The Great S**t Show

 

Greetings!   Over the winter I played with the idea of writing a book about the water industry. Not just the water industry we know today, 30 years on from privatisation, but rather an examination of how we are where we are. A history of British s**t if you like.   In the course of the research, it became abundantly clear to me that we have never really addressed the problem of human, farming and industrial waste with any real regard to the environment. We often hold the great Victorian sewerage system as the high point of public waste management but really this is a giant myth. Yes, it was impressive. Yes, it did move vast quantities of waste away from human habitation. But to mostly where? Rivers and coastal waters, of course. Collectively, across the British Isles, since the first home sewer was recorded in the Orkneys five millennia ago it has been a case of down the pipe, out of sight and out of mind.

 

 

Jump forward to the Tudor age to see the first attempt at government intervention by none other than Henry VIII, who didn’t just worry about his many wives apparently. Such was the prevalence of fetid open sewers in London and other major cities that he created the Commissioners and Courts of Sewers who were tasked with ensuring they kept flowing ever onwards to river and sea.   And so, it has continued since then with numerous attempts to keep sewers, and the changing nature of waste, apace with the growing population in the intervening centuries. But essentially the problems we see of the 21st century are little different to those of both the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1870 the six leading salmon rivers produced 185,000 fish; by 1939 the figure was 50,000. Goodness knows what feeble figure that is today. In 1900 one third of all typhoid cases could be traced back to contaminated shellfish harvested from British coastal waters. Today Surfers for Sewage have an online map of waters to avoid. In 1908 the Royal Commission on Sewage Disposal sets a contamination standard that effectively legalises sewage dumping in rivers and sea. Sound familiar? By the 1960’s the same standard was still in force so that by the end of the decade 60% of all sewage treatment works were estimated to be failing to meet the standards established at the end of the 19th century.   It was a wretched mess with 170 water providers and over 1,000 sewage treatment companies. “Something must be done!”, went up the shout, the result being the 1973 Water Act that established 10 new publicly owned regional water authorities that would manage the supply of water and sewerage services for England and Wales on a fully integrated basis, operating investment on a cost recovery basis.   It was on the rocks of that phrase “cost recovery basis” that the 1973 Act was to flounder. The growing population, environmental concerns and EU legislation meant that the required investment could only be recovered through ever higher consumer bills. Civil servants offering up spending plans to their political masters got little more than blank stares – there are not many votes to be had in s**t. So, with every passing year, as the problems worsened, the potential bill became higher and higher.   The problem was resolved, at least from a political if not environmental perspective, by the privatisation of the water and sewerage industry in 1989. But the question must be asked was this the sale of the century or the offloading of already degraded assets? The answer is definitely and definitely.

 

 

It was pretty sweet deal for the privateers with a one-off injection of public capital, the write off of significant government debt and the provision of capital tax allowances. And once they had their feet under the table, they soon found it easy to run rings around the regulator OFWAT and swat away the EA as the annoying fly in the room.   As to the assets, namely the physical structures that move and treat sewage, they clearly were not up to the job in 1989. Today? Well, if the population had remained stable there might have been some opportunity for catch up, but the British population has exploded by 20% since privatisation – an extra 11 million people with no matching increase is sewerage capacity. I see it around here in the villages of the Test Valley every day where emergency fleets of giant tankers stand by each morning to take away the waste from local sewage plants built 50 years ago for populations a half or a third of what they are today.   The only chink of light I see in all this is a growing public awareness of sewage pollution but is there the will to spend money on any significant scale to make up for half a century of inaction? Judging by a recent comment from George Eustice, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, probably not. He wondered whether an annual £12 increase in water and sewage bills could be justified to pay for some minor improvements. £12? Really! That is just 3% on the average water bill and doesn’t even match inflation. As a certain tennis player once said, you cannot be serious. It seems The Great S**t Show is set to run and run.

 

 

Fancy your own slice of fishing?   You may recognise this picture from a Newsletter around this time last year when 2,328 yards of the River Itchen and 33 acres of water meadows, just upstream of Winchester at Abbots Worthy, came up for sale. It went under offer pretty quickly but for a variety of reasons the deal never went through so it has been remarketed this spring at £1.1m.   At the time some of you wrote or spoke to me to say you’d be interested if I was putting together a group of like-minded fly fishers for some kind of joint purchase. As things moved quickly it was not on the cards but this time around there might be a different opportunity.

 

 

If you are interested in exploring the possibility, just drop me an email to express your interest stating what proportion of the asking price (minimum 10%) you would be willing to take. It is obviously highly speculative at this early stage so there is no obligation on any side, and I’ll treat all expressions of interest in total confidence.

 

 

Click for more details of the Savills listing Mill Lane, Abbots Worthy, Winchester, Hampshire, SO21.

 

 

Fly Fishing Trout in the Small Stillwaters   Up front I am proud to confess that Peter Cockwill, author of the just published Fly Fishing Trout in the Small Stillwaters, is a guide and instructor of this parish. So, I hope I am not being biased when I say this book, the seventh by Peter, is truly excellent and certainly the best manual on fly fishing since Charles Jardine’s Guide to Fly Fishing for Trout way back in the last millennium.   Let us be clear, this is a not a book for the novice – it requires a certain level of knowledge – maybe a couple of years on trout lakes after which time you’ve learnt the basics and are probably advancing your expertise largely by trial and error, and most likely more of the latter than former. If you want to be a more knowledgeable stillwater fisher, then Peter’s book is perfect.   For instance, he tells you what trout eat beyond the obvious; it is that sort of knowledge that turns a blank day into a limit. Depressed and confounded by a lake covered in scum? Peter tells you how to fish that, and other challenging surface conditions, successfully. Every chapter is divided into short sections, with apposite headings, which makes the book an easy reference manual.   If you are looking for a leisure read, then look elsewhere. But if you want a book to pull out of your fishing bag to find the key to catching when you and others are not, then I believe this book will be a godsend.

 

 

Fly Fishing Trout in the Small Stillwaters is available direct from Peter Cockwill by post for £29.99 or in person at £25 from Dever Springs, Hampshire. petercockwill@aol.com

 

 

CHALK The Movie   Just a reminder that tickets are still available for the matinee and evening showing in Stockbridge Town Hall on Friday 6 May.   Visit Stockbridge Community Cinema for show times and tickets.

 

 

Watch the trailer

 

 

Quiz The normal random collection of questions inspired by the date, events or topics in the Newsletter.   It is just for fun with answers at the bottom of the page.   1)     Who ascended the English throne on this day in 1509?   2)     Which tennis player, where and in what year said, "You cannot be serious!"   3)     Who was the civil engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works generally credited with the creation of the city’s sewerage system in the mid 1800’s?   Crossness Pumping Station, East London

 

 

Have a good weekend.    Best wishes,

 

 

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk Founder & Managing Directorwww.fishingbreaks.co.uk

 

 

 

Quiz answers:   1)     Henry VIII aged 17 years 2)     John McEnroe at the 1981 Wimbledon Championships 3)     Sir Joseph William Bazalgette

Is 2lbs the perfect sized trout?

 

Greetings!   In the gentle world of chalkstream fishing it is not often the gloves come off but in the latest edition of Classic Angling Tom Fort, well regarded author, lays into (I can’t put it kindlier) Neil Freeman, angling antiques supremo and tenant of 3.5 miles of the River Test on the Broadlands Estate and Alistair Robjent of the Robjent’s fly shop in Stockbridge.   The spat revolves around the rumours that the Environment Agency (EA) are considering imposing a 2lb maximum stocking size for trout in designated rivers. Freeman is against, laying out his views in an article for Classic Angling at the back end of last year. Fort, on the other hand, is in favour.

 

 

Read both articles here

 

Now, I’m not going to recite the arguments for and against, but both articles raise interesting points. Firstly, where did this 2lb limit come from? Why is 2lb a magical number? Do trout turn rogue above this weight? What is the science that led the EA to choose this limit? Well, like so many ‘facts’ it is not a fact at all. Did you know the ‘five a day’ mantra had its origins in an advertising campaign by the Californian Fruit Marketing Board in the 1960’s? We are in danger of much the same here with something oft repeated becoming a truth by default.   I can tell you why this is so with absolutely certainty because in a Zoom call with EA officials last year I asked the question: why 2lbs? The question was eventually fielded by the scientific field officer who had proposed the 2lb limit. As a keen angler himself he opined that a two pounder was the largest fish he liked to generally catch, hence the limit. So, there you have it; policy based on the personal opinion of one man. No science. No consultation. No logic. Had he been a regular at Dever Springs, home to both the British brown and rainbow trout records, who knows what monster size he might have proposed.   For size does have a part in angling; I was particularly drawn to one line in Fort’s article where he quotes from JW Hills, of Summer on the Test fame, who said the average fish (this was the early 1900’s) was 2lb and a big fish 4lb. If anyone asks me today what the average fish size is I say 1.5lb and a big fish anything 3lb plus. Maybe things have not changed that much for frankly it is a huge myth that chalkstreams are stocked to the gunnels with huge fish that commit ritual suicide at the sight of any fly, cast anyhow.   Which brings me to another of Fort’s beefs, the stocking of rainbow trout in rivers. Now, I’m not all that keen on rainbows myself but since they do no harm to the natives it seems to me, that if you own a river and that is your preference, fair enough. We have over two thousand miles of chalkstream. Some are ideal for little wildies. Others less so. If you want to fish for one but not the other, choose your beat accordingly.   There are many shades of fly fishing. Let us try to embrace them all.

 

 

A new trout species   I have spared you this as a quiz question: how many freshwater fish species are there in the world? I was surprised at the number – 18,267 which includes 212 added to the list this year by SHOAL, the international foundation who monitors the health, well-being and survival of freshwater species around the globe.   The latest report lists the new discoveries, the bulk of which, 205 in total, are located in Africa, Asia and South America but of the seven remaining one was found in Europe namely Salmo baliki. This new species of trout was discovered in Turkey, which brings the total number of different types of Salmo in that country to sixteen, compared to our own rather miserly four.

 

 

Murat River, Turkey

 

Salmo baliki appears to be confined to the Anatolia region in a tributary of the Murat River which rises in the east of Turkey, close to the border with Iran, flowing due west across half of the country until it joins the Euphrates. Like many rare species around the globe the baliki is threatened by the usual forces of pollution and habitat degradation, but, unlike any trout I have ever heard of it is said to have special healing properties, in particular for stomach ailments, hence its local name as the ‘healer fish’. There is no scientific evidence to support this belief, but it adds to the pressure on the native stock.   Turkey might seem an unusual location for such diversity of trout, but when explained by Müneever Oral, a research fellow at Recep Tayyip Erdogan University, it all makes perfect sense: “Turkey harbours remarkable biodiversity, as it is geographically located at the intersection of three global biodiversity hotspots: the Caucasus, the Mediterranean and the Irano-Anatolian. Anatolia provided a secure refuge for species throughout the Ice Age, while most counterparts were facing extinction further north.”

 

 

Salmo baliki

 

 

Walk on the wet side   Late on Monday afternoon I met up with river keeper Donny Donovan as he came in sight of the Tufton fishing hut, his billet for the night just south of where the River Test passes under the A34. For a wet Donny was completing the first of five days in an endeavour we believe has never been attempted, namely walking from the source of the River Test at Ashe to where the water turns brackish at Knob Point in Southampton Water, more or less at the container and cruise ship terminals.   You might think it is an easy task; simply follow the Test Way and the 55 miles would soon be done. But the Test Way is something of a misnomer. It should more accurately be called The Test is a Fair Bit Away, for the route largely follows the Spratt & Winkle railway line that ran from Southampton to Andover so is often a goodly distance from the river itself. Donny’s route is true to the river. If he is not beside it, he is in it. Often progress involves steps sideways and backwards just to go forwards. Bridges are for either going under or over. Conurbations, with dozens of urban gardens that jealously guard every foot of river frontage, often with elaborate fencing, are a constant challenge. Nesting swans usually have something to say.   And then there is barbed wire ….. Donny was wet because, less than an hour into his walk, he had punctured his right wader leg just below the knee. The evening respite was going to involve Aquasure.   The walk inspired by the memory of the late Vic Foot, a famous River Test keeper and Donny’s mentor, will be raising money for Fishing for Schools and the Naomi Children’s Hospice. You may contribute on the Donny Donovan Just Giving page.

 

 

Donny Donovan

 

 

Photo of the Week   Spanish wildlife photographer Mario Cea tells us this photo was 6 years and 702,00 shots in the making. It is the real thing - no photoshop.   Mario explains: "The image was taken with a slow shutter speed of 1/15s, combined with continuous light to capture the wake left by the bird in its path, with a flash to freeze the flight. When the exposure begins, the continuous light of a lantern is on and the flashes are fired at the second curtain, just when the exposure ends. Some people ask me, ‘Why doesn't the wake appear in the reflection?' The answer is simple…the wake is only visible when the background is dark enough.”   I am still not sure I really understand but the finished product is truly amazing.

 

 

 

Cartoon of the Week

 

 

 

Quiz The normal random collection of questions inspired by the date, events or topics in the Newsletter.   It is just for fun with answers at the bottom of the page.   1)     What are the four native UK Salmo species?   2)     Catherine II of Russia annexed which country on this day in 1783?   3)     Which British band released the hit song Two Tribes in 1984?

 

 

Have a good weekend.    Best wishes,

 

 

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk Founder & Managing Directorwww.fishingbreaks.co.uk

 

 

 

Quiz answers:   1)     Brown trout, Atlantic salmon, grayling and Arctic charr. Non-natives are pink salmon, rainbow trout and brook trout. 2)     The Crimea 3)     Frankie Goes to Hollywood