It’s fair to say that, in angling terms, I’ve developed the stubbornness of a donkey that’s just been offered a salad instead of a carrot. I keep trudging back to the syndicate stretch like some misguided pilgrim, convinced that if I just sit there long enough with my bread, meat, pellets and optimism, the barbel will eventually give in.
But as Einstein allegedly once muttered (probably after losing a big tinca), “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” By that logic, I am officially insane. I should probably have this stretch of river registered as a care facility for the terminally optimistic.
The “master plan” and I use the term as loosely as one might describe a politician’s expenses claim was to target the chub specifically. None of this “wait four hours for a single barbel pull” nonsense. Oh no. This was to be tactical, deliberate, laser-guided piscatorial warfare. Armed with bread mash, a chub rod delicate enough to register the hiccups of a passing gudgeon, and a misplaced sense of destiny, I felt sure I’d crack it this time. Spoiler alert: I did not crack it. The only thing cracking was my patience, like a Rich Tea biscuit in a builder’s tea.
Bread mash went in. I let the swims rest, as one does when pretending to be a seasoned campaigner rather than someone who Googled “how to fish for chub” while in the works toilet. Then came the moment of truth. Rod out, bread flake on, sat there with all the poise of a man who had forgotten he had Willis-Ekbom and would soon be flapping about like a demented heron trying to swat invisible flies.
The bites came quickly enough with a tame moorhen watching in awe. Trouble is, they were less “chub confidently wolfing down my offering” and more “minnows trying to whittle away a loaf of Hovis one molecule at a time.” Each twitch on the quivertip was amplified to seismic proportions by my delicate glass tip. NASA probably picked up the tremors and are currently re-routing satellites. I struck at a few, of course, and each time succeeded only in providing the minnows with slapstick entertainment. Somewhere down there, there’s a shoal of them doubled over in hysterics.
And then miracle of miracles one bite had that unmistakable oomph. The sort that makes your heart skip and your arm go into autopilot. For a split second I was certain it was a barbel, until I remembered I wasn’t actually fishing for barbel and had only myself to blame for such treacherous thoughts. Anyway, I missed it. Naturally. I could miss a fish if it threw itself at my landing net wearing a hi-vis vest.
As dusk arrived, I told myself: This is it. This is prime chub hour. This is the bit where the blog post gets interesting. What actually happened was that the swim went as silent as a library in a power cut. No pulls, no plucks, not even a cheeky liner. Just me, staring at the glow of a torch-illuminated tip like some budget airport runway attendant waiting for a plane that never lands.
After forty minutes of this lunar vigil, my restless legs were in full swing and I looked less like an angler and more like a man performing interpretive dance to an audience of moths.
Eventually, dignity or what was left of it demanded retreat. Another blank. Another tail-between-legs march back to the car. At this point I think the river’s playing hard to get, but frankly it’s getting boring.
I know I should change something tactics, venue, species, underwear brand anything really, just to break the rut. But instead I’ll almost certainly return, convinced once again that this is the time, this is the session, this is the blog post that doesn’t end with me confessing failure. Until then, dear readers, you’ll just have to enjoy the comedy of errors. Because if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. And I’ve already done enough of that on the riverbank.
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