Sam the Lucky One was on a teacher training day, which in real-world terms means he was “off” while I was “working,” though my version of working on a Friday involves finishing at midday-ish and making solemn promises to myself that I’ll “crack on in the afternoon maybe next week,” promises which have the structural integrity of a Rich Tea biscuit dunked twice.
Fate, clearly an angler, had decided that this was not a day for CAD bashing but for piscatorial enlightenment, and so Sam and I found ourselves aligned like planets, or at least like two blokes with a rucksack full of bait and wildly unrealistic expectations.
Totally unlike Sam, he was keen to go fishing. This alone should have been logged with the Met Office or at least written down for future disbelief. Sam, you see, does not do cold. He doesn’t tolerate it. He doesn’t negotiate with it.
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| Sam 9 years ago when he was 5 we left shortly after 😂!! |
He simply shuts down, like a mobile phone at 2% battery, and wanders off to find central heating, soup, or the overly large bosom of his mother.
Yet here he was, voluntarily suggesting fishing in winter, which is normally about as appealing to him as licking a frozen gatepost.
I, on the other hand, am quite lucky. I don’t feel the cold that often, possibly because I am generously insulated, possibly because I am too stupid to notice discomfort, or possibly because my internal thermostat is set permanently to “boil.” Sam, however, has inherited his mother’s genes, and she feels the cold ALL the time.
This is despite the central heating being cranked up to a level normally reserved for incubating fertile eggs or encouraging tropical amphibians to breed. One can stand in her living room and watch the curtains wilt, and boy I have the bill to show for it.
This raises important scientific questions. Is it the hypothalamus, the body’s thermostat? Or is it simply subcutaneous fat? Do they both have less of it than me? Sam certainly does.
His mother definitely not though I’ll add here, purely for my own safety, that she doesn’t read my blog. Who knows. Science is a mysterious thing, best left to men in white coats who don’t fish the Warwickshire Avon.
During the colder months, despite my repeated encouragement, pleading, bribery, and occasional emotional blackmail, Sam usually loses interest big time.
He knows he won’t enjoy it. He knows his fingers will go numb, his feet will turn into ornamental ice blocks, and his enthusiasm will leak away faster than maggots through a split bait box. And yet here’s the thing he’s been noticing I’ve been winkling out a few chub on the Arrow of late.
Every time I get home he asks, casually, as if he doesn’t care, “How’d you do?” This is the fishing equivalent of someone saying they’re “not hungry” while staring intensely at your chips.
The Arrow has been kind, and the chub have been cooperative enough to fuel dreams. And dreams, as we all know, are far warmer than reality.
So yes. To the Arrow forthwith. The mission: get Sam a chub of his own. Get him a proper bend in the rod the sort he loves, the sort that briefly makes you forget that your nose is numb and your fingers feel like borrowed items from someone else’s hands. I’d recharged the hand warmers just in case, ready to offer some temporary relief. It’s always his extremities that suffer the most, as if the cold targets him personally, like a sniper.
The air temperature definitely felt colder than where the mercury settled at 8 degrees, it was a chilly wind. That’s winter for you: the thermometer says one thing, your face says another. Even I, on my lunchtime fast walk, had increased the pace to try and warm the cockles. This is never a good sign. When you, a man built for thermal efficiency, start walking like you’re late for a train, you know it’s Baltic.
So anyway, enough analysis, enough physiology, enough excuses. We’d better get fishing, hadn’t we!!!
The Arrow greeted us with that familiar winter indifference, sliding past quietly, pretending it hadn’t seen us. The sort of river that makes you whisper, not because you’ll spook the fish, but because it feels like a church where chub are the congregation and you’re very late. Sam, blew on his hands, and looked at me with the expression of a man who has made a terrible but educational mistake.
It didn’t take long to catch the first chub, which was mildly annoying because I’d barely settled into my role as Supreme Commander of Excuses. A couple of missed pull rounds in the opening swim didn’t help matters, nor did the swim feeder, which shot past the chub’s noses like a low-flying missile and almost certainly sent them off for counselling.
Still, optimism lingered like the smell of damp canvas and crushed hemp, so we did what all sensible anglers do when things go slightly wrong: we legged it up the river pretending it was all part of a cunning master plan.
Roving upstream, we fished every swim that looked remotely chubby—under overhanging branches, near slack water, beside mysterious bubbles that were definitely fish and not, as history suggests, something decomposing.
It didn’t take long to find them. The first fish nudged the scales at a pound, which is the angling equivalent of a polite handshake. But as we pushed further up the Arrow and onto the Alne, the fish improved, as did Sam’s smugness, which grew with each bend of the rod and each theatrical sigh. At this point, Sam more or less annexed the rod. He manned it. He captained it. I was demoted to net boy, commentator, and occasional provider of tea.
Five chub came to hand, all his, bar one for me, plus one that came off mid-battle after giving him a proper runaround, darting about like it had an urgent appointment elsewhere. I offered words of wisdom throughout, mostly beginning with “What you should have done is…”, which were ignored with commendable discipline.
They weren’t monsters, these chub, but they were proper river fish, and the afternoon slipped by in that agreeable way that only happens when the light softens, the bites keep coming, and your fishing buddy is having a genuinely cracking time.
Sam certainly was, which was good though I couldn’t help noticing that his best mate and angler Matthew is arriving Saturday lunchtime and they’re off magnet fishing on the local canals. Staying over, too. Apparently, I’m now second best to rusty shopping trolleys and Victorian padlocks.
Still, all things considered, it was a fine afternoon. Good company, obliging fish, and the comforting knowledge that while I may have lost the rod, the glory, and possibly my standing in the friendship hierarchy, I retained the most important thing of all: the blog post. And as every angler knows, that’s where the real trophies live, shame those other bloggers that have fallen off the radar don't think the same way 🎣
