A month ago Dick and Dave came fishing with me down on the Wye. Two lovely blokes I have known forever and a river slowly coming back into form. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, we’d got a swim going nicely for chub in the main, with the very occasional barbel, and prospects looked good. At 1.00pm, I excused myself as I was meeting up with Mr Whitehouse to show him a piece of the River Arrow. All looked in order and I had no qualms.
Paul and I got back to the swim before 4.00pm to find the lads still there, but Dave as a pure spectator. His rod? You guessed it. An hour earlier it had javelined into space far faster than Dave could make a move to intercept it. Gone and lost forever we presumed. I set him up with a rod of mine – and strict instructions to hold the damned thing this time – and the session drifted to its close.
Forward four weeks and lure fishing whizz Robbie Northman comes to the stretch to give the perch a look. Nothing massive to report but one cast produces… Dave’s lost rod. A hundred yards downriver from where it went in, and still in decent working order.
A testimony to the quality of Shimano gear and to Robbie’s ability to work a lure deep. Now the rod is waiting for Dave to come back and sit a bit closer to it in the future!
