There comes a point in every angler’s season when the sensible thing to do would be to stay at home, polish one’s reels, and make peace with the ever-growing pile of tackle catalogues that have gathered by the side of the armchair. But alas, sense and angling are rarely bedfellows.
No, instead I found myself pulling on muddy boots at a time of morning when only milkmen, insomniacs, and owls should reasonably be awake. Why? Because I’d finally tracked down a Cadence Wand CR10, that mythical 10ft contraption that’s been seducing me through late-night eBay scrolling like a barmaid with a wink and a well-poured pint.
Now, the thing about buying a new rod is that you have to christen it properly. A rod sat at home, propped up in a corner, is like a Labrador that’s never seen a stick thrown it just won’t do. So, off I went to the River Alne, that sultry ribbon of Warwickshire water that I’d joined a new club specifically to molest with maggots.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Alne (My PB dace of 12 ounces came from there) . She’s fickle, she’s narrow, and she’s got more character than the local parish newsletter. But she’s also been hammered in recent years by cormorants and otters, the sort of predatory landlords who arrive uninvited, eat everything in the fridge, and then disappear without paying the rent.
After negotiating a padlocked gate, a small herd of suspicious-looking bulls, and the creeping thought that my life insurance probably doesn’t cover “death by bovine trampling in pursuit of dace,” I finally reached the water.
The river, though, wasn’t exactly playing the temptress. It was low, thin, and glittering in the morning light like a teenager’s bottle of cheap aftershave.
Still, I dutifully lobbed out the new Cadence with a mini feeder stuffed with groundbait and a couple of sacrificial maggots. Cue the minnows. !! Now, I’ve nothing against minnows. They are, after all, the river’s equivalent of a kebab shop always open, always busy, and slightly greasy if you hold them too long.
But dear Lord, this was biblical. No sooner had my bait touched the water than the Cadence tip was rattling away as though I’d hooked Moby Dick. Strike after strike resulted not in dace, nor chub, nor barbel, but in minnows the size of a man’s thumb, each one flapping indignantly as if to say, “What did you expect, mate? It’s all us down here.”
After half an hour of this nonsense, I abandoned maggots entirely and switched to breadflake. Bread, I reasoned, is the thinking man’s bait. Civilised, wholesome, the staff of life. Unfortunately, the fish disagreed. A couple of swims later, with not so much as a pluck, I admitted defeat and tramped back to the car in search of more forgiving waters.
The Warwickshire Avon was my next stop. Now, the Avon at this time of year is clearer than a freshly polished gin glass. You can practically see the chub swimming along muttering, “Not him again.” I dropped into a favourite swim, a shady bend with a few obliging branches and, on occasion, chub that fancy themselves as heavyweight boxers. Out came the breadflake again, and out came the TFG chub rod, because if you’re going to get mocked by fish, you may as well use the proper stick for it.
For the first half an hour, nothing. Not even a twitch. I began to suspect that the chub were attending some sort of sub-aquatic committee meeting where the agenda read: “1) Avoid Newey. 2) Destroy bread. 3) Laugh behind weedbeds.”
Eventually, I decided to trot a few lumps of crust down the surface. Now, this woke them up. One by one, the chub appeared, ghosting up from the depths like fat policemen approaching a buffet table. Some of them were real bruisers too, the sort of fish that make you calculate, mid-cast, whether your landing net is entirely adequate or whether you should have brought scaffolding.
But here’s the rub. The chub were cautious. Ridiculously cautious. They’d nose the bread, roll it about a bit, then nibble off tiny pieces like fine diners dissecting a Michelin-starred canapé. My hookbait drifted down, and they’d follow it like great white sharks scenting a surfer, only to peel away at the last second with what I can only describe as an audible snigger.
I fluffed two strikes in quick succession one too early, one too late and on the third attempt managed to actually connect. The fish bolted straight under my feet and wedged itself in a snag I hadn’t even noticed. Cue some muttered oaths, and me staring at the water like a man who’s just had his wallet nicked on payday.
Finally, mercifully, I managed to net one. A modest chub, hardly the leviathan I’d been taunted with, but as fellow piscator Baz Peck sagely observes, “a fish is a fish.” Unfortunately, that was enough to send the rest of the shoal into absolute hysterics, vanishing upstream as though I’d turned up with a barbecue.
I tried another couple of swims on the trudge back, but by then the angling gods had clearly packed up for the afternoon. So, I conceded defeat, returned to the car, and drove home reflecting on the morning’s catalogue of errors. Still, the Cadence Wand had its baptism, I’d christened it with minnows, and in the peculiar mathematics of angling, that counts as a win.
Because here’s the thing: no matter how frustrating the fish, no matter how sunburnt the ears or muddy the boots, it always beats gardening.
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