The River Arrow (and Alne) - Mudsoakedness and Meanderings

The forecast, that modern oracle of disappointment, had confidently predicted rain, and for once it was bang on the money. Not the pleasant, poetic drizzle beloved of gardeners and romantics, but proper cold rain, the sort that sneaks down your collar and makes you question every decision you’ve ever made, including but not limited to buying fishing tackle and learning to read. I stood at the window, mug of tea in hand, staring out like a condemned man granted a final view, weighing up whether fishing in freezing rain was a noble act of dedication or simply another example of my complete lack of common sense.

Cold rain when fishing, as we all know, is not exactly enjoyable. In fact, it ranks just below dental surgery performed by a badger and just above standing on a plug in the dark. Still, the Arrow / Alne had been checked, cross-checked, and then checked again on the local gauges, and while it was still up, it had dropped a little since Friday. This, in angling logic, is known as “promising,” which translates roughly to “it will probably be awful, but you’ll go anyway.”

After negotiating the muddy field a task that involved less walking and more interpretive slipping I parked up and immediately wondered why I was bothering. You see, the river was chocolate brown, the kind of brown that suggests it has recently consumed a small village upstream and is still digesting it. None of the colour had dropped out at all. It was opaque, angry, and looked like it would happily sweep away anything lighter than a Land Rover. Bites, I knew, would be hard to come by. Possibly imaginary.

However, this time I had maggots with me. This fact alone filled me with a sense of preparedness entirely disproportionate to their actual effectiveness. Some gonks proper ones, not half-hearted had appeared in one of the swims in similar conditions recently, so I had that nugget of optimism rattling around in my head like a loose nut in a biscuit tin. Armed with this fragile hope, I headed up to the so-called banker swim.

The banker swim, for those unfamiliar, is a swim that reliably produces fish provided the river is at the correct height, colour, temperature, mood, and planetary alignment. On this occasion it was still pretty unfishable. In fact, it resembled a washing machine set to “obliterate.” I gave it fifteen minutes out of politeness, but the back eddy went from stationary to something resembling the River Ganges in monsoon season. I half expected to see a cow float past.

So, on the rove I went, which sounds romantic until you realise it involves trudging along soggy banks with all your worldly possessions hanging off you like a mobile jumble sale. It was a good walk too, though thankfully rewarded when I found a nice slack underneath a bridge. The liquidised bread feeder hit hard bottom with that reassuring “donk” that instantly improves your mood, and the large, vulgar piece of visible bread flake was hovering enticingly within five minutes.

Then it happened. A couple of tentative plucks. The quiver tip nodded, paused, and then went into full meltdown. Absolute carnage. The kind of bite that makes you forget the rain, the cold, and the fact you’re standing ankle-deep in something that smells like regret. “A fish! A fish! A fish!” I announced to no one in particular, like a man who has finally found water in the desert.

The fish, clearly offended at being disturbed, tried all the tricks in the book. Scraping, lunging, sulking, and generally behaving like a creature that had not consented to this interaction. Still, it was in the net soon enough, a proper little chub, and absolutely worth the trip out on its own. I admired it briefly, offered a sincere apology, and slipped it back to continue whatever important chub business it had been attending to.

More swims were roved. Some looked good. Some looked terrible. Some looked good but lied. I even switched to maggots at one point, largely out of boredom, but was rewarded only with minnow rattles those irritating, confidence-destroying trembles that make you strike at shadows and feel foolish for doing so.

Eventually, I headed back down to the end of the stretch, where I found a nice slack at the end of a reed bed and managed a 2lb chub. A proper fish, that one, and very welcome. 

The next swim produced two unmissable bites, both missed, which is an impressive achievement in itself. After that, it went completely dead, as rivers often do, like they’ve decided you’ve had enough joy for one day.

One last swim upstream, next to a tree, offered some slack water and another small chub, clearly a bread muncher of refined tastes. And that was that. Three chub in atrocious conditions, which in angling terms counts as a roaring success and will be recounted for years as “one of those days.” Back home, there was no rest for the wicked. The beef brisket needed to be prepped before getting in the shower, thankfully filling the house with smells far more pleasant than wet riverbank. 

Cold, damp, slightly battered, but quietly smug, I reflected that it had been an enjoyable morning after all despite the rubbish weather, the mud, the brown river, and the nagging suspicion that I might do exactly the same thing again next week.

After all, this is fishing. And if it made sense, we’d have given it up years ago.