Warwickshire Avon - Hope and Hypothermia

There are moments in life when a man must ask himself serious questions. Questions such as: Why am I awake? Why do my hands feel like they belong to someone else? And why am I voluntarily scraping ice off a windscreen when civilised people are still asleep, warm, and blissfully unaware that chub even exist? These questions, of course, are swiftly ignored, because an angler who pauses too long for introspection rarely makes it to the river.

Minus four degrees is not a temperature; it is a condition. A state of being. It removes all unnecessary sensation from the extremities and replaces them with a vague sense of regret. 

Fingers lose their purpose almost immediately, becoming ornamental hooks at the ends of sleeves. Yet still, the ritual must be observed. Ice scraped. Engine started. Maggots quietly contemplating their fate in the passenger footwell, unaware they are about to be drowned for reasons no fish has yet agreed to.

The roads were ungritted, as they always are, because rural councils correctly assume that anyone daft enough to be travelling at this hour in these conditions has already made peace with risk. 

I wasn’t going far anyway just far enough to maintain the illusion that I was popping out casually, rather than embarking on a small expedition driven entirely by blind optimism.

The Warwickshire Avon lay before me in its winter finest: slate grey, moody, and possessing that crystal clarity that instantly tells you you’ve made a terrible mistake. Gin clear water is beautiful in the same way a job rejection email is beautifully written. You admire it, but it offers no encouragement whatsoever.

Still, the trotting gear went together with the well-rehearsed motions of a man who believes despite all available data that this might be the day. Maggots were introduced initially than after twenty minutes, a float was Vaseline guided lovingly downstream, and each run was watched with forensic intensity. Nothing. Not a tremor. Not even a half-hearted indication that a fish had briefly considered the concept of eating before sensibly dismissing it.

Two swims passed like this, the chub clearly holding an emergency meeting somewhere mid-river and voting unanimously to stay put. They were not hungry. They were not curious. They were not impressed. Winter chub are philosophers. They know that feeding is optional and suffering is eternal.

At this point, an internal dialogue began. You could leave, it said. You could go and get warm. You could still have fish and chips and pretend this was always the plan. But anglers are stubborn creatures, and so the cheese paste appeared a substance that smells like regret and hope rolled into one.

While feeding maggots for reasons known only to tradition in the third swim getting ready to trot, I dropped the paste into a slack to my right and enjoyed some steaming hot tea from my flask . This was not tactical brilliance. This was muscle memory. And then, in the manner of all great moments, it happened while I wasn’t paying proper attention. Pluck. Pull. Proper pull round. Suddenly the universe made sense again.

The strike was instant and enthusiastic, fuelled by months of pent-up winter nonsense. The fish, a chub of respectable but not headline-grabbing proportions, fought with the weary resignation of something that had absolutely not planned for this today. It was netted quickly, as if keen to get the whole embarrassing episode over with.

And just like that twenty seconds. From frozen, existentially questioning idiot to grinning simpleton. A smile appeared that had no business being there. The cold vanished. The load of balls blank swims were forgiven. Winter itself was temporarily cancelled, a happy angler

This is the absurd alchemy of fishing: hours of discomfort instantly justified by a single, moderately sized fish. Outsiders will never understand this. They will ask, Was it worth it? and you will say yes, without hesitation, knowing full well that if you’d blanked you’d still probably say yes, just with less conviction.

With the moral victory secured, I abandoned trotting altogether and roved further swims with cheese paste, partly in pursuit of more chub, partly to burn calories in advance of the fish and chips already looming large in my imagination. No further takers materialised. 

The river had given what it intended to give and no more. Yet the morning had softened. The sky was blue. The winter sun hung low and honest, making everything look better than it had any right to. Even the cold felt earned now, like a badge rather than a punishment. 

Eventually, with cheeks tingling and feet beginning to issue formal complaints, I packed up. One fish. Job done. The challenge satisfied. The ancient, irrational contract between angler and river upheld once more.

Because winter fishing is not about numbers, or size, or even success. It is about going when you shouldn’t, hoping when you know better, and finding meaning in the smallest of victories. It is about scraping ice off windscreens and pretending, just briefly, that this all makes perfect sense.

And sometimes just sometimes the chub agrees.