All thoughts of Covid-19 and lockdown were dismissed with the very first run through of the float and it was good to see that little stick make it's way down the river for the first time before dipping under as a small chub kicked things off, a few nice roach and dace followed before I made my way up to see if dad was also off the mark where I set him up earlier.
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| Sharing the swim with dad |
Dad was resting his legs, happy to be catching nice dace interspersed with the odd roach and chublet and I shared his swim, wading across, something we often do unlike the pair of herons who seemed to be fighting over the fishing rights above us. We also had a laugh watching the mallard ducklings going downstream before coming back later seemingly twice the size, we shared the swim with those two generations of ducks but there was now just one heron as there was a clear winner in that battle upstream in the shallows, the victor making itself heard landing on a big tree and woe betide any other who tried landing on it's stretch.
The river was the clearest I had ever seen it in summer due to much reduced boat traffic on the nearby canal and the moor itself was that yellowy-green colour usually associated with late August. The weather went from sticky humid to fresh and then back again in a few hours but that was all we needed to wet a line and whet the appetite for more, we caught plenty, nothing of any size but It got dad out the house and every time I go fishing with him it's more special as I know it isn't going to last forever
Croxley Memories
I'll always hold this little river in high esteem even if it is a shadow of it's former self like many others, gone are the days when you needed to get up at silly o'clock to get to the good spots and also those days of roaming up and down getting half a dozen nice chub in each of the the average ones, maybe with the odd nice bream and perch thrown in and if you were lucky a big roach or even a wild carp. Gone also are the days when dad would take me by bus and train to get there and also the mornings I would go straight from work at the post office without getting changed. Perhaps it's the memories that make it still a nice place for me to fish, there is the odd good fish around now but usually in the overgrown hard to fish spots where they can't be got at If you get my drift.
The River Gade is a trout stream until it reaches Hemel Hempstead where it joins equally tiny River Bulbourne. In bygone days it used to feed many a paper mill along it's course and if it's not running through an old mill it's running in and out of the Grand Union Canal, this means the river is coloured most of the year and it never really floods or gets scoured out, this in turn means it's impossible to blank there, even in the most atrocious conditions I've caught something. It's also really shallow, on the two main sections at Cassiobury Park and Croxley anywhere two feet deep is a 'hole' and anything over three feet is an 'abyss'. I remember a fishing club visiting it each winter when every other river was flooded, I think they came up from London and were based on the Regents Canal but I could be wrong, anyhow they would sometimes mention how shallow it was and indeed you could always tell a visiting pleasure angler by any reference to the lack of depth.
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| The remains of the old paper mill |
Despite having no depth the river threw up the odd surprise even if Gade fish were usually long and lean, I recall a lad running up to us saying he's got a huge perch in his net, we looked at each other as if "yeah right" only to be flabbergasted by a monster stripey, we had no scales back then so we helped him unhook it and guessed at over 3lb as it glided across the shallow water into the murky water. More often than not it worked the other way, there were always kids fishing back then and if they saw you catch a 3lb bream, word of it would travel downstream and by the time it got back to you you were asked if you were the one who just caught a 6lb fish, we called it the Gade Grapevine. Both dad and I were lucky enough to get our first 2lb roach from there but if you caught a 3lb chub you had done well, now it does bigger chub but the chances of a big roach now are really slim. Bream were often the target fish and barbel didn't feature until they were stocked a few decades ago, how times change. The Gade could throw up anything though from trout to tench and a mate of a mate of mine once knew someone who saw someone catch a grayling, with all that mucky canal water coming down perhaps that really was the Gade Grapevine in full motion
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| A terrible photo of a cracking roach** |
There was some characters down there, Old John for example used to come down at least twice a day, a country gent complete with wax jacket, flat cap and pipe, I could never quite work out whether the accent was West country or Norfolk but either way he looked a bit out of place on a moor crossed by the Metropolitan line. He used to fly fish in the evenings although we never saw him catch much but he always talked about his holidays up the Spey going after Salmon, come to think of it he never said he caught any there either. He would always stop for a quick chat, wind up dad by asking him why he's catching nothing and drift off without a goodbye, some anglers thought he was a grumpy old git but we saw his dry humour, as a cocky kid I used to make sure I caught loads whilst he was there as I knew he would wind dad up. It's been many a year since I saw Old John so maybe he's Spey casting up there in the sky somewhere, who knows, I hope he's catching well where ever he is.
Also there was 175Cow probably not the most imaginative name for a beast but it had that number in it's ear and was a cow so... But it's a cow I hear you mutter like I'm some sort of loon, well I kid you not that 175Cow was not just any cow but rather, in layman's terms was a complete and utter nutter with udders. Many a time I would wonder down the bank with my gear to hear footsteps behind me, gradually getting louder until forming a stampede, I would turn around to see 175 standing there with her cronies, turning around with the net and rod raised hollering made them stop but as soon as your back was turned they were off after you lead by you know who. It was scary stuff and on quite a few occasions I used to say to dad It's 175! maybe we'll give that swim a miss today. He always agreed.
I remember one time when the housing estate was being built on the old paper mill site a building worker would go across to the moor and smoke something iffy in the bushes on his break. The look on his face was something I'll never forget when I came running past being chased by a herd of mad cows, I made it through a barbed wire fence without thinking what could get caught up I was so scared, I turned and looked at this chap and he almost did that thing winos do in old comedies when they look at the bottle, he was stunned and I almost needed a new pair of pants The weird thing about 175Cow is she was one of those pretty Jersey types with the long eyelashes, the sort you would like if she was in cartoon form, well you know what I mean. Anyhow she didn't look menacing unless you were an angler or dog, then you got chased. The last time I saw her she was chasing a guy who lived on one of the canal boats across the moor - he was on a motorbike at the time.
I wonder if one day someone will say that we were characters down there? I doubt it somehow and much of the river is either flanked by houses or being urbanised in parks now, however the character of the river will always live on in my many memories of it.
