I joined the southbound anglers that visited the Avon regularly in the early nineties looking for monsters. I bought a camper van and spent many a night in Ringwood Tesco’s car park. Later it came in handy when a girlfriend got a place at Winchester Art College, which gave me somewhere to go and a little warmer and more comfortable shall we say
In those days it seemed there were roach everywhere but you still had to think about what you were doing. Careful preparation of bread in the week before to make mash. Handmade elder pith fluted floats were needed, with big sight tips for trotting a windy Avon and holding the line in the middle or far bank. Gradually I became accepted amongst the locals; big Cliff would grunt at my existence and Fred the Bread would no longer scream at me, “don’t you dare put a single ‘effing maggot in that water boy!”. Fred stood behind me once at a gust-strewn Fordingbridge Park, as I ran off the back of the island,”you’ve got that going through lovely there boy”. Praise indeed. If those boys turned up, you knew you were in the right place and in with a chance.
Last week was a special anniversary for me. In anticipation of a holiday with the family I had dug out an old fishing diary and here is what it said:
Life changed after that. I still visited the Avon but I’d got a really good fish and it no longer ‘needed’ to be front and centre. Over the coming years I travelled and met Fran, marriage, children, fab, and I’m so lucky to have the family and our life together. I did get a few more big roach but it was fun and not too serious.
I drifted away from the Avon, to the Wye in the west and Wensum to the east. Word was I’d caught the last of the Avon roach and the river hit rock bottom. It was very sad. The locals no longer bothered and the travelling anglers went elsewhere. But two men weren’t prepared to accept it was the end; Trevor Harrop and Budgie set up the Avon Roach Project (a search on the internet will find more details) and after a decade something has happened. All of a sudden, roach began to appear again in catches. Small but bull shouldered fish with bright crimson fins, and even the odd big one. The roach world gasped when Mark Everard caught a three pounder at last year’s fundraiser and then it got even better.
This October the fundraiser produced another three pounder plus FIVE over two pounds and many more pound plussers. Here is the biggest with apologies to ARP for pinching the photo.
The last ten years we’ve holidayed as a family for the October half term to Norfolk but this year the family wanted to go somewhere different, so Fran booked a cottage in the New Forest - in fact she found a place fifty yards from the middle Avon!
So, for the first time in twenty plus years I travelled to the Avon in hope of a two pounder. Everything was familiar to me still; turn off at Cadnam, mind the ponies, the little tree that I stopped at to stare across the heathland (a bit bigger, but still there).
I took a wander last night up the stretch at Ibsley. The bailiff was very kind and showed me the river. The trees and bushes are all in the same place, also a little bigger but the river resplendent with a little extra push.
I will only get an hour or two here and there but, thanks to Budgie, Trevor and all of those at the Avon Roach Project, I will once again fish in hope.
I’m planning to meet up with Trevor and I’ll let you know how it goes. I will thank him for his vision and hard work, on behalf of all of us that love the Avon and it’s iconic roach, from both near and far.
Up the Avon - it’s the greatest!
It's good to hear that the ARP is proving to be successful 
