Ride 'em cowboy - NB not his real name

Fuggin' 'ell - what you doing here, says the figure hunched under the brolly. Blast me, it's the Midnight Cowboy. 

I clocked his van in the layby on the BTEAB drain. That's Blank to End All Blanks drain, between you and me.

Wotch'a doing Midnight Cowboy..? Blanking mate - wossit look like..?

Midnight Cowboy - not his real name, by the way - is a bit of an enigma in these parts, mainly because he seems to pick the hardest waters and keep fishing them regardless.

I have a lot of time for Midnight Cowboy, which isn't his real name, because of this. Midnight Cowboy does his own thing. He's been doing his own thing on this water two days running.

Trouble is you could be miles away from them on here, I say - adding a hefty shot of realism to the conversation. 

Hunkered down behind the only bit of undergrowth for miles, he's sure he's going to catch - despite the westerly tearing down the drain that's rendered one or two nearby waters virtually unfishable.

"Get your rods out then," he says. "You can't catch if you h'int even got a bait in the water."

I look at Midnight Cowboy (not his real name...). I look at the drain. The waves are starting to crest, rolling over into white horses. My rods stay in the car.

Midnight Cowboy - who wasn't called this by his mum and dad - says he might fish on into dark. I fancy this as much as I fancy a cabbage water enema.

Today had grim written all over it from the word go. Got up late, people in the swims I fancied on the first couple of waters I looked at. Gave the river an hour and needed three ounces of lead to keep the float still against the gathering gale.

Went to a nearby drain in time to spy a couple of this country's newest inhabitants packing up with the perch they'd just killed in a carrier bag. I looked at the new water I fancied trying and there were people everywhere.

"Someone had a thirty out last week," one explains, when I ask why there are people everywhere.

I checked out somewhere else, on my travels. Litter everywhere - beer cans and vodka bottles topped off by a bike someone had obviously hauled out of the drain.
 
Midnight Cowboy - which I stress is not his real name - is non-plussed by all of this. Conditions are almost perfect in his book.

The wind' s howling down the BTEAB drain. Midnight Cowboy (whose birth certificate carries a different name...) shrugs: "I don't care if the bobbins in't dropping off every minute. You just got to keep trying."

I decide to do just that. As in keep trying. As in tomorrow.