The River Arrow - Mosh Pits and Mogigraphia

With the kids now set free from the shackles of school and presumably launching themselves into a six-week campaign of minor destruction and crisps consumption  I’ve discovered that keeping them occupied requires more tactical planning than a Normandy beach landing. Thankfully we've a week in North Devon and 11 days in the canaries to look forward to in August where hopefully I'll get the some sea fishing in. 

The LEGO kingfisher a majestic thing, apparently modelled on the avian equivalent of James Bond  was meant to buy me at least three afternoons of peace. I'd barely got the kettle on before Sam had polished it off with all the calm focus of a neurosurgeon. Impressive? Absolutely. Disappointing? Only if you were banking on an extra hour to do anything else with your Friday. 

What’s more, the box was deceptive one of those “looks manageable” jobs that turns out to be the size of a small Vespa once assembled. Still, he was proud. I was knackered. So with Sam's mate Matthew due over for a weekend stay (I suspect to test the structural integrity of our furniture), I thought: let’s go full old-school Dad mode pork joint from Freemans in Alcester and some classic riverbank frolics. Two birds, one stone. Or two boys, one slow-sinking lump of Warburtons.

Now the River Arrow, bless its babbling soul, is in dire need of a drink. Bone dry in parts, a bit like my wit after too many family BBQs, but ideal for the kids to paddle, splash, and do their best to disturb the peace for any resident barbel within a three-mile radius. 

Our first chosen spot was already occupied by what I can only describe as a group of small humans enthusiastically attempting to relocate the riverbed via splash. I was about to mutter something curmudgeonly and retreat upstream when lo and behold  they all buggered off to do TikToks in a field or whatever kids do these days. Swim cleared, rods ready, bread pinched. Perfect.

It always amazes me how even little rivers like this have features. You think it’s just a wet ditch until you realise there’s a marginal shelf deeper than my overdraft. Years of flooding have carved out channels, hollows, and prime ambush spots for sulky chub who’ve probably seen more loaves than a bakery.

But sure enough, within minutes of casting, there’s that wonderful moment the slow flutter of bread through the gin-clear water, the silence, the anticipation then bam, a chub shoots in like a teenager spotting the last sausage roll at a buffet and nails it without hesitation. Didn’t even need polarised glasses, though I did wear them anyway because it makes me feel like a professional and hides the bags under my eyes. 

Sam, who’d been standing precisely where those other kids had churned up the bottom like paddle-tailed piranhas, decided to fish the very same swim. You’d think it would be ruined, but nope  apparently, the local chub are used to the aquatic equivalent of a Napalm Death mosh pit. 

As soon as his bit of bread sank just a whisker below the surface, it vanished and like a coiled spring (a short, slightly startled one), Sam struck. Fish on! It wasn’t exactly Moby Dick, but on his little 6ft Scope rod it gave a cracking account of itself. I stood back, offered sage advice like “Keep the rod up!” and “Try not to fall in!” while secretly praying the hook held. It did. Result.

A few more fell to floaty bread, lazily plopped in under overhanging branches while I tried to keep Ben from testing the water depth with his knees. All in all, a cracking afternoon. 

Fish caught, pork joint acquired (complete with enough crackling to give your fillings PTSD), and two boys thoroughly knackered by tea time. Which, as any parent will tell you, is the greatest trophy of all.

And the kingfisher? Still perched proudly on the shelf. Glaring at me every time I pass, as if to say: “You thought I’d take all day, didn’t you?” Cheeky plastic show-off.

Warwickshire Avon - Bad Knots and Baculiforms

The little Jimny stood there, lonely as a wet spaniel in a thunderstorm, parked dutifully on the desolate third floor of the multistorey staff car park. No other cars in sight. Not even the chirpy red Fiat 500 with the missing hubcap or that dubious Skoda that smelled like old ham and regret. Just the Jimny. Just me. Just corporate decay.

You see, when you’ve had three rounds of redundancies in six years, it doesn't take a spreadsheet wizard to realise the writing is probably not just on the wall it's been etched in with a Dremel and underlined in red marker by the lovely Katie from HR with no soul and a collection of novelty mugs. The "Fun Committee" stopped funning years ago, and even Julien from operations, usually an eternal optimist with a drawer full of biscuits, had recently started referring to life as "a long wait for cake and disappointment."  

So, yes, working from home seemed a more appealing option, especially when your office resembles a library post-apocalypse and the vending machine only stocks stale crisps and those monster energy drinks. But I’m not bitter. Not me. I’m off soon  to pastures new! A new job! A design studio again! People who actually want you around. I might even have a chair and my OWN desk that doesn’t slowly descend of its own accord during Team's meetings.

9lb 11oz River Wye 

But until then, a couple of days a week in the office suits me just fine. Gives me a chance to say goodbye to the survivors, exchange awkward half-hugs and “we must stay in touch” lies, and spend a few last moments with the Jimny, who, like me, enjoys solitude and making unwise choices in mud.

Now, last weekend's salvation arrived in the form of the River Wye, which for me is like a warm bubble bath for the soul, albeit one full of silt, chub, and the occasional crisp packet. 

Honestly though, if heaven had a postcode, it’d be somewhere near Hereford with a tackle shop just down the road and a tea van that did bacon rolls so strong you could re-attach scaffolding with the grease. That said, the fishing's not just a hobby anymore. 

It's a necessary form of mental therapy cheaper than a psychologist and sometimes comes with a slug of tea. Retirement dreams may be a little way off, but I’ve been chipping away at the pensions, like a squirrel stashing nuts and occasionally checking the value with all the wide-eyed optimism of someone opening their electricity bill.

The property’s 'almost' paid for, and if it weren’t for the fact I’ve got mouths to feed and a lawn that still needs mowing, I’d probably sack it all off now, buy a battered old campervan do a Phil Smith, and follow the barbel runs like some sort of leathery-skinned fish-obsessed roadie ready to swim jump at every available opportunity. 

But alas, here I remain. At least for now.

The plan was simple after raiding the freezer and getting a Crosta & Mollica Stromboli Pizza at the parking place of convenience, scalded pellet and method feeder the same method that had done the business down the Wye. 

Light gear, subtle approach, and the tactical deployment of a chair that had seen better days. Down on the Avon, the water was low, slow, still, I was hopeful for a bite, there seems to be some good fish here. 

It's only 20 minutes away this stretch which is about the same as the WBAS syndicate stretch where those barbel are few and far between and ok I've caught them on the stretch before, but not for a while. It's nice to have one's string pulled once or twice now isn't it. Anyway those other anglers on this stretch, you know who you are, ta for the info, it's always appreciated. 

Now there’s something about a quiet river at dusk that whispers of promise, especially when you’ve spent the best part of two hours sat behind rods that might as well have been in the garage, for all the interest they’d had. Not a tremble. Not a twitch. Nothing. I’d have had more action watching paint dry in a wind tunnel. But optimism is a dangerous thing in angling, and mine was beginning to feel like a bad investment.

Now, it’s one thing to fish poorly quite another to start lobbing gear into trees like some overzealous chimp at a casting competition. One enthusiastic swing too many and off goes one of my prized method feeders, soaring majestically into the nearest sycamore like a Newtonian experiment gone wrong. If there was a robin nesting in there, it’s now got a new garden ornament.

Grumbling like a pensioner in a bus queue, I re-rigged with my barbel standby an open-ended feeder setup I could tie in my sleep, assuming I hadn’t already nodded off due to the sheer inactivity. Light was fading, stomach rumbling, and just as I was mentally weighing up whether a man could survive the night on half a packet of smoky bacon crisps, BANG! A bite. A real one.

Cue the chaos. Rod hooped, line zipping an honest-to-goodness barbel with steam in its fins. We battled. I imagined victory. And then... slack. The kind of slack that makes your heart fall into your boots and your vocabulary turn blue. One minute I’m connected to a brute, the next I’m reeling in line like a man pulling up a kite with no string. Rig gone. Hook, feeder — the whole lot. I sat back in stunned silence, reviewing the crime scene. Knot failure? Fish too clever? Cosmic punishment for that feeder-flinging incident earlier?

Still, as I stared into the now-barbel-less gloom, trying to resist the urge to launch my entire tackle box into the 'Von, I had to concede at least the fish are turning up. That’s progress, isn’t it? Small mercies and all that. I re-rigged in a sulk and saw out the last half hour under a sky now as empty as my landing net.

They say you learn something every session. Tonight, I learned that sycamores don’t like feeders, dusk is the most treacherous time for dreams, and barbel have a wicked sense of humour.

River Wye - Damp socks and Damnification

Now somehow and I’m still not entirely sure how this happened  Ben turned sixteen over the weekend. One minute he’s eating crayons and posting Pokémon cards through the toaster, the next he’s wanting a Fat Hippo “Born Slippy” like a seasoned burger connoisseur and swiping ID-checked mocktails like he’s about to DJ at Ministry of Sound. Time, it seems, is no longer on our side.

Ben having left 'school' will now go to the Welcome Hills 'hub' which is for 'life skills' where he will be until he is 19. We've a few years to decide where he goes from there, answers on a postcard !!

So anyway what better way to celebrate his coming of age than with something greasy, followed by something loud and wildly overpriced? 

Cue the Fat Hippo in Birmingham for burgers dirtier than a Somerset tractor tyre, and then on to the F1 Arcade for the kind of simulation racing where the only thing more dangerous than the virtual crashes is the price of a pint.

Ben’s younger brother Sam, however, doesn’t quite share the same enthusiasm for airshows or faux-driving Grand Prix cars into a digital Monaco chicane. So while Sarah dutifully took Ben and a small gang of turbo-charged teenagers to Fairford Air Tattoo the following morning to ogle jet engines and fried dough, I’d booked Sam and I something a little more... tranquil.

Fishing on the River Wye. Man and boy. With rods, reels, and enough scalded pellets to open a small branch of Nash Tackle.

Now, Sam had been absolutely buzzing for this trip. He’d got his first pair of proper waders for his birthday, the kind that makes a lad feel part man, part frog. I’d barely got the car packed before he was in the driveway dressed like an amphibious knight, armed with a landing net and asking if we could camp “for at least a week.”

When we finally arrived, the Wye looked... well... thirsty. Desperately low and as gin-clear as the posh optics behind a Waitrose bar. The streamer weed, which had been playing hard to get in recent years, was back doing its leafy dance, and there, tucked just off a gravel bar, were the tell-tale flashes of flanking barbel – more barbless ballet than feeding frenzy, but encouraging all the same.

Our swim was marked with a forgotten pair of socks someone had clearly sacrificed to the river gods, then I did what all sensible river anglers should do: fed the swim and didn’t rush in like an over-eager labrador. A half-hour of soaking and some hopeful muttering to the river spirits later, I prepped for the Method approach – on the advice of Nic from Avon Angling, who’d been here two days prior and winked like a man who knew a secret.

Scalded pellet mix. 12mm halibut pellet on the hair. Standard stuff. Except what wasn’t standard was what happened fifteen minutes in. I noticed the line collecting a bit of weed, went to tweak it and then WHACK! The rod tip went full Shakespearean tragedy. A violent lurch, a screeching clutch, and suddenly I was connected to what can only be described as an aquatic freight train with fins.

Now this, my friends, was no chub.

Sam, to his credit, had the net ready and was pacing like an apprentice zookeeper watching his first lion get loose. The fish wasn’t happy. The line was grating. Streamer weed was wrapping around the line like a sullen teenager in a duvet. After some heart-stopping lunges and a final defiant burst, Sam did the honours and netted it like an absolute pro. What a lad.

At first glance, I guessed 7lb. Maybe 8. But once I hoisted her up and felt the weight thumping through my wrist like an angry metronome, I revised my estimate. Scales don’t lie. 9lb 11oz  a proper Wye bruiser and my personal best from the river.

After some resting and obligatory admiration, Sam released it with all the grace and seriousness of a junior fish priest. The barbel, perhaps sensing our awe, didn’t linger. She flicked once and surged away with purpose. Job done.

The rest of the day unfolded like a greatest hits album of classic Wye moments. We swapped between float and ledger tactics. The “gully swim” produced some chub (nothing big), taken on little cubes of luncheon meat trotted through a pacey glide that made the rod tip twitch with anticipation. Sam, despite being only 13, fished like a lad with gills. 

I suppose dragging him to rivers since he was 4 has paid off. He’s got the touch now  the soft flick of the float, the patient wait, the instinctive strike. I mostly just watched, passed him sandwiches, and felt a quiet swell of dad pride.

As the day wore on, clouds began to grumble in the distance like an old man realising he'd left the immersion heater on. We took the hint. Packed up. Began the long trudge back to the car, rods on shoulders, boots clagged in riverbank clay. 

We’d barely shut the doors when the heavens opened in a deluge of biblical proportions. Torrential rain lashed the windscreen with all the grace of a toddler wielding a watering can.

Perfect timing. Perfect day.

And so, after burgers, barbel, and big skies full of Red Arrows and thunderclouds, we returned home damp, satisfied, and carrying the faint but glorious stink of river fish and dirty waders. 

Roll on the next session.