Battle of the polluters

 

Greetings!   Do you feel sorry for farmers, now reduced to paying Inheritance Tax along with the rest of us non tillers of the land? I must admit I am struggling as the loophole so egregiously exploited by agriculture for decades will now see the closure of thousands of small family businesses who will be caught in the crossfire.   In the wake of all that I was not a little amused to read that the farming community reaction is to threaten to bring the water industry to its knees by refusing to shovel the sewage waste aka toxic s**t, for which they are handsomely rewarded, onto their fields. See my September article on this institutionally approved pollution if you missed it.

 

Goodness, this is really going to be the battle of the polluting giants. In the red corner farmers who are responsible for 40% of river pollution. In the blue corner water companies who are responsible for another 40%.   Frankly, my only hope is that the s**t embargo does become reality. At least that way we will be spared further this particularly heinous form of agricultural pollution whilst the water industry is forced to find a non-polluting solution to the waste they were meant to have dealt with in the first place.

 

 

Waterland   Before I headed off on my current trip, I did what I have not done for a very long time – I went out to buy a book. There is something strangely constant about bookshops. Despite the onslaught of technology, they remain much as they were fifty years ago. The smell. The layout. The shelving categories by genre or topic. The just in table. The topical table. Staffed by people who are truly passionate about books. I hardly dare ask a question for fear of being unable to replicate their enthusiasm for a selected or recommended book.   If I want to buy a particular book I use Amazon, so any trip to a bookshop proper is an entirely random affair. I am not a great buyer of biographies or factual books; it is the fiction shelves that draw me, alphabetically democratic, potentially giving every book an equal chance of catching the eye. For me, I am a sucker for a) a cover and b) trigger words so when I chanced upon Waterland by Graham Swift that featured eels on the cover there was no way I was going to leave Waterstone’s without it.   I am not sure whether I have read a Swift novel before – Waterland is nothing new having been first published way back in 1983, his third novel in a career that spans a dozen or more books and four decades. Nor do I ever recall having heard of Graham Swift which is a big fail for me as he won the Booker Prize in 1996, back in the day when there was a good chance that a winning Booker writer will still be being read in a hundred years’ time.

 

At this particular moment, being only a few chapters in, I cannot reveal the true worth of Waterland to you, but it has already captured me. Set in the Fens, a land of silt that is only borrowed from the sea, Swift evokes the temporary nature of our occupation of wetlands on which dry footed humans do not really belong. It is impossible, at least for me, to not draw parallels with the chalkstreams along with his fascination with eels. I will leave you with a quote from the opening pages,   “… the chief fact about the Fens is that they are reclaimed land, land that was once water, and which, even today, is not quite solid.”

 

 

Weed rack rescue   This is a strange time of year for us. One season is over but the next seems a very, very long way away with all that is bad about the British weather between now and the opening day. Believe me, it is hard to keep your mojo going when you start in the dark, finish in the dark, battling rain, mud and cold just to put one foot in front of another.   However, all that said it is a time of year to get your teeth into jobs that were put off during the season simply because there was not enough time or they are disruptive. One such job is the weed rack on the River Itchen at Abbots Worthy. Weed racks are really a throwback to the time of working mills when the waterwheel had to be protected from weed, logs or general debris being carried by the stream into the channel housing the wheel, jamming it up. The least worst outcome is a temporary blockage but at the other end of the scale the detritus could cause flooding, snap off the wheel paddles or at the very worst, heave the wheel off its axle.

 

So, a weed rack would be installed a few yards upstream of the mill angled to the current with the uprights wide enough apart to let the water through whilst capturing the debris which would be diverted down a side stream to rejoin the main flow downstream of the mill. You will occasionally find these racks built of metal, or a combination of wood and metal, though in the case of Abbots Worthy this is of the more common all wood construction with a walkway that doubles as a footbridge and a platform for clearing any build up against the uprights.   On the Itchen you can see river keepers Si and Charley deploying their carpentry skills stripping out the old oak uprights, called arris rails, essentially square sections of timber cut with a triangular cross section. As ever, the replacement is never as simple as it looks. The arris rails, the bottom half of which are permanently submerged, are supported at water level by oak cross beams between the main upright posts. The beams take huge pressure when combined with heavy flows and a build-up of weed on the rack. They are currently failing in this so we have had to double the thickness of the cross beams and have our metal worker friend make up some crucifix shaped brackets to spread the load and secure the fixings.

 

 

It has taken a bit of trial and error to get it right with five new cross beams and a hundred new arris rails but Si & Charley are getting there. The aim is to use all new oak rails working from the left, salvaging the best of the old ones, to reuse on the right, which is out of the main current. Despite the extra cutting and drilling effort, oak is always a joy to work with and its longevity will see this particular round of repairs good for twenty years or more.

 

 

 

 

 

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 does the J in Donald J Trump stand for?   2)    Who disappeared from his London home on this day in 1974?   3)    Who lost to who on this day in 2016?

 

Have a good weekend.   PS In the last Newsletter I clumsily wrote it was the last of the season suggesting it was the last of the year. Sorry, both for any confusion and that you will remain peppered by me on a continuing biweekly basis.   PPS I have held over the Feedback Draw until next time, so there is still time to get your report in.  Best wishes,

 

 

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

 

 

Gift Vouchers on sale now

 

 

Quiz answers:   1)    John 2)    Lord Lucan 3)    Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump

Why We Fish. The eternal quest for the answer to the ultimate question

 

Greetings!   This newsletter marks the last of the season as, by rights, the trout fishing officially closes 31st October. This provides the perfect excuse for a retrospective. However, this is not a retrospective that is going to analyse catch returns, hatches, stout angling endeavours or the weather but rather that eternal question, which having put our hearts and souls into this rather mad pursuit for the past six months, a madness that will certainly be repeated next year with, in all probability, equally little to show for such great endeavour, would lead anyone with an ounce of nous to ask, Why We Fish.   Now, neither you nor I are coming at this question entirely cold. I defy anyone to deny that at some point in the past few months not to have said either out loud or from one part of the cortex to the other, why the f**k am I doing this. Bad fishing. Bad weather. Bad companions. Bad casting. Sharp metal in soft flesh. Expensive waders that fail in the single attribute for which they were bought. You should have been here yesterday. You cannot be here tomorrow? But like Sisyphus, we return for each new day to push the rock up the hill at the behest of whatever God thought fly fishing was a suitable pursuit for mankind.

 

I do not have a simple answer to the question Why We Fish. Actually, that is not entirely true. I have many answers but they rarely stand up to even the mildest scrutiny in the company of a non-believer. We do what we do and we love it. I guess I do not really get base jumping and any explanation is lost to me in translation. To quote that sage Mr Bean, in his outing in a 1992 Barclaycard advert when haggling incomprehensively in a Bedouin rug market, “We [Atkinson and the Arab rug trader] are both fluent”, he remarks to his companion, “sadly in different languages”.   Back in December 2022 I did pose the Why We Fish question to you all and you replied in droves. It is to my shame that I have not quantified your answers sooner. The truth is that the volume and apparent diversity of your replies was rather overwhelming and I struggled to piece together a narrative that would make some sense. However, with some time on my hands I have read and numerously reread all that you wrote. It is fascinating.   Setting out I am not going to try to create Daily Telegraph style article with a headline like The Six Top Reasons to Fly Fish. It is obvious from your replies that fly fishing is a nuanced pastime that people come at from all manner of directions. This is more going to be about drawing out common themes, plus a few left field thoughts.  Without a doubt the overarching reason as to Why We Fish, the one nearly everyone mentions, is to be a part of nature. The sounds of the countryside. The healing qualities of flowing water. The glimpses of wildlife. The escape to the great outdoors. To be absorbed into the landscape. Interestingly, this does not seem to require travel to some far, distant place. Tranquillity, with the space to totally relax, is to be found in all manner of unlikely places where fish just happen to live.   I was surprised how many people mentioned the very act of casting – the fluidity and the satisfaction of a cast well executed. That was also aligned with a cohort of you who just love your split cane rods. This is not something that is in my fly fishing DNA but for those who love bamboo it gives not only a satisfying feedback loop between rod, line and water but a connection to the origins of our sport. Allied to this was lifelong learning – every day is a school day somebody wrote. Clearly, we all take great satisfaction in the fact that there is the potential to learn something new every time we venture out.

 

Agate rod ring from www.chrisclemes.com

 

The act of not catching fish seems to weigh much heavier on the minds of non-anglers than us. I am sure you have had to field a question along the lines of ‘Isn’t it boring when you don’t catch anything’. Well, yes it can be boring, frustrating, annoying and for those of us in the trade, a dent in our professional pride. However, we are all definitely driven by the concept of man vs. fish even if along the way we have to countenance failure. However, when we succeed it is not the size or quantity of the fish that matters but much rather winning the elemental battle with the fish. The tug is the drug. It is not so much the act of catching but the split second moment when that happens. The rest, as they say, is history.   I cannot possibly mention all the many other individual reasons you gave to Why We Fish, but I will add companionship – the ability to share the joys and frustrations is high on most lists. However, those companions do not always have to be present. Solitude is sometimes a companion in itself; the chance to recall people and the past with fondness. Some years ago I had a regular client, one of the founding Fishing Breaks band, who was dying of lung cancer. Knowing his clock was running down I went to see Dick at Compton Chamberlayne to say hello and, ultimately, goodbye. We shook hands for a final time as I left him beside the river, walking back to the road where the Nadder passes under a humpbacked stone bridge. On the bridge I paused and turned; in the distance Dick stood where I had left him, slightly stooped, rod in hand gazing at the river. I simply cannot imagine the thoughts he had that day but as he raised his hand to acknowledge my gaze I hope they were of a life well lived. To this day I cannot cross that bridge without recalling Dick but that makes me glad for what fishing can bring.   One final thought, or one final word, that leapt out at me in your replies: esotericity, namely the condition of being esoteric.   a: designed for or understood by the specially initiated alone b: requiring or exhibiting knowledge that is restricted to a small group c: difficult to understand d: limited to a small circle e: of special, rare, or unusual interest   I must admit I did not know such a noun existed so it sent me to the Merriam-Webster dictionary and the definition of esoteric, not something I have ever thought hard about before. All in all, esoteric in nearly all its uses, is not a bad word to define the madness that afflicts us all.

 

 

Time for more s**t under the bridge   As you well know I have pretty well dipped out on commenting on all matters of pollution and I wish everyone well on the march next week; I will not be there having been booked for a trip overseas long ago.   Breaking my omerta I see we have Sir Jon Cunliffe, former deputy governor of the Bank of England, leading a Water Commission (Will he be on the march? I think we know the answer to that …..) with a sweeping brief to “strengthen regulation, boost investment and inform further reform”. I have to be honest my heart rather sinks – do we really need more navel gazing and lead by an establishment figure? As I have often commented we have more regulation than you can shake a stick at and investment is as simple as explaining to water users the true cost of water use.

 

But I suppose it suits everyone – government, regulators and the water industry – to await what will inevitably be called the Cunliffe Report which will, at best, tell us what we already know whilst wasting another 3-5 years. My only hope is that the kites flown since the announcement for the abolition of regulator Ofwat and the removal of water oversight from the Environment Agency to an independent body might actually happen. You never know my call of many years for a Pure Water Authority might see the light of day but not before we have allowed time for more epic amounts of s**t to flow through our rivers.

 

 

Is this the right move for you?   I can readily understand the Murdoch family pursuit of the property website Rightmove – its is one of the few portals I log onto every day by choice.   I have lots of alerts that are purely practical – obviously fishing for good commercial reasons and anything in the immediate vicinity of Nether Wallop to satisfy my nosy neighbour gene. I also have one for mills which bought me to Throop Mill on the River Stour near Bournemouth last week.

 

There are plenty of mills for sale at any given time but for the most part they were converted to homes a long ago, the original purpose and layout lost to all but memory. It some respects that is a shame, but one of the strengths of British architecture is the constant repurposing of old buildings rather than outright demolition. However, Throop Mill is a complete throwback, the Marie Celeste of mills, apparently barely touched since the miller ground his last decades ago.   On the outside the name of the owner is proudly displayed on the front elevation. Inside there are massive flagstones worn smooth with age, open beams, scuffed wooden flooring and much of the milling machinery remains. This is a building that remains stripped bare to its original purpose. For me, scrolling through the photos which you can do here, it was a step back in time of 25 years so similar is the current layout of Throop Mill to that of Nether Wallop Mill, even down to the cast iron supports, shape of the windows, open staircase and joinery of the crossbeams in the attic section. The agents say the building has been unused since 1974 – I can believe it.   I have no idea whether the asking price of £500,000 represents value but if you fancy your hand at a grand design I suspect you could do a great deal worse.

 

 

 

Throop Mill from Ellis and Partners

 

 

 

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)    The infamous Charge of the Light Brigade took place on this day in 1854. It was part of which battle during the Crimean War? Clue: think of a woolly hat.   2)    Which Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer begins, “Once upon a time there dwelt in Oxford A rich churl, that took in guests to board …..”  3)    Who was the co-creator with Rowan Atkinson of Mr Bean?

 

Have a good weekend.  Best wishes,

 

 

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

 

 

BUY 2 AND GET A THIRD FREE!

 

 

Quiz answers:   1)    The Battle of Balaclava 2)    The Miller’s Tale 3)    Richard Curtis