Mr. Heron is dead. Long live Mr. Heron

 

Life on a Chalkstream 24th October 2025   Having problems reading this email? View as Webpage   ·    Mr. Heron is dead. Long live Mr. Heron An outbreak of bird flu reaches the Wallop valley ·    Arise, Lord Jardine! ·    Learning something new about yew ·    The power of Gone Fishing ·    Wildlife Photographer of the Year ·    Quiz   Greetings!   A sad sight the other morning - our resident heron floating dead, partially eaten, on the lake at The Mill.   This is not the first time I have found a dead, adult heron here; a few years back on the Brook I found another that had just been shot. The reason for the death of last week’s heron was harder to discern. We speculated that it may have been attacked by an otter or fox but in a life or death tussle of that nature my money would be firmly on Mr. Heron. They are strong. They are tough. And that is a beak that will pierce deep into any flesh. Maybe, though I could see no injuries to confirm it, that this one had also been shot and wounded, returning home but with injuries that would eventually end its life.     However, all my guesswork was well wide of the mark, for a few days later I heard that in our next-door village of Broughton an outbreak of bird flu had been declared on 11/October the same day we found the corpse. This seems to me the most likely cause of death and that the ever opportunist otters had had a go at the body.   You might think that the death of a heron, a fish eater, might be the cause of celebration but really they are not birds that have much impact on the trout for they are far more focused on easier, smaller prey such as frogs, mice and bullheads. That said, I think Mr. Heron and I had reached a sort of working arrangement. Most mornings I would see him patrolling along the edge of the lake (plenty of our fish have heron-inflicted scars) at which point I would go out onto the balcony and wave my arms which, despite the 50-75 yards distance between us, he would acknowledge by lugubriously taking off to fly a short distance to grumpily take up station in the water meadows.   Of course, I think we both knew we were indulging in a fiction for he would inevitably return later in the day when I was not around. However, judged by the evidence of dead fish, otter kills and heron kills being distinctly different, I would say fur outkills feather 20-1. Anyway, to kill a heron is pointless – there is always a population of the dispossessed looking for a new haunt though for a week or so in our particular instance the egret, who usually had to play second fiddle to Mr. Heron, strutted around with that strange egret head jerk walk, as king of the hill.   But on Monday the natural order of things returned. As I walked around the lake clearing the grilles of the autumn leaves, my daily task between now and Christmas, a grey body curled in the air above my head executing a deft landing on the bank of the lake. Mr. Heron is dead. Long live Mr. Heron       Arise, Lord Jardine!   There are not many headlines that make my heart sing with joy but the one on Monday “Fishing to be taught in schools” certainly did.   For those who missed it, this is a new GCSE, BTEC and A-level qualification that has grown out of The Countryside Alliance Foundation’s Fishing for Schools programme which has been championed by Charles Jardine for nearly twenty years. My gut tells me this might be the fillip angling, and outdoor pastimes in general, needed to arrest the decline in interest of successive generations we have seen over many decades.       Charles Jardine at the House of Commons launch of the new qualifications accompanied by the Lakedown Fishery & Brewery crew   I say this having seen the massive benefit of our local Sparsholt College, a leader in fishery management courses where it is not all about degree level academia. Sparsholt takes young boys and girls at that critical crossroads in their education, where they can swap classroom learning for an institution that values outdoor talent. Fishing Breaks is living proof of this, many who do and have worked with me, proud and talented alumni of Sparsholt. It seems to me that these new qualifications, to be taught in schools from late 2026, which range from Level 1 (Introduction) through to Level 3 (Advanced Skills), the latter earning university entry points, may do for the whole country what Sparsholt has done on a more localised level.   On a side note, four or five years ago, I was asked to sponsor an application for an OBE which I willingly did. For reasons I do not know that OBE was never granted but frankly that person deserves more for his legacy, which will now cascade down through many generations. Arise, Lord Jardine! Can anyone make that happen?     Learning something new about yew   I learnt a new word today – aril. My father had a liking for yew berries but still lived to a ripe old age despite the general assumption that they are deadly poisonous. I was reminded of this as I walked around the perimeter of The Mill this morning which has a yew hedge which this year, in common with most hedgerow plants, is thick with berries.   Unlike my father, I have never quite had the cojones to eat a yew berry, called an aril, the trick being to remove the seed (the poisonous bit), from the red flesh which is indeed edible much liked by birds and, strangely, foxes both of whom have a digestive systems through which the seed passes undigested providing distribution for the species.      However, for nearly all other creatures, including ourselves, yew is deadly poisonous with no antidote which explains why the tree, essential for longbow making, was grown in churchyards - one of the few fenced off areas away from livestock in the times before the first Enclosure Act of 1604.   Of course, like most plants, the yew is not all bad from a human perspective. The drug Docetaxel is derived from yew leaves, a highly effective chemotherapy compound. Slightly more esoterically on hot days, yew can give off hallucinogenic vapours and standing in the fine golden pollen is said to shift consciousness, which may well explain why everyone finds The Mill, with over half a mile of yew hedging, such a calming place!     The power of Gone Fishing   It seems unbelievable for such a cockeyed concept but Gone Fishing, that begins its eighth series on Sunday, has propelled angling back into mainstream consciousness.   Quite why two old gits and a dog  has found the sweet spot in the TV viewing habits of BBC watchers I have no idea but I can say for sure, judging by the many people who call up to cast that first line or rekindle a childhood passion, Bob and Paul are mining a productive seam on behalf of all of us in the fishing business.   It is a seam that looks set to continue as angling consultant to the show, John Bailey, tells me they have already begun filming the ninth series, a tenth is under discussion and the Christmas Special is in the can.     John, Paul & Bob   I caught up with John on Tuesday evening, just in from a day trotting with maggots and worms for perch on the River Wye, the banks of which he moved to not so long ago after half a lifetime in East Anglia. John described the day as ‘amazing’ with plenty of good sized perch, chub and barbel. He reckons, subject to rains and frost, we probably have another six weeks to wring out from the neck of the season. So, if you fancy a last gasp day this side of Christmas check out the options with John here ……      Wildlife Photographer of the Year   As ever, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year, currently on show at the Natural History Museum did not fail to impress with both the beauty and pain of nature captured by some remarkable people. Having just been writing about egrets it seemed rather appropriate to share this one with you, definitely one of my top ten from the exhibition.      Egret chasing ladyfish chasing bait fish in China   I am sure that you, like me, have fond memories of childhood visits to the Natural History Museum; it is sort of in our collective DNA so I must admit I felt rather embarrassed as a native for the greeting the Museum gives to its visitors, a majority of which are clearly from overseas. Firstly, the cost of admission to Wildlife is an eye-watering £17.50 a head, plus you get harangued to give an extra donation. I do mean literally harangued as once past the ticket barrier you have to pass along a zigzag path between ten donation touch screens with a man shouting imprecations to pull out a credit card to give one last time. I could barely understand what he was saying and I could see the bafflement of non-English speakers who had no idea whether this emotional obstacle course was compulsory or voluntary. And this from an institution that received over £70m this year from the taxpayer.   The commentary that went along with each photo was for the most part helpful and illuminating; rarely are these photos the result of a random point and press of a smartphone. However, readers did get rather bludgeoned with the theme of ‘we are trashing our planet so wake the f**k up’. Genuinely, I do not think anyone there needed to be told this with every third photo.   And then as you leave the darkened exhibition area you enter a brightly lit 10,000 sq. ft hall full of what is best described as tat. You know what I mean; all those pointless trinkets, baubles, mementos and keepsakes that only seem to have a home in tourist gift shops. I suspect 90% of the product is sourced overseas, 95% manufactured from manmade materials and 100% of it all will be landfill within a decade.   Perhaps the Natural History Museum should take a long look in the mirror to ask whether they are doing to our planet themselves precisely what they abhor in others.     Quiz   The usual random collection of questions this week inspired by the date and topics today.   1)     Why was this date ‘Black Thursday’ in 1929?   2)     What is the name of the dog in Gone Fishing?   3)     Match the seed names drupes, keys and masts to the correct tree of ash, beech and holly    Answers are at the bottom of this Newsletter.   Have a good weekend.  Best wishes,     Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk Founder & Managing Directorwww.fishingbreaks.co.uk     1)     The start of the Wall Street Crash 2)     Ted 3)     Ash=keys. Beech=masts. Holly=drupes       TIME IS PRECIOUS. USE IT FISHING     The Mill, Heathman Street, Nether Wallop, Stockbridge, England SO20 8EW United Kingdom 01264 781988 www.fishingbreaks.co.uk Check out our social media

Carp for supper?

 

Life on a Chalkstream 10th October 2025   All manners of people, from all sides of the political aisle, seem to have tied themselves in knots over allegedly the latest in fine dining – carp, which prompted me to look into the regulations.   Each day, excepting the closed season, you can take from rivers one pike (up to 65cm), two grayling (30cm to 38cm) and fifteen small fish (up to 20cm) including barbel, chub, common bream, common carp, crucian carp, dace, perch, rudd, silver bream, roach, smelt and tench. Any eels you catch (except conger eels) must be released alive. You can also take minor or ‘tiddler’ species, such as gudgeon, non-native species and ornamental varieties of native species like ghost or koi carp.     Crispy Fried Carp - a Polish Christmas Eve tradition   Having never eaten any of the above species bar eels I sought out some opinions. Carp, which was much reared in medieval times, especially in monastic circles, was considered the best, with bream the second favourite. Perch, tench and roach were also reared which suggest they had appeal as food. Pike were much liked but rearing difficult for all the obvious reasons. Eels of course, along with trout and salmon, were the most sought after but more seasonal and harder to harvest.   But back to today; I have to admit I did not realise we were quite so free to kill quite so many fish on a daily basis. I am sure there is some logic behind both the listed species and the associated sizes, but for the life of me why anyone would want to kill two good sized grayling a day defeats me. And more importantly, why, if eels are protected why not grayling?   I did get briefly side tracked into the regulations for trout, salmon and sea trout but that is a whole new world of pain which you can enter for yourself via this link. Apropos the Boden skirmish there are still plenty of rivers where, if you have the wish, you may keep a salmon which makes me think the pile on should be directed at the Environment Agency, custodian of the bye-laws that control such things. To requote myself, why, if eels are fully protected why not salmon?     When salmon were plentiful: Sir Thomas & Lady Sopwith with a day's catch from Nursling, River Test 1954.     Confected outrage   The headline in The Daily Telegraph last week ‘Boden ad campaign featuring dead salmon triggers angler backlash’ caught my eye on two fronts. Firstly, having seen the advert I did not feel in anyway triggered and secondly, in full disclosure, Boden founder Johnnie Boden was one of our teenage gang who grew up in the Meon Valley of East Hampshire.   The ‘outrage’ was that the models, kitted out for salmon fishing, were holding a dead salmon. Now to be fair, I am not a great fan of grip ‘n grin photographs of dead fish, but they do have a place. Across our website nearly all the fish featured are on the way to being safely released. However, at Nether Wallop Mill, I see no harm in recording the incontestable joy of catching and keeping that first ever trout which often is the beginning of a lifetime of fly fishing with all the abundant adventure that will bring and an appreciation of the great outdoors.        But back to Boden. It seems that the ‘angler backlash’ was that someone, somewhere (let us assume for the moment a click hungry keyboard warrior) had decided that holding a dead salmon, patently obviously a farmed one, was in some way hastening the demise of the wild salmon stocks. Cue The Daily Telegraph, and the following day The Times, contacting the usual string of people and organisations who wheeled themselves out as a rent-a-quote to support this flimsy assertion. One even tried to draw some feminist connection.   This was confected rage of the worst kind that does little to move forward the cause of angling. In fact, I would argue that the likes of the Boden campaign, left unremarked by activist anglers, would have been a boost for our image. Yes, there was a dead fish but the British public do not resile at images of this kind, as evidenced by frequent supermarket TV and poster advertising campaigns featuring dead fish.  Frankly, I thought they were great images that bought some fun and youth to fishing, precisely the target audience the rent-a-quotes are usually so keen to go after. But no, thanks to this ‘backlash’ Boden withdrew the adverts, issued a grovelling apology and you can be absolutely sure that no advertising campaign manager is going to touch anything angling related for a very long time.   So, well done everyone who piled on, great job.     Resolving UK water scarcity   Here is a good idea. You live in a country where water is at a premium, where rivers are starved by over abstraction when they are at their most vulnerable during the summer months. So, in the name of climate change, why not grow a water hungry crop like rice in artificially created paddy fields.   Nah, its never going to happen, you might think. However, you could well be wrong because in East Anglia, Britain’s driest region, trial rice crops are about to be harvested for the first time, the scientist leading the study saying, ’In 10 years time, rice could be a perfect crop for us.’   Perfect? I sometimes wonder if people like this have entirely lost the plot. Though water for agricultural use only accounts for 1-2% of overall UK consumption the problem is that irrigation is consumptive. That is to say water is not returned to the environment in the short term, concentrated in the driest areas, in the driest years and driest months when resources are most constrained. Fortunately, not everyone is quite so smitten with the rice plan, a fellow scientist involved in the project, pointing out that the likely upshot will be a wildlife haven for tens of thousands of locust-like Canada geese.     The Ely rice crop   Last week I did in fact touch upon the use of water in farming when I gave a seminar to the team at Imperial College London who are undertaking the Water Scarcity Project Inquiry. The bulk of the discussion was around a national grid of water, reservoirs, desalination, and encouraging less wasteful use in both residential and commercial settings. The theme, in essence, was that we are a country with plenty of water where we only need six inches of rain a year to sustain our needs from an annual rainfall of 32-40 inches; the trouble is that, as things currently stand, we often have the most water where we need it least and vice a versa. In this, farming has a role to play.   The growing water consuming crops such as maize or sugar beet, and field vegetables like potatoes, carrots, onions, and salad crops, and in extremis rice, should be confined to those regions where water scarcity is not an issue. This can be done by pricing – namely varying the cost of abstraction licences by region or simply proscribing certain crops in certain areas. In a similar fashion, commercial enterprises should be subject to water pricing in areas of water scarcity or denied planning permission altogether. Likewise new residential housing should be subject to similar strictures.   Today technology and innovation frequently makes the previously impossible readily possible but sometimes, as with the rice project, we should stand back to consider the broader implications.     Commemorative bench to Halford & Marryat unveiled by the River Itchen in Winchester   I am indebted to Michael Rescorle who saw this article in our local paper the Hampshire Chronicle which I reproduce in full.   A bench commemorating a meeting between the fathers of dry fly fishing has been unveiled in Winchester. The bench is located in The Weirs, and marks the April 28, 1879, meeting in Winchester between Frederic M. Halford and George Selwyn Marryat, which led to the development of dry fly fishing.   The bench was officially unveiled by supporters on Thursday, October 2. They were joined by Johanna Halford, the great-great-granddaughter of F.M. Halford. She said: “I think it is rather magical that we are celebrating this meeting between Marryat and Halford. Marryat had all this knowledge that he shared with Halford. Halford tried to share the spotlight and asked Marryat to be a co-author, but Marryat said no.   Marryat was the brains behind it all. I would have really liked to have met him. I think to have a bench for this meeting between these two men will shed light on this part of history. It is really down to the hard work of Mike Davis and the team, that we have this bench here. Like fly fishing, it is all about patience and observation. I have studied trees, and one of my teachers said, it is all about observation. My family and I are thrilled that this bench has been placed in The Weirs.”     Mike Davis, Johanna Halford and Terry Lawton   Mike Davis, who was one of the main drivers behind getting the bench erected, said: “I am delighted that there is finally a memorial to Winchester's role in the history of fly fishing. I am surprised there has not been a memorial to date for this meeting, which led to the development of fly fishing and made Hampshire chalk streams world famous.”   Terry Lawton, another of the main organisers for the bench, said: “We are very pleased to be here today to unveil the bench. It is a memorial to a most significant meeting in the development of dry fly fishing."   I have to say this is a great tribute but a horrible bench, though I guess the hand of the Winchester City Council, or maybe the Cathedral authorities, laid heavy on the choices. If you wish to visit, here is the What3Words location.        That was the month that was September   I would say this September was just about the perfect month to end the final full month of the season. Plenty wet enough at 149% of long term average rainfall (LTA) to perk up the streams but the rain concentrated enough to leave blue sky, short sleeve days to enjoy a final cast. In fact, we were inundated with last minute bookings which added up to one of our busiest Septembers on record with some stellar catch reports.   Of course, as you well know, I now start to look nervously to the heavens as October-January are the critical months in which the winter rains recharge the aquifers that will carry us through 2026. Currently we are set fair with groundwater levels and river flows measures showing Normal. That said on the 12 month rolling measure we are tracking at 92% of LTA but that comes on the back of the very wet winter of 2024/25.     If your of a mind, the grayling season has kicked off in earnest and our winner of the September Feedback Draw Marcus Wide who fished Whitchurch Fulling Mill will be able to head out with 10 grayling patterns from our Vice Master Nigel Nunn. Tight lines Marcus!     Small & Scruffy Loop, Small & Scruffy Rainbow & Dry Fly Hackle     Quiz   The usual random collection of questions this week inspired by the date and topics today.   1)     What was worn for the first time on this day in 1886 to an autumn ball at Tuxedo Park in New York?   2)     Which country has the carp as its national fish?   3)    Which two nations are responsible for more than half of world rice production?   Answers are at the bottom of this Newsletter.   Have a good weekend.  Best wishes,     Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk Founder & Managing Directorwww.fishingbreaks.co.uk     1)     A dinner jacket. 2)     Japan where the Koi (Nishikigoi) is recognized as a symbol of strength and aspiration. 3)     China and India        TIME IS PRECIOUS. USE IT FISHING     The Mill, Heathman Street, Nether Wallop, Stockbridge, England SO20 8EW United Kingdom 01264 781988 www.fishingbreaks.co.uk Check out our social media