Westward Ho! - Grockles and Guillemots

You’ll have to forgive me if this particular account of piscatorial pursuit drifts somewhat off-course, like a badly anchored crab bait on a spring tide. That, I assure you, is entirely intentional. I’ve just returned from another jaunt down to Westward Ho! yes, with the exclamation mark, which gives it the air of a place forever surprised at its own existence.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Westward Ho!? Isn’t that the place where your chips taste faintly of sand and where the amusement arcades still give out 2p coins like it’s the 1980s? Well, yes, but don’t be so quick to mock. For us, it’s something of a second home, a family bolt-hole, and as ever, the holiday didn’t disappoint even if the fishing did.

The stunning vista on the last night 

The town, you see, has had a bit of a renaissance thanks to one Rob Braddock, who appears to own roughly 93% of the place. If you so much as buy a pint of milk or a stick of rock, there’s a good chance Rob’s getting a cut. But unlike most seaside towns where investment means sticking up an Aldi and painting a bench, he’s genuinely kept the place spruced up. Westward Ho! is not your peeling-paint, rusting-helter-skelter kind of destination. No, it’s a seaside town still clinging to the idea that England can be lovely if you squint past the windbreaks.

It helps, too, that my brother Chris escaped Coventry nine years ago and made the place his home. To his friends, he’s just Chris. To me, of course, he’s the identical twin who got away, which apparently is endlessly amusing to the locals. His middle daughter is now at uni in Southampton however she made an appearance which was nice as did his youngest daughter. 

They call him by name, then stare at me like they’ve had one pint too many and can’t quite work out how I’ve duplicated. I must admit, it does make me feel like a novelty act at times “Look, it’s the other one!” but after countless evenings in the pub, I’m now welcomed as something between a local and a particularly well-tanned grockle.

But I digress. My mission this year was a simple one: catch a smooth hound. The humble dogfish wasn’t going to cut it this time. I had the bait, I had the ambition, and I had the tides stacked against me in such a way that even Neptune would have raised an eyebrow.

With Summerlands Tackle now shut (a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions if you ask me), I’d stocked up beforehand: crab and squid, the smooth hound’s equivalent of a Michelin star menu. Sam (sporting his new haircut) was keen to join the pursuit, so between family commitments, bodyboarding sessions, and being dragged waist-deep into an Atlantic that felt like it had only recently been part of a glacier, I slotted in four sessions of fishing.

Four. Sessions. Ten hours in total. Do you know how many bites I had? None. Zero. Zilch. Even the ever-reliable dogfish, the aquatic equivalent of a drunk bloke staggering into a kebab shop at 2 a.m., failed to show.

Now, I’ve blanked before. Many times, in fact. But there’s something uniquely soul-sapping about blanking in Westward Ho! You stand there, rod tips nodding only to the rhythm of the waves, while around you the scenery is so ridiculously pretty that it feels like you’re in a Visit Devon advert. Gulls wheel overhead, kids scream with joy on bodyboards, and your bait is being entirely ignored in a manner that makes you question your very existence.

Still, there were compensations. The family had a cracking time, the kids are improving on the boards every year, and I even found myself up to my neck in the sea on one occasion Quite why, I don’t know. The British sea is cold enough to make your internal organs reconsider their life choices, and I normally limit myself to paddling. 

But there I was, submerged like a seal impersonator, grinning manically while wondering if hypothermia sets in faster with age.

So yes, the smooth hound mission was a failure. A glorious, noble failure, but a failure nonetheless. Not a scale, not a fin, not even the faintest tug on the line to remind me that fish still exist. And yet, oddly enough, I didn’t mind. That’s the thing about Westward Ho! you go for the fishing, but you stay for the chaos, the family, and the faint smell of vinegar that seems to permeate the air.

Next stop: Lanzarote. Ten days in the sun, and with any luck, I’ll catch something other than a chill. Smooth hounds may have eluded me, but there’s every chance I’ll return with tales of exotic fish, volcanic backdrops, and a sunburnt nose. Until then, I’ll keep thinking fondly of Westward Ho! the place that never fails to deliver, even when the fish don’t. 

The DJ sundown sessions at the Fairway Buoy concluded the holiday rather nicely. Oh before I finish, lack of competition down these parts does sometime mean the the food can be a bit hit and miss but Morans thai restaurant is decent as is the Pig and Olive pizza. The choice of beer, well that's another matter. 😀 The Beaver in Appledore, don't bother, that's all I'm saying, like me it's gone right down over the years we have frequented it. 

Warwickshire Avon - Swadish & Swingometers

Right then. Fishing. Remember that?

It’s taken a bit of a back seat of late, truth be told. Not because I’ve lost interest oh no, far from it but because the Warwickshire Avon resembles more of a mid-range mineral water these days than a river. Low, gin clear, and quieter than a vegan at a hog roast. Not exactly barbel-friendly is it? Those crafty old lumps don’t get to twenty pounds by being reckless in daylight.

Still, if the river won’t provide therapy, then there’s always techno. (well not quite)

So off I went to Glasgow last weekend, where the beats were deep, the bass was heavier than the 2 12" Cerwin Vega's complete with huge amplifier in the Metro GTI when I was 21. The venue was intimate enough to see the DJ's ear hairs vibrate with each drop. Selador Records, Dave Parry and Dave Seaman at the Radisson Red’s Skyline Bar, with Rodriguez Jr providing a live set essentially a rave in a greenhouse, suspended several storeys up, with a soundsystem capable of rearranging your pancreas.

Nine hours of 50hz-fuelled ecstasy (the frequency, not the pill this is Glasgow, not Gatecrasher 1999) and by Sunday morning, my tinnitus usually dormant unless I accidentally touch the oven with wet hands had returned like a long-lost mate offering to crash on the sofa for a few nights.

"Mick are you not too old for this?" I hear you ask. (Sam says it all the time)

Well, when I’m nodding along in sync with the sub-bass while ordering a pint of beer and Googling “Can earplugs still be cool?”, I think the answer is maybe. But I’ll be the judge of that, thank you very much. And food well, the calories were flowing freer than the Avon is right now. The culinary highlight came courtesy of Swadish by Ajay Kumar, a tasting menu so exquisite I briefly considered taking up food blogging and hanging up the rods. 

Lamb pepper roast, black spices, coconut, Rumali roti, and preserved lemon like a balti that got a first-class degree. If you ever wondered what finesse tastes like, it’s that dish. It was one of those meals where as a foodie you can’t help but take a picture before tucking in, despite looking like a berk in front of strangers.

Anyway, back to reality. (Via the superb Bon Accord Whisky bar !!)

Midway through digesting both the lamb and my Glasgow hangover, an email popped up from one of my blog readers (you know who you are the one who still uses Comic Sans in emails). 

Two twenty-pound barbel caught on the Warwickshire Avon. Two. Twenty. One of them from a stretch I know more intimately than my kettle’s limescale situation. 

Now Glasgow is a city with plenty to do with some great free museums only tainted like many cities are these days with the scurge of the Uber eat kamikaze masked up riders and out of place menacing street corner frequenters.

Now, I’m not saying it was he who peddles the pinkies spreading Chinese whispers, but there’s only one way to separate fact from Facebook fiction: grab a rod, lob out a bait, and sit in the gloom looking slightly suspicious to any trespassing dog walkers, thankfully despite the horrendous wind the plane took off from Glasgow airport fine, and oddly it was one of the smoothest flights I've had for a while.  

 
A smash and grab session was hastily arranged. Rods on the Jimny, bait (stinky, homemade, and illegal in three EU countries) in the bucket, flask brewed, and off to the river I went like a barbel-obsessed bat out of hell. The plan: bait and wait. Dusk till done.

And honestly? It was glorious.

Not because I caught anything of note spoiler alert, I didn’t but because sitting on the Avon’s banks, in the half-light, with clouds creeping over the fields and owls hooting like rave MCs on a comedown, was exactly what I needed to realign the chakras after a weekend of hedonism.

 
So yes, the river might be low, the fish might be shy, and my ears might still be ringing like a fire drill in a biscuit tin but you can’t beat the peace of a quiet riverbank.

…unless, of course, someone’s genuinely had two twenties.

In which case, I’m fishing every evening until my bivvy grows moss and my missus files a missing persons report. Joke, that is not me at all but my PB of 12lb and 14 ounces is easily beatable on the Warwickshire Avon with the fish that seem to be swimming about there at the moment. 

Anyway nothing much to report for the first go for a big Bertha !! I baited one swim came back to it after 45 minutes with nothing bigger than a 8 ounce perch milling around and a load of bait fish, and then decided to go all out in the main swim. 

Almost 2 hours fished in to dusk and a tad beyond to only a couple of chub snatches and pulls but it was a nice swim I've not really fished this way before having targeted others species before and I can see why a big fish would like it here given the challenging summer conditions. Some depth but also some extra oxygen from the oxygenated water.

Warwickshire Avon - Selfies and Selenography

The Warwickshire Avon, that meandering mistress of hope and heartbreak, greeted me with her usual murky indifference. I arrived armed not with optimism (that died years ago somewhere near Bidford), but with a small rechargeable light, a questionable rig, and enough bait to sink a modest canoe.

You see, someone had asked me recently how I manage those moody, torch-lit trophy shots without invoking the demonic flash of a phone camera from 2006. The answer is delightfully unsophisticated: a £12 dimmable light, bought in haste from the darker corners of eBay, wedged awkwardly in the bank with a bendy bankstick and sheer will. It’s always in my bag, next to the emergency pork pies and philosophical despair.

This session was supposed to be a quick smash-and-grab—no midnight vigils (there are rules after all !!), no existential crises by the water's edge, just in, out, barbel about. Same peg as the near-double the other evening; a fish so fine I almost forgot to photograph it with my headlamp set to “interrogation mode.”

Today’s twist? The “Gluttonous Chub Poka-Yoke Rig”™. A concept borne not of science or field-tested data, but rather the caffeine-fuelled madness that strikes when you've blanked three times in a row and start imagining a rig that can outwit chub by being too delicious to resist yet oddly selective. The idea was simple: one enormous bait roughly the size of a golf ball, if that ball had spent time in a curry house and some freebies slung out for good measure.

I had just begun my careful setup when two of the Avon’s regulars plodded down the track. Lovely fellas, both more interested in chinwags than chub. Thursday is their social. Rods out, thermos open, bite alarms off. Fishing is incidental a performance piece more than a pursuit.

We exchanged pleasantries, a few jokes about barbel becoming an endangered species, and parted ways before they could notice that I was fishing with a bait large enough to choke a badger. First cast, textbook. PVA bag deployed, pellet sunk with promise. 

Gin-clear water glistened under the waning sun. Half an hour passed. Then it happened. A bite. A twitch. The sort of nod you’d expect from someone at a funeral buffet who’s just clocked the sausage rolls. Strike! Contact. Result? A chub so small it looked like it had been grown in a test tube. It swung in with all the grace of a wet sock. So much for the rig being chub-proof. More like chub-encouraging.

Still, the witching hour approached, and with it that deliciously pointless hope that something big and bewhiskered might make an appearance. I waited. The Avon gurgled. A bat flew into my rod, 5 times. I forgave it. 

The curfew loomed thirty minutes past official dusk. Enough time for a miracle, or at the very least, a half-hearted twitch. But alas, the rod tips remained static. 

Even the otters didn’t bother showing up. I reeled in with all the enthusiasm of someone checking a lottery ticket with two numbers and a bonus ball.

Blank? Technically yes. Spiritually? Also yes. But such is the way of the river.

I packed up, torch unused, head full of excuses, and trudged back to the car. You can’t win them all, but at least you can fail under moody lighting with style.