Life of a Chalkstream: May 2019

Friday 24 May 2019

My Mayfly day

Greetings!

By now thousands of you will have caught thousands of fish on the Mayfly. My personal score stands resolutely at zero. I am yet to cast a Mayfly. For my days around this magical time evolve in a slightly different manner to yours.

I'm up a dawn but not, sadly, to fish. Email is a marvellous thing but it's also a choke chain on my life. Some of you clearly wake up in the middle of the night with the dread question: is my fishing tomorrow? Did I really book it? Where are my maps? Or a myriad of other things that invade our sleep ahead of any trip. And being as we all are (and I am not complaining) you send an email. I truly don't mind. I'd rather answer an email over my first cup of tea of the morning than field a frantic phone call later on.

Then it is off to the river to greet guests and corral the guides. I am a veritable travelling fly shop and mini mart - everything from cool beer to some of the most esoteric mayfly patterns in existence. We all like a bit of novelty. Then it back to the office for yes, more emails and writing. I sacrifice time on the river to bring you this newsletter. And then it is back to the river to collect the empties. Console the unsuccessful. Congratulate the victors.

I like to stay until everyone is gone; the car park finally empty. It is for me one of the greatest pleasures in life to sit on a bench, deserted of human company, to absorb the silence and quiet. Watch the river slide on by. See the occasional dying Mayfly sucked down by a trout who has mastered the art of the effortless take. I never feel inclined to fish though I do err towards that arrogant belief that I would indeed catch every rising fish should I have a rod in hand. But somehow the act of fishing seems unimportant. The fish have suppled their side of the bargain: sport for the day. In the dying light I feel they have earnt the right to feed unimpeded.

Eventually the occasional rises peter away to absolutely nothing. A glass flat river. It's done for another Mayfly day. It is time for me to leave. I feel my phone vibrate on silent in my pocket. The final round of the day beckons. Home. Eat. Sleep. Reboot. Tomorrow is another Mayfly day.

Is it a plane? Is it a bird? Well, sort of ....

.... it's a swoose. I never knew such a thing existed, the product of a swan and a goose. However odd the combination this stuffed specimen lived to the goodly age (at least for a hybrid bird) of fourteen years, born in 1910 at Beeston Priory in Norfolk where it lived out its life.

There are a few other swooses documented in more recent times. There was one living close to the estuary of the River Frome that was variously seen between 2004 and 2011. If our stuffed version was more swan than goose; this Dorset one was more goose than swan. More recently one was born at the National Trust West Green House in Hampshire in 2016.

If you would like to buy this rare stuffed exmaple it is in the Summers Place Auction on 11th June. The guide price is £2,000-3,000. www.summersplaceauctions.com

From odd fowl to odd fish

Here is a weird looking brown trout, in fine condition bar the obvious, that came out of the River Test on the Main beat at Mottisfont Abbey earlier this week.

It is now back swimming around, but we think it may have been caught once before in the One Fly, though that was some years ago. It did, as you might, imagine cause a certain amount of discussion as the One Fly scoring is based on the length of the fish. Now clearly this fish would, under normal circumstances be a quarter longer than it currently is. There was some attempt to argue for a higher score based on what-it-should-have-been, but our rigorous scrutiny committee dismissed the appeal i.e. we just laughed at the notion.

We are undecided as to whether this is a wild or stocked fish, though are generally erring on the side of wild. A disfigured fish of this kind would rarely get through the quality control of any decent fish farmer and if it did it probably would not have survived for so long and in such good condition.

If you do happen to catch Stumpy again do take a photo but do put him (or her) back.

Father's Day weekend

My father had absolutely no interest in fishing, fly or otherwise. But even though he never really understood my fascination, he happily ferried me around the rivers and trout lakes of southern England in the days before I could drive. He always seemed perfectly happy to read the paper or nod off in the car. Maybe he did get that bit of fishing where we are all very capable of filling a day doing very little.

The journey home was inevitably interrupted by frequent stops at wayside inns where we occasionally traded my catch for scampi-in-the-basket. My father had this uncanny knack of becoming the publicans' best friend in the matter of a few sentences. We were treated as regulars despite being miles from home in pubs we hardly ever visited. As you might imagine the remainder of the trip could sometimes be something of an adventure ......

I am not sure my childhood experience is the best template for inculcating your own children to fly fishing, but we do have the chance for fishing with your son or daughter here at Nether Wallop Mill on Saturday 15 June, the day before Father's Day proper.

It is a half day led by one of our patient instructors which aims to teach the essential casting skills, how to tie a fly and all importantly, catch plenty of fish. As the parent you will sit out the first 90 minutes (we serve excellent coffee, have comfortable chairs and Wi-Fi) but after that you'll buddy up with your child to catch fish.

The sessions run 9.30am-1pm or 2pm-5.30pm. There will be up to four father/child (8-16 years) pairs at each session. All tackle and flies provided. You may take home fish if you wish. The cost is £125/pair. For more details and to book click here .....

The Quiz

So, with all the swoose in mind our quiz this week is on hybrids. As ever it is just for fun

with answers at the bottom of the Newsletter.

1) What is a hinny?

2) What bee species were crossed to create the Killer Bee?

3) What two trout species are crossed to create the cutbow?

Enjoy the Whitsun break.

Best wishes,

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk

Founder & Managing Director

www.fishingbreaks.co.uk

Answers:

1) The reverse of a mule: a cross between a female donkey and a male horse.

2) The European honeybee and an African bee. A laboratory attempt to create tamer more manageable bees that then escaped into the wild.

3) Rainbow and cutthroat trout.

Friday 10 May 2019

Going to the dark side

Going to the dark side

Dear Simon,

I didn't think that my appearance on Countryfile Diaries could cause anyone any upset but, according to one email, I have apparently crossed a line to take the side of the anti brigade. Heavens, I was only talking about otters ........


	The Guardian's 1986 'Points of view' advert

The writer branded Countryfile as 'ludicrous'; I'll spare you some of the other things he said but I do actually understand at least some of his less extreme sentiments about the programme. It can be I'll agree saccharine sweet, a confected urban view of the rural landscape. But is that so bad? It is after all one of the BBC's most watched TV shows with an audience not just here but overseas. A Montanan fishing guide in my office earlier this week had even seen it in the USA. The British countryside is fast becoming a brand. Do we embrace that or do we fight it?

Years ago, The Guardian newspaper ran a marketing campaign that had the strap line 'Points of view'. In the most memorable of the adverts you saw two images. In the first a middle aged man walking along a pavement beneath some scaffolding was clearly terrified as a running skinhead bore down upon him. The inference was clear. Robbery. But in the second image, shot from the reverse angle, bags of cement were falling from a scaffolding above. The skinhead was trying to save the man. What you see or read is all about perspective.

The fact is that the way we see the countryside from our sporting perspective, be we shooters, fishers or hunters, is very different to those whose involvement is as ramblers, hikers, bird watchers, bikers or any of the many other myriad of ways in which the countryside is enjoyed. Most of us don't own large chunks of land so we can't really claim ownership to say that the right to pursue our pastime trumps that of all others. Ultimately use of the countryside is a collaborative thing whether our view of it is from a car window or a riverbank.

We shouldn't fight Countryfile. We should embrace it. It's a show that encourages people to love the British countryside. These are the people who we will need to rally to our support in the years to come as pollution, urbanisation and the other manifest dangers to rivers and wildlife loom ever larger.

No longer turning Japanese

You know I have often bragged about my favourite toy, the Toyota Hi Lux. Well, the love affair is over. Mercedes Benz have lured me across the aisle with their first ever pickup truck.

I must confess there was some logic in my decision, though you might caveat that by saying there is little logic to buying any car. The latest iteration of the Hi Lux lacks power and is 50% more expensive that the equivalent model in 2010.

The Benz on the other hand has borrowed much from the USA truck market - high suspension, grunty engine, tweaked exhaust pipes and generally all-round bigger than its European competitors. Which is somewhat ironic as currently the Germans don't have any plans to release it in the USA.

Anyway, it is rather fun to drive and the number on the roads are still so few that us owners exchange smug waves of recognition. However, I'm still to work out the purpose of the little glass panel in the back window, not much larger than an A4 sheet of paper, that slides open at the flip of a switch.

Steeple Langford - River Wylye

It has been a bit of a last-minute rush but I am delighted to welcome into the Fishing Breaks fold a lovely section of the River Wylye at Steeple Langford that lies upstream of Salisbury and south of the A303.

For those of you with long memories you might recall this as part of the Steeple Langford Fishery run by Paul Knight (now at Salmon & Trout Conservation) which had two large trout lakes in addition to the river. Things have changed a bit since then with the ownership now in the hands of the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust. Known as the Langford Lakes Nature Reserve the lakes are now fished by a coarse syndicate but the lakes primary purpose is as a breeding and resting ground for wild fowl; it is something of a bird watchers paradise with paths, hides and viewing platforms.

As for the river, which is separate and private from the rest of the reserve, it has undergone a radical change as the Trust have their own river restoration team who undertake contract work so the half mile section has become something of a test ground for many innovative techniques that are now commonplace.

Make no mistake this is a beat that is managed to be as natural as possible without erring on the side of jungle warfare. In broad terms you can divide the fishing into two sections: above and below the weir pool. The lower section is shallower, faster and more gravelly. The upper slower and deeper. This is an all wading beat; there are few opportunities for bank fishing and all the fish are wild. There is no stocking so as a consequence this is all catch and release.

For more details and booking click here. The river opens today.

April feedback winner

New season, new monthly draw for the feedback forms that many of you so kindly return.

You do have the rather fine Hardy Marquis reel to look forward to at the season-end draw but month-by-month I am going to be rather random. This time around the very good book by Jon Day I reviewed last month.

Well done to Mark Gomm who came out of the April hat, unusually for a draw winner a Nether Wallop Mill private tuition guest.

Mark: the book is in tonight's post.

The Quiz

This is the time of year for baby birds, so a test of knowledge of who grows into what. As ever, it is just for fun with answers of the page.