The River Arrow - Detectorism and DiscursiveMeanderingness

I woke with that familiar, half-formed optimism that only an angler can truly appreciate: the belief that today might be the day, despite all evidence to the contrary gathered over decades of personal experience. A bite was required. Not desired, not hoped for required, like tea, oxygen, or a mild complaint about the weather.

The first act of the morning ritual was enacted with the solemnity of a pagan ceremony: checking the local river levels. The Arrow, that most contrary of rivers, looked fishable. Not ideal, mind. Still a little higher than I’d like, a little browner than I’d planned for in my imagination, but close enough to justify lying to myself.

Anyway, it’s only fifteen minutes by car to the stretch I’ve been fishing recently. Fifteen minutes is nothing in angling terms. You can waste fifteen minutes just tying a hooklength you’ll immediately cut off again because it “doesn’t feel right”. So off I went, threading my way along country lanes clearly designed in medieval times to accommodate one horse, a sack of turnips, and the occasional chicken with a death wish. And then, just as I hit the main road into town, there it was: the Line. A vast, unbroken conga of parked cars stretching into the distance like a metallic spawning run.

Now I don’t mind company, but my angling brain instantly did what it always does: Match fishing. I could see them in my mind’s eye already keepnets like submarine pens, stopwatches, men shouting numbers at one another with the intensity of air-traffic controllers. My fishing time, I feared, was about to be curtailed to something resembling a polite paddle.

I parked before the combination-locked gate, checked the club book (as one does, because rules are important and because it allows us to feel morally superior), and… nothing. No match. No warning. No ominous footnote saying “Abandon all hope ye who seek solitude.” Perhaps it was on Facebook. But I don’t use Facebook. I have enough ways of being confused and irritated without adding that particular circus to the repertoire.

Oh well. Get fishing anyway.

I headed straight to the banker swim under the bridge – a spot that has rescued many a blank and restored many a wounded ego. Five minutes in, I missed a couple of bites. Proper bites too. The sort that make your heart do that ridiculous little leap before immediately kicking you in the shins. Third time lucky though, and a fish was on. 

The water was a milky brown, perhaps six inches of visibility at best, but I was fishing visible white bread – a bait so bright it practically files a flight plan. The fish turned out to be a chub of about two pounds. Nothing to write to the record books about, but as every angler knows: a fish is a fish is a fish, and each one counts double if you’ve already begun mentally drafting a blog post about blanking.

As I landed it, an elderly gentleman appeared on the bridge, peering down like a benevolent gargoyle. Conversation followed, as it always does near bridges.

“Morning.”

“Morning.”

“Just to warn you,” he said, in the tone of a man announcing incoming weather or invading armies, “you’re about to be joined by a load of people.”

Ah. So it was a match then.

“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “Dirt fishermen. Metal detectorists. About sixty of us.”

Sixty.

Now I’m not one to judge. Fishing, after all, is basically just staring at water while holding a stick. Metal detecting is staring at fields while listening to beeps. Cousins, really. Still, the mental image of sixty headphone-wearing relic hunters descending upon my previously empty stretch of river was… unexpected.

He assured me they wouldn’t bother me, and to be fair they didn’t. Soon the banks were populated by an extraordinary parade of attire: full tactical commando outfits, as if expecting enemy fire from the reeds; carp-lifer chic (beanies, muted colours, expressions of permanent mild suffering); and then the outliers blazing red jackets visible from space, presumably to aid satellite navigation or alien contact. Mostly elderly men, but also kids and women, all united by the hopeful beep of buried history and the unshakeable belief that this next signal might be the big one.

I was full expecting to see Jeff Hatt from https://digregardless.blogspot.com/ but he didn't' appear. 

I roved on. The river was still high, but the slacks were doing their thing. A shallow back eddy produced a savage bite, followed by the inevitable snag-finding manoeuvre performed by all self-respecting chub. The next cast, however, resulted in redemption. Another fish on. And another later. And another. By the time the session wound down I’d landed six chub, the best nudging three pounds  not monsters, but honest fish, caught in honest conditions, while surrounded by a mobile museum of people earnestly failing to find anything.

Did they find treasure? From the snippets of conversation I overheard: no. Certainly not another Brownhills Hoard, that legendary £3 million stash discovered by Terry Herbert in a field belonging to Fred Johnson the sort of story that keeps detectorists detecting and anglers angling, both convinced that today might be the day everything changes.

As I packed up, the detectorists drifted away, pockets no heavier, spirits undimmed. I reflected that the river, the fish, and the strange pageant of humanity had combined into one of those sessions you couldn’t plan if you tried. Slightly surreal. Mildly ridiculous. Entirely memorable.

And that, really, is fishing.