Life of a Chalkstream: Beware: Contains graphic fishing scenes

Greetings!

Not so long ago I went back to read The Old Man and the Sea. I must admit I was felt slightly disappointed; it didn’t seem to be the great novella I recalled from my teenage years. Perhaps it was because I know more about Hemingway now than I did back then; the autobiographical elements, that are not often commented on, somehow detract from the fiction.

However, I can’t say that I was upset on my recent reading, or the one way back, as perhaps might be the literature students at the University of the Highlands and Islands (which has a college dedicated to fisheries ....) where the book has been issued with a trigger warning in case readers are upset by the “graphic fishing scenes”.

Look away now

Aside from the patent absurdity of such a warning as we watch the scenes in Ukraine unfold by the hour, I do wonder whether the same students are advised never to turn on a television.

Goods knows what they would think of Wicked Tuna (Channel 5) or ITV’s Jeremy Wade in River Monsters; he is clearly in need of some sort of help. And as for Mortimer & Whitehouse on BBC2 I assume it will soon contain a viewer discretion message: contains graphic scenes of old men having fun.

This could be you .....

The indestructible willow

When is an evergreen tree not an evergreen? When it is a willow. For the willow, in most of the 400 odd manifestations of its species, is the deciduous tree that buds first, and sheds leaves last. The magnificent specimen that greets visitors to Nether Wallop Mill will be leaved until well into December and turn a hue of green in February. Basically, January is the only month it looks as stark and bare as its chestnut and ash neighbours.

Salix is the genus by which the willow species goes but the Latin name almost certainly has an alarmingly simple Celtic origin, sal meaning near and lis meaning water. Willows just love water; the only two British trees I can think of that compete for moisture on anywhere near the same scale would be poplars and alders. In fact, if you trim a large limb from a willow, it will spout water like a regular hosepipe for quite some minutes. And talking of trimming, they are almost undestroyable. I’ve never known a tree bounce back with such vigour when denuded of all branches.

We pollard about once a decade the dozen sentinels that line the Wallop Brook in the meadow below The Mill. The trunks, estimated by some at over 400 years old, stand about 15 feet tall with a circumference of the outstretched arms of two or three men. From the crown of the trunk sprout clean, straight limbs that triple the overall height of the tree; it is these we cut off. Not so much today, but in generations past this was a harvest of valuable materials. The straight grained, pliable wood was much used in construction and famously, cricket bats. The source material for the bats of WG Grace is often cited as the Wallop valley though, in truth, it is not a claim I’ve ever been able to definitively stand up. However, more definitively willow is used in the sides, backs and linings in the construction of the double bass. By the way, if you are an artist, your charcoal pencil is willow.

But these are relatively more modern uses; willow is pliable and strong used by man almost since the beginning of civilisation for basket weaving and similar purposes including fishing, with nets being dated as far back as 8,300BC. More recently willow was co-opted into WWII by the Parachute Division, who used light, strong willow baskets that could be weaved into any shape and bounced on impact, for air drops. At the height of the war production ran into thousands of tonnes with 670 manufacturers employing over 7,000 people.

It is a shame we don’t have much practical use for the cut willow wood but cut the willow trees we must. For, if the trees were not pollarded the branches would simply keep growing and growing until the weight to the top above would split the trunk below asunder. It does, however, given sufficient time to dry, make good firewood with a high mass-to-heat coefficient hence the attempts at growing willow as a biomass product to fire commercial power stations.

However, we do use some of the branches to cultivate new trees – this is horticultural cutting on an epic scale. Select a straight branch as thick as a thick thigh and about ten foot long. Trim off any side branches. Dig a hole a yard deep in wet ground into which you stand upright your branch. Heel in and leave returning a couple of times each year to rub off any side shoots. Within a year you’ll have a nice green, fuzzy head of willow shoots. In three years, you’ll have a tree in everything but name. In five you’ll wonder why you ever planted the bloody thing as you add another tree to the list for pollarding. I suspect my Nether Wallop neighbour, who loving tends his red-headed willow boundary on an annual basis, might sometimes feel the same way.

For not everyone loves willows. In their attempt to seek out water the fibrous roots often invade sewer pipes, water supply pipes and cesspits causing blockage and damage. Of the cesspit I can attend. Our specimen willow grows right above our cesspit, so every couple of years a huge, wiry beard of roots, often as long as the cesspit is deep, has to be hacked out. Lovely. Though maybe I should not be so harsh as I read somewhere of an experiment in using willow for biofiltration. The Australians who seem to make a habit of importing things that subsequently become a menace, rabbits and cane toads spring to mind, have now listed the willow as a Weed of National Importance after an experiment in planting to prevent riverbank erosion went badly wrong as the willow population exploded like, say, rabbits.

Actually, willow is not in fact native to Britain either and the most recognised of the species Salix x sepulcralis, the weeping willow, is in fact a cross between the Peking willow from China and white willow from mainland Europe. Legend has it that the poet Alexander Pope begged a twig that had been used to tie a parcel sent from Spain to Lady Suffolk in England. Pope planted that twig which thrived, from which all British weeping willows are descended,

And, in case you are wondering why the willow is first out, last in it is not, as I fancifully imagined, something unique to do with chalkstream water temperature but rather ambient air temperature and daylight. In the spring three consecutive days of 10C/50F is enough for leaf out and leaf drop begins when daylight shortens to ten and a half hours. As those wretched meerkats would say, simples.

Cover story

Where in the world was this photo taken on the cover of the May edition of Trout & Salmon?

It is a Fishing Breaks favourite for over 30 years in the mostly westerly chalkstream county. If you are thinking Dorset and the River Frome, you are spot on. This is Muckleford, one of the seven beats on the Wrackleford Estate.

If you are a regular Trout & Salmon reader you will know I write a monthly column called Trout Talk. I’ve just penned my fiftieth edition, and, like here, the topics range far and wide from berating the fishing establishment for their failures to some rather more, what I hope are, more thoughtful pieces as to why we fish.

If you don’t buy Trout & Salmon, I won’t berate you though annual subscription starts at a reasonable £25 for the digital edition but I will tell you that you are also missing out on the wonderful fishing reports for the Wessex region by our very own Tony King.

You may catch up on the back catalogue of my columns via this link.