I’d heard he rumours of course I had, but I’d looked onto the crystal clear gravels for five years and never caught sight of a decent fish other than the ubiquitous chub. Were they there? Did we have the B-word fish in our stream..

........ our little stream, the water we had fished for perhaps 15 years or longer since the club acquired the lease. No, not Bream, but then I am sure you did not think that for it was the B in the rather bland heading that attracted you to this article in the first place.
I have noticed that catchy headings on this web site don‘t always catch the eye - but a few catchy words do... take Barbel for instance, and fishing, and small streams...and you have a recipe for delight. Of course I did not believe that OUR stream held such fish, despite hearing that some fingerlings were stocked by the EA - or was it the NRA - the National Rivers Authority, some 15 or so years ago. Time flies so fast, if I think it was 15 years ago then it was no doubt 18 years ago. Time does indeed fly fast - every Sunday evening when I go to bed, it seems to be Thursday... for Friday is here in no time. The week disappears before my very eyes. Work, rest and play, said the ad for the Mars Bar... so make the most of your every waking, fishing possible minute. One day it will be your last...

I don’t intend to sound morbid with that comment but life moves so quickly, for it hardly seems a few years ago that I was staring as a new first former, just 11 year old, into the 8 x 4 concrete pond at school - just behind the bike sheds (though it was not the only thing found behind the bike sheds.) And I recall it was just in front of the school greenhouse potting shed. It was about a foot deep at the shallow end, for it was that end that housed a couple of beautiful red water lilies in those black plastic retaining baskets.. and the pond sloped to he ‘bottom end’ which I guess was about three feet deep.

In fact it was over 35 years ago that I watched the still, green, pea soup water in the pond, its balance all at odds with nature, but perhaps that was also due to the odds and sods my fellow pupils at Grove Hill School threw into its murky depths. I sat and I watched, and I watched, and watched, and I even cycled to school at the weekends to look again. It was still, there was no sign of life. But I‘d heard the rumours back then too, of leviathan, a giant fish that lived in the mud. It had been seen, if you believed those rumours. But how could such a monster live in such a small pond? And a concrete pond at that, bereft of underwater weed to aerate and with just a couple of lilies, as splendid as they were in summer, covering a small surface area. No wonder the pond water was olive green.

But I did not see it. And I didn’t believe the story either when on the school mini-bus one morning venturing the 100 miles to the famous Royalty fishery on the equally famous Hampshire Avon. I was 14 then, and one of the fisher lads chosen for a school trip, a fishing trip, organised by the caretaker, a keen fisher. Ah, yes, this was the days when the school caretaker was looked up to, admired, and treated with respect as an important member of staff - and it wasn’t only because he was the man who held the keys to the school tuck shop either. I caught my first one pound perch that day, one of only two fish caught, a bigger boy bagging a modest chub of over two pounds to claim the day’s prize. But hat‘s when I heard about it. The pond contained a huge green flanked tench, put there by the caretaker a couple of years before. And after three years of looking, watching the water, creeping to its edges before school, at break-time, dinner time and after lessons finished for the day - and the weekend vigil...oh well, the bigger boys and the caretaker were always playing pranks anyway. So it didn’t exist. But I’d given it my best shot. But on the trip home that Sunday from the Royalty, semi comatose at the end of the long day after the 5am start I heard it straight from the horse’s mouth.

“Anyone seen the big tench in the pond, it’s a bit elusive.. but it comes up occasionally,” said Bill, for we were grown ups that day and we were on first name terms with Mr Caretaker. I knew instantly by the tone of his voice that he was not kidding, that the fish did exist, but I was not going to believe it one hundred percent until I had witnessed it with my own eyes.

More months followed, dawn, dusk and weekends after football I was there, cutting into my own fishing time. I was addicted, I watched the bland piece of water, lifeless. My parents thought I had lost it big time, to coin a modern phrase. Perhaps I had. And then, just like a Red Letter Day when you least expect it, it happened. And we were all left gasping. I was sitting on the edge of the pond, for it was a raised pond with brick sides and the cement inner. And around me were five, maybe half a dozen friends and I recall it clearly, we were discussing the previous night’s Colditz TV programme. And it happened. I was mesmerised as usual, few others were watching the water for they had no interest. Then James tossed his apple core into the water - it was small, well chewed, but it still floated. And it happened. In slow motion, the thick lips surfaced, sucking in the core and promptly spitting it out, but not before its head was in daylight. A red eyed, golden green flanked tench, of fully 2, or maybe even three pounds. I missed the next lesson, and narrowly escaped a detention. I just sat and relived the moment.

And I relived the moment as I gazed onto the golden gravels in my stream some 36 years later, and I recalled the school pond incident. It gave me hope of finding the B-word fish. But I never did. Until the following spring when I walked the stream in the close season with Barbel Dave who was considering joining the club - now if they existed he would find them, or at least I was hoping he would find at least one. That’s all I needed. Just one.
And there it was, three quarters of a mile upstream from the edge of the wood where we parked the car. Over the edge of the marginal growth, which was already fierce and would be impenetrable come June 16. But that suited us. There, stationary but for a slowly wavering tail fin on the shallow gravels in the current, was Barbus Barbus, a fighting fit mint conditioned torpedo, of over four pounds, and quite possibly closer to five said Dave. She was majestic, she was previously uncaught, pristine..beautiful bronzed flanks, coral pink fins. Stunning. And even at the modest size, she was a giant for such a small stream. Who needs to catch record sized fish on the Upper Ouse this season when you have fish like this on your doorstep. She was the inspiration and motivation for the past season.

We adjourned for a celebratory can of Ginger Beer.. it was going to be a good season searching the feature swims, the snags, the gravel runs, back eddies and the meandering deeps.

I have been at the river several times each week since, and virtually every day during the close season, watching, observing, and while often in a bailiffing role, I have always been armed with ten or eleven feet of masterly cane rod (post June 16th only!) and with a simple rig, a light lead, and an even simpler bait. Jungle warfare during the summer, but I have enjoyed some long trotting float fishing for barbel with a worm bait under a traditional Paul Cook float on milder winter days. I have had chub a plenty, to well over five pounds, I have had dace, roach. Small river carp and modest perch (the larger stripeys have alluded me thus far), and I have banked 22 barbus to date. Small stream barbus…. in all year classes from just 10 ounces, my favourite fish of the season, a giant four barbuled gobio, to a small stream monster of eight pounds and nine ounces – a leviathan from a stream that even I, an aging, overweight former athlete could long jump across in most places as it meanders across the wonderful Hertfordshire landscape.

Other fishers have caught barbel, but this has been my season, sitting in the grass or propped against a tree hiding behind the marginal rushes, at one with nature, the overhead kestrels, the evening visit from the resident barn and tawny owls, the jet fast blue streak lightning kingfishers…

Roll on June 16th….

Gary Cullum

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