Lost in Translation

 

Greetings!   Many, many moons ago I was on holiday in France so decided to try my hand on the local rivers. Now, to describe my French as schoolboy would be kind; infantile would be closer to the truth. But I gave it a go enquiring in local shops and bars as to the best place: Où puis-je pêcher à la mouchoir?   I got some very odd looks, as you French speakers will instantly understand, for mouchoir means handkerchief. I should, of course, have been saying, Où puis-je pêcher à la mouche? I am sure that to this day there are people in that rural backwater of central France who still speak of that strange Englishman who wanted to go handkerchief fishing and wonder whatever became of him.     I was put in mind of that distant memory this week as I turned to Google Translate as we embark on a bit of marketing for Chinese visitors to the UK. I wanted a simple headline that read Experience Traditional English Fly Fishing which Google Translate told me was 体验传统英式飞钓. Having been caught out by Google before, I thought it best to check with a Chinese friend who came to my aid, avoiding an epic marketing fail for, Google had translated it to Experience Traditional English Flying Fishing.   I guess, flying fishing may have a future somewhere, but I am grateful to my friend for the correct translation 体验传统英式的假蝇钓钩钓鱼.     A very strange Environment Agency email   I increasingly worry the Environment Agency (EA) are losing the plot. In April I received an email from the National Investigation Witness Team with a subject line that read: Environment Agency Call for Witnesses - Mr Simon Cooper. To briefly precis a letter attached to the email that began NATIONAL INVESTIGATION INTO ILLEGAL SEWAGE DISCHARGES.   The letter explains that in November 2021 the government commissioned the EA to investigate sewage discharges that took place into English Waters (sic) in 2020. In this criminal investigation the EA are now seeking my assistance by way of a witness statement because I may have either ”had previous contact with the Environment Agency, or via the media, demonstrating an interest in the alleged offending and may have potential evidence to provide, or have carried out my own work and assessments through academic papers and research.”   The letter then goes on to ask for any factual evidence of storm sewage discharges and whether I have been affected by those discharges or know of any effect upon the local environment. Further enquiring if I am aware of any impact to leisure, business, commercial or sporting activities because of storm sewage discharges?   If the answer to any of those questions is yes the EA would welcome my assistance by way of a witness statement and should the matter go to trial I may be required to attend court to give evidence.   In its own way the EA's call out for help is all very worthy, but we are going back five years (why the wait?) and anyone who has ever called the EA Emergency Hotline will know that even contemporaneous pollution incidents are triaged to the point that only the most extreme fish kills get an on-site attendance by an EA official.   To be honest, I am a bit baffled. Maybe I will just lodge my back catalogue of this bi-weekly newsletter as evidence which hopefully will get me a day in court to rant and rave until they usher me away to a darkened room for my own safety.     Cattle herding   When I was writing Frankel I often used to break my regular visits to Newmarket in Cambridge and, for me, one of the great joys of arriving in the university city was seeing the cattle grazing in the water meadows close to the centre of the town, a wonderful juxtaposition of a place that prides itself on its hi-tech future whilst hanging on to an ancient grazing practice. However, due to budget cuts the city council were set to end a millennium of tradition to save the £10,000 or so spent each year rescuing the two to four cattle that fall in the river.   But appropriately, technology has allowed the grazing to continue, the cattle now fitted with a GPS collar that emits a warning sound, and ultimately a mild electric pulse to stop them going any further as the animal approaches a danger point. I guess it will also have the added advantage of keeping them off roads and allowing the grazier to manage the grazing pattern.     It is worth noting that what the council probably never factored in when considering the ban was a huge maintenance bill coming down the track. Cattle, as I wrote about in Life of a Chalkstream are the water meadow managers. Without their constant grazing, cloven hooves piercing the sod and their lumbering mass pushing through the undergrowth, the meadows would soon have become an impenetrable morass of nettles and brambles, leaving the council with an even more expensive maintenance headache.   The collar technology might also be a useful aid for management of cattle along rivers. For sometime there has been a conflict between the Environment Agency who like rivers to be fenced to prevent bank degradation whilst Natural England positively encourage cattle along and in rivers, using their considerable powers to prevent the erection of fencing. And such is the power of Natural England, they win any such argument.     Mayfly on the Wallop Brook   We do not get a huge Mayfly hatch here on the Wallop Brook but just enough to gladden the heart, bringing everyone to the table for the feast. Fish rise. Ducks hoover them up. Swifts, martins and swallows swoop. Even the bats get a look in for Mayflies unwise enough to still be on the wing at dusk.     Dusk Mayfly hatch on the Wallop Brook     A trip to the north   At the end of April I took a trip to the northern extents of the Fishing Breaks empire (!) taking in Cottons Fishing Temple on the River Dove in Derbyshire, our Yorkshire instructor Charlie Clive on the beautiful Nunnington Estate and then to the pellucid Driffield Beck.   I had forgotten how very, very clear it is – four to six feet of cut glass. As luck would have it, Dave Southall, guide and fly tyer extraordinaire was at Mulberry Whin kick sampling, the results in his video which show the great health of the Beck.      Dave Southall's kick sample thriving with bug life     Dave's fly box. The size 30's are the two side-by-side yellow flies bottom RH corner   Never being shy of asking advice, I took a look in Dave’s fly box him pointing out a size 30 (yes, that small…) moth pattern as his top tip for the day. Frankly, even if I had the tippet to do justice to such a small hook eye my eyesight is beyond such microsurgery.   So, sorry Dave we defaulted to a size 14 Hawthorn which did very nicely.     The Hawthorn strike!     Quiz   The usual random collection of questions inspired by the events that took place on this date in history or topics in the Newsletter, plus one especially for my American readership because, apparently, there are not enough US related questions   1)     Which member of the committee that drafted the US Declaration of Independence declared his invention of bifocal lenses on this day in 1785?   2)     The Chelsea Flower Show began in which year? A) 1893 B) 1913 C) 1933 d) 1953   3)     What are the two birth flowers for May?   Answers are at the bottom of this Newsletter.   Have a good Bank Holiday weekend.  Best wishes,     Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk Founder & Managing Directorwww.fishingbreaks.co.uk     1)     Thomas Jefferson 2)     1913 on its current site the Royal Hospital Chelsea 3)     Lily of the Valley and Hawthorn     Check out my 78 fly Hatch Calendar selection         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

Swifts in the belfry

 

Greetings!   Often when I look up into the sky around this time I marvel at the dexterous flight of our new arrivals, the swallows who skim across the surface of the lake feeding on the hatch. Then I pause to ask myself whether they might be swifts for, however much I dredge deep into my inadequate avian knowledge, in the excitement of flight I often forget which is which. However, I must try harder because, on our Norman church which neighbours The Mill, three swift nesting boxes have been installed along with a swift caller.   Swifts, though similar in appearance to swallows and house martins, are in fact not related to either, their physical resemblance due to convergent evolution. Swifts are, in fact, related to hummingbirds. Ill adapted to life on the ground they do not like to do anything other than fly, spending as much as ten months of each year on the wing, drinking, eating, sleeping and mating only coming to ground for nesting and rearing. In a lifetime, that can often be a decade or longer, a swift will fly millions of miles, capable of 60mph plus.     St Andrews Church, Nether Wallop

 

The number of swifts which arrive in Britain from May to August from southern Africa, is fast declining; the Hampshire population has halved this century. As we all know the decline in many bird populations is a common theme with the reasons often complex and only partially understood. Much of this can be said of swifts, though it does seem certain that modern houses and the modernisations of buildings generally, is reducing the availability of nesting sites as gaps and holes disappear from buildings in the name of progress. Hence the swift boxes.   The swift caller is an esoteric addition to the box, small speakers positioned above and below, connected to a playing device that emits swift nesting calls. It seems slightly bonkers but as you will see from the photo last year the swifts fell for it enough to check out the church, though it was too late in the season for nesting. Swifts are, apparently, loyal to nesting sites so it seems a distinct possibly that they might return this year to actually raise some young.   If you are interested in a box of your own check out the Hampshire Swifts which has plenty or general information or the shopping page of Swift Conservation.

 

 

His name is Bob!   I have found out the origin of our Indian Runner Duck who has a name – Bob! It seems a villager just upstream incubated four Runner eggs producing three females and one male, our Mr Bob. Sadly, a night time raid by either a fox or otter (my money is on the latter as we have three at present) saw all three females killed at which point Bob fled, adopting two mallards, presumably not the ones who attacked him, as mates.   Bob, named by the lady that reared him, now divides his time chugging up and down the Brook, the lure of fish pellets our end and proper duck food back at his birth home.

 

A duck named Bob

 

 

Weekly River & Hatches Update   In the past you have sometimes criticised my Update Ahead of Your Fishing trip for being overly generic; it is a fair point which I hope we are doing something to address with the launch of the Weekly River & Hatches update.   Every Friday morning we will upload to the Fishing Breaks web site the latest intel covering conditions, flows, weather, hatches, catches and fly advice for the week ahead. The Update we send you will take you straight to the page though anyone may log in, anytime.   If you have a moment, do respond to the Feedback request (or just send an email) because your days on the river are a valuable source of information to make the Updates relevant and useful to others.

 

Check it out ......     And the winner is ......   We are, though it seems hard to believe looking at the full chalkstreams, in the midst of something of a spring mini-drought with April recording just 52% of average rainfall and March 22%. However, all the chalkstreams are recorded at having Normal river flows from the EA monitoring data and river keepers across the region are grateful for these dry months after nearly two years of wet everything. However, despite these past few dry months we are more or less on track with rainfall of the past six and twelve months at 92% and 106%.   Whilst on the subject of rain I see Tim Mcmahon, Director of Water at Southern Water has managed to scale new heights of inanity only previously scaled by the CEO of Thames Water in that recent car crash TV documentary Inside The Crisis. Mcmahon, pronounced [wrongly; see quiz] that, "If you look at the south-east of England, it's drier than Sydney, Istanbul, Dallas, Marrakech." and that "We need to reduce customers' usage.” Mcmahon seems to have forgotten a basic tenet of business, namely if your customers want the only product you sell it is probably a good an idea to sell as much of it as you can.   Aside from that Economics 101 lesson his bizarre comparison forgets the basic fact that we have thirty two inches of rain each year in the south of which only six inches is required to fulfil our water needs. He goes on to say, rather threateningly, “Otherwise [without the reduction] we will have to put other investments in place, which will not be good for our customers and might not be the best thing for the environment." Heaven forbid that a water company might build a reservoir, fix leaky pipes, create a water grid or invest in desalination.   Enough of that for now, in more cheerful news we have an April winner for the feedback draw. It was a hard start to the month with not much showing or happening but as the days ticked on things improved with Grannom and Hawthorn the stand out patterns. Well done to Tom Rogers who wins the flies to use in May from our vice master, Nigel Nunn.     The winner with his Shawford Park fish

 

Quiz   The usual random collection of questions inspired by the events that took place on this date in history or topics in the Newsletter.   1)     How many red balls are there on a standard snooker table at the start of a frame? a: 10  b: 12  c: 15   2)     Who wrote Gulliver's Travels, published in 1726?   3)     Which is the driest: Sydney, Istanbul, Dallas or Marrakech?   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)     c: 15 2)     Jonathan Swift 3)     Marrakech at 11 inches average per year. Sydney 46 inches, Istanbul 17 inches and Dallas 35 inches.