I bring you good news

 

Greetings!   At last, some good news about the water crisis as I have the definitive answer to why our rivers and reservoirs are lacking water. You must not doubt what I am about to say as I know it to be true for those modern day water soothsayers, the government, regulatory bodies and water companies, have spoken.   The problem is, and please do not be angry, YOU. As human being living in a country famed by tourists from around the globe for being rainy you have had the temerity to take a shower, run the washing machine and possibly, at the dead of night away from prying eyes, water the tomatoes in your greenhouse. We are all truly bad people. Forget Partygate. Soon it will be Watergate all over again as Rishi Sunak is run out of office for owning a swimming pool.

 

 

Probably coming to you very soon .......

 

And all this in a country where the annual average rainfall, an average which has, incidentally, barely changed by a fraction of an inch in the past three centuries and is set to remain the same even on the Environment Agency worst case 50 year prediction, provides six time more water that we actually consume. To put that in a number, we have 31 inches a year but only need 5 inches. But despite that you, me and every person in Great Britain is being blamed for the lack of water supply.   Now, it is true we have been daily consuming more water per head (roughly 32 gallons/144 litres) than any time in history, with the amount rising from less than half that in the past fifty years. However, household consumption, thanks to efficiencies in machines such as dishwashers and more metered homes, is now on a falling graph. But the elephant in this particular watering hole is overall demand which, thanks to a growing population, is predicted to rise from a daily consumption of 14 billion litres to 18 billion litres by 2050.   Now in most capitalist endeavours the suppliers would be rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of demand for the product rising by 28%, not least when you get your raw material for free! But in the weird hybrid socialist/capitalist model forced upon the water industry by government and regulators there is no appetite to satiate demand by any other means than sucking our rivers dry. Desalination. Reservoirs. A national grid for water. Since 1991 the population has risen by 10 million but not a single new reservoir has opened, the £250m Thames desalination plant has mostly been out of commission including during the drought of 2022 and, despite a few local schemes, there is no meaningful plan for a national water grid.   So, in some weird Orwellian manner, it apparently falls to us to take the blame for the failings of others. But we should not accept the narrative being forced upon us. We are a water rich country who deserve better.

 

 

Also your fault ..... the River Ver, Hertfordshire in summer 2022

 

 

June is weed cut month   I think it would be fair to say that June is the month every river keeper dreads. Weekends, holidays and family days out all go by the board as, just to add to the woes of the bankside vegetation growing like crazy, they have to dedicate every working hour to weed cutting.   The chalkstreams are unusual in having such a regimented weed cutting regime but, such is nearly two hundred years of intensive management, it is now an essential part of river ecology. People sometimes ask why the weed cannot just be left to its own devices. Well, it can, but you’d soon have a clogged river that would be unfishable, be degraded from an ecological standpoint and, in some circumstances cause localised flooding.

 

 

The best analogy is a wildflower meadow. A truly wild one is managed by the grazing of sheep or cattle but for the most part what you see is created by human intervention. If you wanted your front lawn to become a wild meadow you would not just let it grow rampant; it would soon become a weed infested mess. You have to cut, seed and manage it to create those ‘wild’ spaces much beloved of lifestyle magazines. But back to the river.   The time of the cutting varies from river catchment to river catchment. On the rivers Itchen and Test the owners agree specific weed cutting periods in June, July and August when the rivers close to fishing and the cut weed is allowed to flow out to sea or, in the case of the Test upstream of Romsey, to a weed boom where it is removed for composting. We used to have something similar on the River Avon but in a recently announced change to policy the Environment Agency have withdrawn their provision of a weed boom on the grounds of health and safety for which you can read budget saving and the general abrogation of any river care duties.   So, the Avon, in common with most other chalkstreams, now follows a policy of what we call ‘cut & pull’. That is to say you cut whenever you like but you have to gather and remove all cut weed before it drifts on to the water of your downstream neighbour. Obviously, the cutting causes plenty of disturbance so neighbours usually try to march in step to minimise the disruption.   How you cut depends on the nature of the river. The best way is hand cutting with a scythe, which is done on all sections where wading is possible with a chequer board cutting pattern used to optimise fishing and bar cutting to maintain river levels. If it is too deep to wade, we bring in a motorised weed cutting boat that does the job a great deal quicker than the chain scythes of the past which required huge amounts of labour (and effort) with a muscled team on either bank hauling linked scythe blades, connected by chains and ropes, from side to side.   As you read this we are on (signs of relief all round) the final Friday on the June cutting period. The Itchen is done, as are the upper reaches of the Test. This weekend will mark the final push to clear down and tidy up before Monday marks a return to the more mundane river keeping work and catching up on the backlog of mowing.

 

 

Weed cutting boat in action

 

 

Video of the Week   Jamie Pankhurst, one of our river keeping team and a keen photographer, took time out from the cut to fly his drone to capture his colleagues Si Fields and Charley Portsmouth, cutting at Upper Clatford on the River Anton last week.

 

 

Click to watch

 

 

Angling caught in culture wars Never in my wildest imagination, which has plenty of capacity for such, did I ever imagine that angling would get caught up in the culture wars that is sexual identity, so when the Daily Telegraph ran the headline last week that read “Anglers quit England team after trans woman picked for female squad” I was truly flabbergasted.   For those of you who did not pick up this story it is that, in a nutshell, three anglers have quit the England team in protest after a trans woman was called up to join the women’s squad of a major competition. Three members of the six-strong squad stepped down after Becky Lee Birtwhistle Hodges, who was born male, was chosen for the Home Nations shore fishing championship that takes place in July.   For me the most disappointing aspect of this was the reaction of Jamie Cook at the Angling Trust, that once used to style itself the independent voice of angling. He was quoted in The Telegraph,   “Naturally, we were sorry to hear that the three women have taken the decision to step down from the team. Increasing women participation in angling is one of our key goals and we will continue to ensure that we offer opportunities for all anglers to participate regardless of age, sex, colour or orientation.   “As the national governing body for angling, the question we are required to address by Sport England is whether the sport of angling is gender impacted to an extent where fairness overrides inclusion or safety.  “The view of the Angling Trust board is that as a noncontact sport, the safety concern is not deemed significant within the sport of angling.”   Hiding behind the coat tails of Sport England is no way to show leadership. Has Jamie not heard about British athletics, cycling, rugby and swimming with rules that ring-fence the women’s category for women only?

 

 

Flies for June & July June is absolutely my favourite month to be on the river amongst the abundantly green English countryside. It may not the easiest month from a fishing perspective as we relearn that fish don’t always thrown themselves at a size 8 Mayfly. However, the one thing for sure is that you will see no river for want of water – in all my three decades of Fishing Breaks I have never seen such sustained levels in June.   My general rule for mid-late June is to be eclectic in your fly choices and be prepared to change a lot. Earlier in the month I fished with everything from a size 10 French Partridge down to a size 18 Greenwell’s Glory with a variety of sedges and unwinged flies in between with no single fly predominating; in fact, all the fish I caught were on different patterns.   Where you cannot yet nymph try work those deep fish with a surface fly. It is amazing from how far below, once you get the right fly, they will move.   Chalkstream nymph selection £16.75 Damselfly Nymph (wtd) s12 | Gold Ribbed Hare’s Ear s12 | Gold Ribbed Hare’s Ear Gold Nugget s12 | Pheasant Tail Gold Nugget s12 |Pink Shrimp s14 | Red (Superglue) Buzzer s14 | Sawyer's Pheasant Tail Nymph s14 | Walker Mayfly Nymph (wtd) s10. Knotless 12ft tapered leader.   June selection £16.95 Blue Winged Olive s14 | CDC Hare's Ear Shuttlecock Emerger s14 | Elk Hair Caddis s12 | Grey Adams Klinkhammer s12 | Parachute Adams s14 | Sherry Spinner s14. Knotless 9ft 6x tapered leader.   July selection £17.95 Cinnamon Sedge s12| Daddy-Long Legs s10 | Gray Wulff s14 | Greenwell’s Glory s14 | Infallible Emerger s16 | Pale Watery Dun s16. Knotless 12ft 6x tapered leader.   Summer 2 Pack £34.90 including two leaders   Summer 3 Pack £51.85 including three leaders   To review the full fly pack selection including the Ultimate Chalkstream Fly Selection (box of 78 flies £149) and the Hatch Calendar Selection (all seven packs £119) click here.

 

 

 

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 did the United Kingdom vote for on this day in 2016?   2)     Which British band were No. 1 in the US album chart with Breakfast in America on this day in 1979?   3)     If you suffered from hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, what would you be in fear of?   Breakfast in America

 

Have a good weekend.    Best wishes,

 

 

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

 

 

 

Quiz answers:   1) To leave the European Union 2) Supertramp 3) Long words. No irony in that

Are salmon worth saving?

 

Greetings!   Recently I was having a chat with the chairman of a small salmon charity who have a pot of money that has been gifted to them over the years for the betterment of the species. How best to spend it in a way that might, however small, go some way to halting the precipitous decline of Salmo salar was the theme of our almost despairing conversation.   I say despairing because the fate of the Atlantic salmon is a conversation that seems to have been ongoing through all our lifetimes as the end of one decade simply heralds the coming of a yet worse decade. I recall those innocent heady days in the 1970’s when we thought that farmed salmon, by dint of relieving the pressure on the wild population, would be the saviour. How very, very wrong we were. Then the push to remove nets was the next great hope but still the descent continued. Today, the theories for the decline of are manifold: pollution. Degraded spawning grounds. Deep sea fishing, Climate change. Ocean current changes. Seals. Piscivorous birds. And there are plenty more unmentioned here.

 

 

1 of 133

 

And then, just to prove my despair was not imaginary, the Environment Agency announced this week that the salmon run (note the word run not catch) for the River Itchen in 2022 was just a mere 133 fish which leads the EA to state in bleak terms ‘Salmon on the Itchen are in crisis and at risk of extinction.’ They say this not based solely on 2022 but because in no year since 2015 has the returning number of adult salmon reached what is termed the Conservation Limit. That is to say, ‘the minimum number of eggs required to maintain the population at a biologically safe level and below which the probability of further decline becomes increasingly likely.’ To put that in context, the run in 2015 was 900.   It seems this data for the Itchen which is faring by far the worst of any chalkstreams, has spurred the EA into action sensibly focussing on short to medium terms objectives that major on the river itself rather than the wider ocean issues that we know assail the salmon population. In broad terms, the objectives are to improve spawning habitat, aid fish passage, encourage best practice by rod anglers and improve water quality in terms of pollution and abstraction with all these actions starting immediately and continuing through 2024/25.   These are, as an editor of a supporting publication mentioned to me, at best, modest aspirations but to be fair to the EA, not my favourite friends as well you know, they have to start somewhere and I’ll hope this is more than just a cynical being seen to do something effort. However, in the course of researching this piece I came across the Salmon Action Consultation Plan for the River Itchen from 1998 by, you’ve guessed it, the Environment Agency. And guess again what the primary recommendations were? Improve spawning habitat, aid fish passage, encourage best practice by rod anglers and improve water quality in terms of pollution and abstraction.   25 years on and we are still thinking and saying the same things which does make you ask, are Atlantic salmon worth saving? Have we gone past the point of no return? I suppose, in itself, the extinction of British Atlantic salmon will not send our planet spinning off its axis. Species are disappearing almost daily but somehow, to me, it feels wrong to give up without a fight. After all, it is not so long ago, within the memory of many living today, that this amazing migratory fish was abundant. It is clear that in trashing our planet by both design, and accident, the salmon has become an innocent victim of our environmental profligacy. So, yes, the Atlantic salmon is worth saving if only to prove that we are not complete ignorant vandals to that munificent being we call Mother Nature.

 

 

FREE place for under 16's on Chalkstream Weekend   Our weekend chalkstream course at Bullington Manor on the upper Test has become increasingly popular since its inception three years ago so I thought it might be a fun idea to open it up to the under 16’s.   Ranging over all four beats over the Saturday and Sunday, in the care if experienced instructors Angus Campbell and Bob Preston it is a chance to take your fly fishing skills to a new level. Each day Agnus and Bob will focus on different aspects of chalkstream fly fishing but leaving plenty of time for fishing.

 

 

The course is open to any 8-16 year old with some fly fishing experience who comes free when accompanied by a paying adult. Each day runs 9.30am-5.30pm with tackle and flies provided. On the Saturday evening, once the formal part of the day is over, you will be welcome to stay until dusk to fish and BBQ. More details here ...... for the Chalkstream Weekend that takes place 8/9 July.   If you are tempted by the thought of the Chalkstream Courses I have three places left on the One Day Chalkstream Course on 17/June and we have just opened up a new Chalkstream Weekend Course on 2/3 September. Neither of these are suitable for the under 16’s.

 

 

 

Airflo lines up for expansion Good news stories in the UK fly fishing business are not the norm – I think we have all become far too accustomed to British brands disappearing or reports of production switched to the Far East, the returning products often woefully poor substitutes.   However, fly line maker Airflo, who are based in Brecon have just secured a grant of £566,000 from the Welsh government to invest in new machine tools and R&D with the aim of quadrupling sales in America (Airflo’s parent company is the US based Mayfly Group) and expanding into Japan, South Africa and New Zealand.

 

 

I am actually a great fan of Airflo lines which we use on all our outfits, but I am ashamed to say I did not know that the company make a point of not using PVC in line production because PVC requires plasticizers to make a line functional and plasticizers, aside from causing the cracking, contain Dioxins that contaminate water and make PVC lines almost impossible to safely recycle. Instead, they use Polyurethane, which is an inert, stable, fully recyclable material that lasts longer than PVC without the use of plasticizers.   Airflo hope that with the grant, and a further investment of £2m by the company, that 21 new full-time roles will be created. www.airflofishing.com

 

 

What, no rain? As I write this, we are into day 28 of no rain in these parts; it is a remarkable turnaround from the start of May when we had nearly all out May allocation in the first week of the month. Much though I love spring rain, which is money in the bank for the summer and early autumn, even I have cast my eyes to the heavens in silent thanks for a dry few weeks which have barely dented the happy news of the aquifers pumping away at full pelt.   However, there is no getting around the fact that some people had a really tough time in early mid-May when, instead of clear water and dancing Mayfly, you were greeted by chalkstreams that were anything but. Essentially, with the valleys sodden, the May rains spilled straight from fields and road into the rivers taking all the associated dirt, debris and silt with it.

 

 

On a happier note, I am truly delighted to bring you another edition in the exemplary fly tying of Nigel Nunn who has created a June selection to tempt the May draw winner back out on the river again!   Well done to Robert Smith, first out the hat from the great many reports in May, who fished Avon Springs for two days, one of which included a lovely 4lb rainbow. The flies are in the post.

 

 

 

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 did we celebrate on this day in 1977?   2)     Which Roman goddess in the month of June named after?   3)     How many days without rain define a drought in the UK?

 

In case you had forgotten what rain looked like .......

 

Have a good weekend.    Best wishes,

 

 

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

 

 

 

Quiz answers:   1)     Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain 2)     The Roman goddess Juno, the goddess of marriage and the wife of the supreme deity Jupiter 3)     15 consecutive days when there is less than 0.2 mm (0.008 inches) of rainfall.