Now Sean, smug as a cat in a creamery, only went and caught what we think is Barbara the Barbel the other week. Thirteen pound ten ounces of sheer bronze magnificence. A fish so wide across the shoulders you’d half expect it to have its own postcode. Meanwhile, yours truly is still waiting for even a polite enquiry. If Barbara is the duchess of the syndicate stretch, then I’m the poor fool loitering outside the palace gates with a Tesco meal deal and a rapidly cooling flask of tea.
But still, there’s something about this bit of river. Maybe it’s the fact I usually have it to myself, or maybe it’s the nagging thought that one day just one day I might actually catch something that isn’t small enough to fit in a Kinder Egg capsule.
The solitude is priceless, though, especially when you factor in the convenience. For short sessions it’s perfect—though "short" is relative when you spend most of that time moaning about the wind, re-tying hooklinks you didn’t need to change, and regretting that extra slice of pork pie.
Ah yes, the wind. If there’s one thing guaranteed to turn me into a muttering, hat-wearing misanthrope, it’s a stiff, cold crosswind that whips the bank like an over-enthusiastic dominatrix. Out came the beanie hat, the one that makes me look like a budget extra from Fargo.
The plan was simple enough. A feeder packed with krill groundbait, small mixed pellets, and topped off with a delicate little wafter something dainty enough to tempt a chub, but still suggestive enough that Barbara might fancy a nibble. Within half an hour I had a few plucks. Plucks! Not full-blooded wallops, mind you, just the piscine equivalent of a teenager poking you on Facebook circa 2007. But it was contact, and in this game that’s often as good as it gets.
Now, I should probably mention that my youngest son Sam is something of a pioneer in the field of bite detection. While most anglers rely on bobbins, quiver tips, or alarms that sound like an ambulance reversing through a kebab shop, Sam came up with the “bottom bite” method. This involves sitting squarely on the cork handle of the rod, so that any vibrations are transferred directly to the angler’s backside. Ingenious. Not exactly something NASA will be patenting anytime soon, but effective nonetheless.
I, being slightly less masochistic, have evolved the technique into a thigh-based system. Rod butt jammed against leg, wedged into the chair. It works too so well, in fact, that even when a suicidal minnow managed to impale itself on my hook, I felt the vibration. Poor little thing swam off afterwards, looking a bit like someone who’d just walked into a glass door at full pelt but pretending they meant to do it. I can only hope it survives to tell the tale to its minnow mates down at the reed bed.
Then it happened. As dusk closed in and the wind died down for a blessed five minutes, the tip slammed round in a proper three-foot twitch. Not one of your namby-pamby trembles, this was a bite so violent it nearly catapulted my beanie hat straight into the river. I struck like a man possessed visions of Barbara already dancing before me only to be met with absolutely sod all resistance. Nada. Zilch. Fresh air on the other end. My heart said barbel, my brain said chub, but my hook said, “You’ve been mugged, son.”
After that? Silence. Forty-five more minutes of complete and utter nothingness. The river went deader than a Nokia 3210 without Snake. No plucks, no twitches, not even the faintest tremor on the line. The sort of silence where you start questioning life choices, wondering why you didn’t just stay at home and rewatch Inspector Morse with a whisky in hand.
And yet, despite all that, I’ll be back. Probably this week, in-fact as I type this afterwork. Probably with bread flake hair-rigged in some daft over-complicated way. Probably still chasing that greedy old Chevin that’s got my name etched into his scales. That’s fishing though, isn’t it? Eternal hope in the face of endless disappointment.
So yes, if you’ve got a spare bag of luck lying around, do send it my way. Either that, or point me towards a river where the barbel queue up like tourists outside Greggs.
Until then, it’s back to blanking.
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