Twenty Four

Tuesday 24th December 2019. River Weaver (0.89m and dropping).

The Annual xmas eve Weaver session started at 13 bells. Earlier that morning I’d done the usual recce with the Airedale and happened across another upper Weaver regular, ‘Stu’, who is a decent angler. He’d been there since sparrow’s fart, fishing the pole with maggot, tight to the far bank, and had sod all. So when I rocked up 3 hours later at 1pm expecting him to have at least gotten something, it was a bit of a kick in the nads to find out he’d still not had a sniff.

We chewed the fat over the state of the river, and the lack of small fish in particular before I settled in 100 yards above him. My plan being to move every 20 minutes or so until I found the fish. I had some dendras that had seen better days, also some lobs, and decided to mince these and mix them with dead maggots and hemp, and then introduce them through a small feeder with lob on the hook. Lots of wormy, hempy, maggoty goodness. First swim gave me nothing, I moved below Stu (who had since had his one and only chub) into a banker swim some 50 yards below him.

Stu’s swim is a popular swim, next to a footbridge, sadly, e-v-e-r-y- -s-i-n-g-l-e- -f-e-c-k-e-r who crosses said bridge wants to ask the usual mundane sh*te. “Have you caught anything?” “Do you eat them?” …and so on. Christ, it’s incessant. Unless it’s peeing down I usually avoid the swim like the plague for those very reasons. However today is worse. Much, much worse. The xmas eve dad banterists are out in full force for their yearly walk. Surrounded by their scabby offspring, who laugh at every, f**kwitted word whilst throwing any old sh*te they can find into the river. One particular gobby nobhead booms out loud to Stu “I’ll place an order for 2 salmon and a trout….HA HA HA HA.“ I hope he gets dysentery.

Thankfully my banker swim can only be approached by circumnavigating 20 metres of mud and a nasty slope, so the feckers steer well clear. Swinging a lobworm under a nearside tree, I should have had something, anything, in the way of a bite or an indication, but again, not so much as a hint of a fish. Twenty minutes later and I move again, to yet another banker, this being the other side of the tree where there is a lovely crease and a large slack. Again, aside from one tentative pluck, nothing on the worm/mush combo.

The witching hour of three fifteen comes and goes and still nothing. The wormy approach isn’t working, so I change my approach and go onto bread. I have a hunch and guess the fish have backed off the feed so I cast 15 metres further downstream and within minutes I land a chub, the bullshitometer guesses it’s over 3. I’m officially ace again.

Next cast, ditto, but this time it’s a bigger fish. Not long, but a proper stocky fella. Into the bag and the scales say 4lb 1 oz, my first 4 pounder off the river in probably 5 years, ferry mucking xmas. Two more casts and 2 more chub followed, another three+ and one of a pound and a half or so.

At 1630 I call it a day, the Nantwich bell ringers are in full flow I’ve had four fish in the last 45 minutes or so including a very rare four pounder and life is good. The walk back to the car is lovely, strangers wishing each other merry xmas, the spirit of the season is in the air, and I have a genuine feeling of goodwill to all men. Except for that gobby twot, whom I genuinely hope is currently shitting a hedgehog.