The River Leam - Gravers and Graphochromotherapy

Now it’s typical, isn’t it? The weather holds itself together in a fragile truce of lukewarm, semi-acceptable mediocrity for weeks, but the exact second the bags are packed for a half-term escape to Devon, Mother Nature summons Storm Austen to blow the roof off the tent and hurl coastal spray directly into your morning brew. Still, if anyone can find misplaced optimism in a tempest, it’s my twin brother Chris. He rang me while I was up in Glasgow to detail his latest marine skirmish a gruelling twenty-minute battle with the undisputed leviathan of the deep from the Ho! rock mark. There he was, bent double under the strain of what was undoubtedly a specimen bass, hound or bull huss, only for the unseen monster to spit the hook right beneath his rod tip, aided and abetted by a floating continent of drifted weed. Heartbreaking stuff, though deep down we both know the big bass always fancy a feed when the sea looks like a washing machine on full spin. Speaking of Glasgow, my brief escape…