So, 2026 then. A new year dawns not with trumpets or celestial fanfare, but with that familiar angler’s cough that comes from inhaling air best described as “aggressively damp”. The sort of cold that doesn’t merely chill you, but enters negotiations with your joints. Nic from Avon Angling and I, brimming with the sort of optimism only anglers possess at the turn of a calendar page, decided to welcome the New Year in the traditional fashion: standing still beside a river, staring at a float, and convincing ourselves this was entirely sensible behaviour.
We met on a stretch far more convenient to me than it was to Nic, which immediately raised the moral question that all anglers pretend not to notice: why would you leave fish you know you can catch to go and look for fish you might not? It’s a dilemma right up there with “do I really need another float?” and “will this be the last cast?” The truth is, when fish live practically on your doorstep and occasionally have the decency to bite, venturing further afield feels less like exploration and more like betrayal.
This particular bit of the Warwickshire Avon is a stretch I can reach in ten minutes door-to-door, which in angling terms makes it practically part of the house. I’ve fished it in stolen half-hours, dusk sessions, and those “I’ll just stop for ten minutes” moments that somehow last until darkness and domestic disapproval descend together.
It suffered badly during a pollution incident, like much of the Avon, but rivers have long memories and short tempers. With restocking, natural migration during floods, and a bit of quiet recovery, fish have begun to reappear like rumours first one, then another, until suddenly match weights are creeping back up and hope is once again permitted.
We chose a section often commandeered by match anglers, the sort who arrive with seat boxes resembling NASA ground stations. On this New Year’s morning, however, it was deserted. Just the two of us, the river, and a vast selection of swims to choose from, many of them so close together that moving pegs feels less like tactical angling and more like rearranging deckchairs.
Nic took the top of the stretch while I settled a few pegs downstream after abandoning my first choice an entirely standard manoeuvre designed to show decisiveness while concealing uncertainty. This is proper long-trotting water, the sort that encourages dreams of perfect runs, dipping floats, and fish queueing politely beneath a gentle rain of maggots. And in conditions like these, when the river feels half asleep and the fish are contemplating life choices, there’s something deeply comforting about the belief that enough maggots, applied with sufficient optimism, can revive even the most dormant of aquatic souls.
This was followed by that brief moment of disbelief, then the satisfying weight of a fish that very much intended to stay where it was. A decent chub came to hand, glistening, solid, and utterly unaware that it had just become the first fish of 2026. I held it for a moment longer than necessary, partly out of admiration and partly to let the occasion sink in.
Naturally, Nic had yet to trouble the scorer. So, being the supportive mate that I am, I immediately sent him a WhatsApp voice message informing him of my success.
Predictably, this prompted Nic to abandon his swim shortly thereafter, citing a lack of bites and a general sense that the swim “wasn’t quite right”, which is angler-speak for the fish have failed to read the script. But if there was fish here he would have had a bite by now.
As Nic wandered downstream past me, fate intervened in the form of a sharp crack and a sudden, sickening lack of tension. My maggot catapult faithful servant of many winters (well this one) had chosen this moment to end its life dramatically, snapping its elastic mid-pult and consigning itself to the graveyard of defunct angling accessories. There was a brief silence, the sort normally reserved for fallen comrades, before Nic, bless him, produced a spare. Had he not, my session would have ended there and then, a victim of equipment failure rather than piscatorial inadequacy.
And that, sadly, was that. We fished on. And on. Nic fished his new swim with determination and increasing philosophical detachment. I trotted, fed, recast, and watched the river with the intense concentration of someone waiting for a kettle that has no intention of boiling. Not another bite materialised. The river level had dropped, the colour had bled away, and yes this is straight from the Angler’s Excuse Compendium, Chapter One but I’m quite sure it didn’t help.
Eventually, cold and realism crept in together as did the sleet. We packed up, hands numb, spirits oddly intact, already rewriting the morning into something far more productive than the bare facts might suggest. One fish. One snapped elastic. One perfectly good reason to go again.
Because that’s the thing about days like this. They’re tough. They’re cold. They’re often biteless. But they’re also exactly why we go. For the quiet, the company, the hope carried on a float drifting downstream. And occasionally, if the river is feeling generous, for a chub that makes the first fish of the year feel like an event worth writing about.
Even if no one believes how hard it was.
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