Pulled up at Kentchurch to find the bridge closed and boarded up with the legend:

THIS BRIDGE IS MOVING!

Really? Tell me, as fishermen, are we born to be foolhardy? Couldn’t resist a quick trot down the concrete just to see if it was true - it was and I damn nearly shat myself. Just then the rain started to pour, hard. Flashes of lightning and peals of thunder merely confirmed my darkest thoughts: “Smithy Boy - today it just aint meant to be!!”

Then I gaze west, towards a break in the clouds and….. “But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?” Bugger all as it happens but enough to convince me that the extra that the extra 8 miles upstream to Pandy may just be worth the trip….. and twenty minutes later as I draw up next to Trewyn Mill the rainfall is just starting to assume broom handle proportions - it’s “oh for f*cks sake!” Act II - I never did like Shakespeare.

Patience is the key to fishing though isn’t it? And I’ve not driven all this way only to have to phone my dearly beloved to tell her that I’m on my way home early. I haven’t looked at the water yet but decide to tackle up and sally down to the river, which is the colour of stewed tea. But how can you be deflated, this place: rain, wind or shine is just beautiful, possibly my most favourite stretch of the Monnow.

I reason that with the freshening throughflow of rain-wash, that the trout will be a little active perchance and a bit peckish like. And whilst I have my thinking head on, I also reason that a highly visible prize is necessary to tempt said brownies, and so a PTN gold head the size of a small torpedo is tied on below the Elk Hair Caddis. The PTN has a generous twist of silver thread coiled around its body; to my mind it should have achieve the same effect on Mssrs Salmo Trutta & Thyallamus as a polished chrome pole in a lap dancers club serves on those of us who dare venture into such establishments - it isn’t the main object of our interest, but it does help us focus.

……. and for the first time today, I’m smack on correct. Despite being Dooooh stupid and a big Jessie who doesn’t like fish without boots, and all kinds of other things, tonight I am a fisherman! Six lovely, lovely wild trout in an hour and a half, the best of which was just 14″, the worst of which was still gorgeous. I know I’m given to hyperbole but to fish here is just a joy, I hadn’t fished here since Mayfly time and on the way to the bank you think to yourself “There’s no water, what there is too dirty, will the fish still be here?”…….. and it feels like a revelation that they are, though of course, like me, where else would they be on a night like tonight?

So here’s the rub:  If you ever doubt yourself or the conditions, remember the words of the bard:

“Oft expectation fails, and most oft there

Where most it promises; and oft it hits

Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.”

Goodnight kisses all