Funny how a team can go from fifty dreamers to over four hundred engineers, turning a sketch into the Polestar 5 a 900-horsepower aluminium bonded body GT monster going down the production line then poof the hatchet CEO decides it’s all a bit too ambitious and back to rebadged Volvos and Zeekrs we go. Last night’s farewell was a proper knees-up though, a final lap with the usual suspects before everyone drifts off to new pastures, I escaped a few months ago after taking voluntary redundancy but some were happy to stay to find out what came next, and sadly what came next was the announcement that the whole UK operation was shutting down at Christmas.
I reacquainted myself with body weight amounts of Rum Bongo cocktails Malibu, Wray & Nephew, Appleton Estate and enough tropical fruit to qualify as one of your five-a-day. Close cousins to the Painkillers I first met sailing around the BVIs in a Lagoon 440 catamaran… and nearly as dangerous.
I grabbed an Uber back from Brum at 2:00am at the exact moment the DJ should’ve taken a long, hard look at his life choices. Cotton Eye Joe. Cotton. Eye. Joe. At that hour. Honestly, no repetitive beats to be seen all night, a wedding disco on steroids .I was still mostly compos mentis, to be fair but then my liver is a seasoned veteran at this point. Proper war-torn. Dunk it in a cup of tea and it’d hold together better than a hobnob.
That was all well and good, however I woke up this morning with a head like wet cardboard, craving fresh air and forgiveness. But for a send-off to six very good years and some of the best work parties I’ve known it was worth every fuzzy minute.
Fresh air required !!!!
I still remember that dace. Twelve ounces of pure Alne perfection a proper bar of silver, glimmering in the net like it had just escaped being made into jewellery.
Of course, the river had other ideas.
It always does.
It’s the Alne.
Not the elegant, nature-in-balance ones you see in BBC documentaries narrated by morally upright people with warm tones. No, these were the type that roll up uninvited, eat everything that isn’t nailed down, and treat your carefully nurtured stretch of river like an all-inclusive buffet.
Not just otters and herons, but now Cormorants !!!
On the Alne.
I mean, honestly. That’s like seeing a giraffe in a corner shop.
They stuck out like black hoodie wearing teenagers at a village fete dark, sulking, and clearly there to ruin someone’s day. Before long the bites dried up. Dace sightings became about as common as winning scratch cards. And after an entire season of soul-sapping blanking, even my stubbornness gave in. I gave up the syndicate ticket before it finished the job of crushing my spirit.
But anglers never really quit, do we? We just redirect the madness.
So I picked up a new club book after given the lowdown from @BuffaloSi, it was one of those impulse purchases that sits unread for months while you sulk about fish that don’t know how good you are. I’d dipped a toe at the start of the season, but the conditions were biblical: hot, bright, low, gin-clear, minnow riddled and entirely designed to amplify my failures. So I did what any responsible angler would do…
…I ignored it and went home.
But now — NOW — the rivers have colour. The sort of perfect, turd hue that makes you believe anything is possible. Except catching barbel. Never barbel. But still it’s the sort of colour that puts a little swagger in your step and a lot of hope in your over-stuffed ruckbag.
And with the Christmas holidays approaching, spirits high, motivation semi-functional, and bladder capacity reduced by festive ale, I decided I’d better give the new stretch another seeing-to. A post-working from home roving session. Nothing too ambitious we know how those end but enough to scope out swims and see if any dace were willing to give me so much as a hint that I wasn’t wasting my life.
Enter: the bread feeder approach.
Simple. Pure. Classic.
Also the angling equivalent of turning up at a nightclub in trousers from M&S and hoping for the best.
Liquidised bread into the feeder. A thumbnail flake on the hook. Wander, cast, wander, cast, mutter something inspirational to yourself, repeat. Perfect for covering water, or for looking productive when you’re actually just faffing about hoping someone upstream has fed the fish already.
Now there comes a moment in every angler’s life when you realise you’ve finally lost the plot. For some it’s when they start talking to barbel as if they’re rescue dogs. For others it’s when they begin carrying more glugs, dips and potions than the average medieval apothecary. For me, blog readers, it was when I found myself at the kitchen table, eyed suspiciously by the wife, dripping geranium essential oil into a bag full of liquidised bread like a budget aromatherapist with a questionable sideline.
This all started, of course, with Fishflix. I blame them entirely. One minute you're innocently binge-watching Martin Bowler catching roach the size of dinner plates, the next thing you know he’s whispering sweet nothings about “geranium rose oil” turning fish heads like it’s Gordon Gino and Fred visit the Avon. Well, if it’s good enough for Bowler and a roach with an unfortunate appetite, then it’s good enough for me. Eight quid on eBay. Bargain. Or madness. Hard to tell these days.
So there I was, rocking up to the first swim on the River Alne, armed with my rose-scented liquidised bread for the feeder and smelling faintly like I’d spent the night locked in the ladies’ aisle of Boots. Cast into a slack bit of water by a snag, sat back, breathed in the perfume, contemplated my sanity… and bang nibbles. Actual, honest-to-God nibbles within five minutes. Then carnage. Chaos. Tip-tapping, rod-bending drama. My first fish: a chublet. But a chublet that absolutely reeked of success (and possibly geranium).
Now what I didn’t expect what nobody expects is to hit the Alne on one of its rare “Yes, alright then, have some fish” moods. Because as rivers go, the Alne is moodier than a teenager asked to empty a dishwasher. Normally I’m lucky if I get a single disgruntled tap that feels more like a leaf having second thoughts. But on this day? Every swim had that electric feel, that whisper of possibility, that quiver in the rod that makes you sit up straighter like a dog hearing a cheese wrapper open.
And the chub the gluttonous, greedy, “we’ve not fed since 1997” chub were absolutely having it. I lost count after ten. Ten! Me! On the Alne! Usually the Alne gives me one fish and a lecture on humility. But I was into fish after fish, like some kind of budget-range Matt Hayes with slightly worse hair and a suspicious floral odour.
The dace, of course, were nowhere to be seen. They didn’t stand a chance against the chub that were piling in like it was the early-bird buffet at a garden centre. The biggest went 3 lb 8 oz, which on most rivers doesn’t warrant a parade, but on the Alne? That’s practically a local celebrity. A fish worthy of a plaque. Perhaps even a small statue.
Was it the geranium oil? The mythical snake oil? The essence of “SAGA reader on date night”? Who knows. But I tell you what: when the angling stars align, when the river mood swings in your favour, and when your bait smells like an elderly lady called Maureen who says “Ooh that’s lovely” a lot sometimes, just sometimes, magic happens.
And magic it was. One of those sessions that reminds you why we lug tackle bags through mud, why we tolerate the odd blank that bruises the soul, and why we occasionally smell like we’ve been hugged by a florist.
The river gave. The chub gorged. And I left grinning like an idiot, smelling faintly of roses, and wondering if maybe just maybe I’m onto something.
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