore like a Newtonian experiment gone wrong. If there was a robin nesting in there, it’s now got a new garden ornament.

Grumbling like a pensioner in a bus queue, I re-rigged with my barbel standby an open-ended feeder setup I could tie in my sleep, assuming I hadn’t already nodded off due to the sheer inactivity. Light was fading, stomach rumbling, and just as I was mentally weighing up whether a man could survive the night on half a packet of smoky bacon crisps, BANG! A bite. A real one.

Cue the chaos. Rod hooped, line zipping an honest-to-goodness barbel with steam in its fins. We battled. I imagined victory. And then... slack. The kind of slack that makes your heart fall into your boots and your vocabulary turn blue. One minute I’m connected to a brute, the next I’m reeling in line like a man pulling up a kite with no string. Rig gone. Hook, feeder — the whole lot. I sat back in stunned silence, reviewing the crime scene. Knot failure? Fish too clever? Cosmic punishment for that feeder-flinging incident earlier?

Still, as I stared into the now-barbel-less gloom, trying to resist the urge to launch my entire tackle box into the 'Von, I had to concede at least the fish are turning up. That’s progress, isn’t it? Small mercies and all that. I re-rigged in a sulk and saw out the last half hour under a sky now as empty as my landing net.

They say you learn something every session. Tonight, I learned that sycamores don’t like feeders, dusk is the most treacherous time for dreams, and barbel have a wicked sense of humour.