Summer on the Test

 

Greetings! I was in a hurry the other day heading out the door to catch a plane with nothing to read. Scanning my bookshelf, my eye was caught by John Waller Hills’ A Summer on the Test- a book I must have read at least thirty years ago. What better I thought to while away the hours at 35,000ft than being transported back to the chalkstreams of the first two decades of the 20th century. Hills’ book is often cited as one of the best fly fishing books of all time which is how I recalled it. This time around, maybe less so. I did, in truth, rather tire of his repetitious days where he endlessly recounts the weather, the hatch, choices from his fly box and his braggadocio of fish caught. Aside from that, it is still a gem that distills the essence of fly fishing on the chalkstreams reminding me, and hopefully other readers, that however much things change they still remain the same. If the Hills of 1926 was standing at your shoulder in 2026 the conversation, observation and fishing would be largely unchanging.

John Waller Hills 1867-1938. Soldier. Politician. Writer. Fly fisher

Of that I was reminded, though perhaps not in a good way, by the Introduction to the 1946 edition by Sir Joseph Ball who writes, “…. I am afraid that the abstraction of its [River Test] pure water has increased and is still increasing …..”. If only he knew what awfulness lay ahead. The metropolitan new town of Basingstoke, that stands at the head of the catchment for both the Test and Itchen, was still a gleam in the eye of the county planners, its pre-war population of 13,000 set to swell to 197,000 today. As Ball penned his introduction the county of Hampshire had 1.1m inhabitants. Today, 80 years on that is close to having doubled, at 1.95m. And precisely how many reservoirs have been built in the county since then? Precisely, none. As I say, however much things change they still remain the same. On a more cheerful line I enjoyed Hills’ dissection of the evening rise and his graduations of its foibles in one of the longer chapters of the book. He posits that there are three styles of evening rise. The first, what he calls the casual rise, starts between seven and eight and lasts until shortly before sunset. The second, the small fly rise, starts after the last edge of the sun has sunk below the horizon and ends when it is too dark to see your fly on the water. The third, the sedge rise, opens and runs for something under half an hour. As to the flies recommended, he is very much a spinner man during a casual rise, and he is a fanatic of the Orange Quill. For the small fly (size 16 or smaller) rise duns, spinners or occasionally nymphs. The sedge rise falls into two parts: until it gets dark nothing bigger than size 16 and then larger versions for the quarter to half hour after dark at which point you should fish no further as it is fruitless. Hills is nothing if not emphatic in his opinions which include his belief that a bag of two fish should be considered a successful evening rise. Anyway, I had quite forgotten his evening rise stratagems so I am going to test them out in the coming few weeks and generally, though I am not going to read A Summer on the Test again cover to cover it is certainly worth dipping into on a chapter by chapter basis e.g. High Summer or Harvest Moon, if you are seeking inspiration or new tactics for an upcoming day on the river. Orange Quill

Ash dieback dying back As our head river keeper Si Fields will tell you, we spend a lot of time dealing with dead or dying ash trees which have a habit of self-felling at the most inconvenient times and in the most inconvenient places. I guess it is no surprise as since ash dieback, a fatal fungal disease that was first identified in 2012, tens of millions have died. Originally it was estimated that 80% of our 150 million ash trees would succumb but more recently this estimate has been downgraded because, thanks to a genetic variation, more trees will survive than anticipated which rather answers a question that has long bothered me about ash dieback: why do some survive and others not? Nether Wallop ash tree that was once five trees

Around The Mill we have plenty of healthy specimens of, I reckon, 30-50 years of age plus another closer to 75 years which I have been nursing for at least 15 years as infected limbs are gradually sawn off. Today it still survives, more of a hat stand than a tree, but each spring raggedly shoots are the cause to celebrate another winter survival and herald its continued primary purpose as a woodpecker paradise. We also have, in the field by the office, one of the most magnificent ash trees I know of anywhere. 150? 200? 250? Nobody quite knows how many years old it might be and village legend has it that the tree was formed by the lashing together of five smaller trees into one by the constraint of cast iron rings.  It seems that, one way or another, the ash tree, one of our only thirty or so native trees, will eventually beat the dieback. Currently it is not possible to buy saplings for replanting but Mother Nature is doing her bit; healthy young ash trees are thrusting skywards where dead trees fall.

That was the month that was June As the 1980’s hit went, June was Feeling Hot Hot Hot ….. and then some more. It was hot at work. It was hot at home. It was hot outside. It was hot by the river. There really was no escape unless you happen to live in one of the 10% of UK homes that have air conditioning. Despite all that June was a wet month. At the time of writing the data for the final week on the month is yet to come in but we are on track to be one third up on the rainfall for a normal June. The weather Gods work in mysterious ways. At this point, in summarising June I am going to have a bit of a rant (I know you have missed them …) because there were some hysterical and utterly misguided suspensions of river fishing issued by fishing clubs and official bodies who really should know better. The way they went on, you would think that a few days of hot weather had turned our rivers into bubbling infernos carpeted with flotillas of dead fish. Now it is true that armed with a thermometer and the desire to create alarm you can always find hot pockets in a river and that lakes truly do suffer, but chalkstreams?

Nigel Nunn's July quartet Dry Fly Soft Hackle | Small & Scruffy Loop Fowey Cahill Caddis | Deer Hair Emerger

Yes, it was horribly hot in the midday sun. Fish skulk in the depths. Insects cling to shaded vegetation. The river surface shines back at you like a lifeless mercury bath. But the truth is insects have to fly to perpetuate the species. Fish have to eat to live. Nature does not stop for a heatwave. It simply cannot afford to. It adapts to survive because it does not have the luxury of a five day forecast.  Like many things in life the secret of successful fishing in a heatwave is timing. Pick your moment and use it well. Do not flog the water or your body in the heat of the day. Fish early. Fish late. Or fish a combination of the two. And I can promise you those that did caught plenty of fish who rose to a well-presented fly and were safely returned to rise another day. Clearly those fish had not read the health and safety memo from the well-meaning idiots. And to wrap up June, I am pleased to announce that Roger Scotts, who fished Middleton Estate early in the month, will soon be the proud recipient of Nigel Nunn’s July selection.

Quiz A short selection of questions based on the topics in this newsletter, the date today or something topical. 1) Who did Sweden's Björn Borg beat on this day in 1976 on his way to five straight Wimbledon Men's tennis titles? 2) How many days does a UK heatwave have to last for the Met Office to classify it as such? 3) Which British motor company still manufactures sports cars with frames made from ash? It is just for fun and the answers are below.

Have a good weekend. PS August is Special Offer month! To receive advance notice of the deals and offers sign up for the alert emails.  Best wishes,

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

Quiz answers: 1) Ilie Năstase 2) 3 days 3) The Morgan Motor Company of Great Britain

Is all pollution bad?

 

Dear Simon, One of the great conceits of the Victorian civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette was that he gave the nation a sewage system of which we could be proud; the truth is more nuanced. What he really did was create a grand network that gathered human and industrial waste, put it in large pipes which in turn dumped the output in the nearest river or sea. Since then, at least until very recently, out of sight, out of mind has been the prevailing ethos of sewage management. To a certain extent, when the waste was largely organic and the population considerably smaller, Mother Nature was able to absorb whatever we chose to engulf her with but how times change. Waste has become more chemical and toxic; the residues will hang around for not just years or decades but centuries. This damaging habit, embedded into the system by Bazalgette, is what the industry calls combined sewer overflows when rainwater and wastewater are carried through the same pipes. During heavy rainfall, these systems can exceed capacity, releasing untreated or partially treated sewage into rivers and coastal waters. For many years the assumption has been that however bad this was, it was not as bad as the overflows from the wastewater treatment works themselves. However, new research from Imperial Collage London challenges this cosy assumption.

Is the Lake Windermere project, pictured in full algal bloom, where the smart money is going?

Without going too much into the considerable data of the Imperial research, they come to two different conclusions. Firstly, the pollution caused by the combined sewer overflows is of similar volume to that of wastewater treatment works and sometimes greatly more damaging due to the nature of the effluents. Secondly, not all combined sewer overflows are equal with a small proportion responsible for a disproportionately large share of total pollution. So what, you might think, is not all pollution bad? On that I think we would all agree, but with money in short supply, we need to take whatever infrastructure cash is around to improve the 45% of wastewater systems in England that Imperial have designated as falling into high or very high environmental risk categories. The simple fact is that there is never, ever going to be enough money in the short to medium term to address every bit of our ageing infrastructure. We need to be smart about using whatever cash there is and focus on where it can most improve the health of England’s rivers. Now that is never going to be easy; some rivers will win whilst others lose. It may even mean taking money from one part of the country and giving it to another. Imagine the furore if say part of your water bill as a Yorkshire Water customer is rerouted to Thames Water. But that is the sort of hard decision politicians, not regulators, have to make if we want clean rivers. As George Orwell might have said, all pollution is equal, but some pollution is more equal than others. You may read the Imperial report here .....

Things that go unseen It is strange how you can live somewhere for nearly three decades without noticing something you have passed by thousands of times but without registering or noticing its existence. This benchmark, carved into the brickwork by my front door to The Mill is precisely that. As you know I was hosting events here last week to celebrate the launch of Tales from The Mill and it was only when preparing for that, walking the walk, that I spied the carving. I knew instantly that it was a benchmark, and maybe long ago I know of their purpose, but it was only when I asked one of the groups if they knew of that purpose some knowledgeable members of the party supplied the answer: an Ordnance Survey benchmark to map the height above sea level. Benchmark bottom righthnand corner of brickwork

There is, apparently, a mammoth network of benchmarks or ‘broad arrows’ which have been ‘chiselled’ into buildings by the Ordnance Survey mapping company since 1840 to help surveyors measure altitude relative to mean sea level. In total some half a million marks have been made since then in three distinct Geodetic Levelling phases of 1840–1860, 1912–1921 and 1951–1956. However, many of the buildings along with the marks, have long disappeared. I must admit I have never really thought about the concept of sea level; it seems to me to be one of those universal constants like gravity but I guess, when you think about it, is sea level measured at high tide, low tide or somewhere in between? And does the level vary according to coastal or country location? Well, as it turns out there is a thing called Ordnance Datum Newlyn which is the official vertical reference framework for mainland Great Britain. Established using tide gauge measurements taken in Cornwall between 1915 and 1921, it defines 'height zero' which dictates the elevation of all hills, buildings, and maps across the country. Of course, that all does rather beg the question how do you measure your benchmark against height zero which is certainly not visible and maybe hundreds of miles distant? The trick was that surveyors used a specialised spirit level to perform geodetic levelling with which, starting from Newlyn, they measured the height difference between one fixed point and the next which in my case, thanks to the comprehensive record keeping of Ordnance Survey, we know took place in 1958. Anyway, at 166 feet (or 50.56m) above sea level it is good to know that it is one form of flooding I do not need to worry about.

The Natural History GCSE is a natural Once a year I give a talk about chalkstreams to 13-15 year olds at The Wellington Academy. Located, as it is on the edge of Salisbury Plain and close to the Army town of Tidworth, this secondary school has an eclectic mix of pupils most of whom you might think have little interest in nature, let alone chalkstreams. But once they twig that the River Bourne that flows through their town is a stream in which they have all swum, paddled or played their ears prick up and become incredibly engaged. I go away heartened that a generation, often badged as screen obsessed, can have a hinterland to their lives if only shown the way to that land. That in turn gives me hope that the newly announced GCSE in Natural History will be a great success engaging a whole new generation to the countryside because I absolutely know the interest is there. Whenever we run our kids camps here at The Mill the two most popular moments are a) the kick sampling and bug identification and b) the fish gutting which, aside from the attraction of the gore, becomes an interactive biology lesson. A few places left on the Summer Kids Camps for 8-11 years and 12-15 years. Click here for details .... My one concern is that the course does not become obsessed with climate change. I am no denier or sceptic but as I always reply to the earnest pupil who asks about the impact of climate change, the truth is that we are already making a fine job of poisoning our rivers and countryside so, unless we do something about that sharpish, both will become toxic sinks long before climate change gets us. Photo of the Week Here is how you cast the full length of a fly line, all 90 feet of it! Photo by Ed Sozinho from Hatch Magazine.

Quiz A short selection of questions based on the topics in this newsletter, the date today or something topical. 1)     Which cartoon cat debuted on this day is 1978, though has become rather foul mouthed with age? 2)     In what year did pupils sit the first GCSE’s? A) 1978 B) 1988 C)1998 3)     What do you call a person who draws or produces maps? It is just for fun and the answers are below.

Have a good weekend. Go Scotland!  Best wishes,

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

Quiz answers: 1)     Garfield, created by Jim Davis, first appears as a comic strip 2)     1988 3)     A cartographer

My battle with cow parsley

 

Dear Simon, It is April so it must be my month to reengage in the annual battle with the cow parsley that lives (thrives?) in the water meadows here in Nether Wallop. Now, there is nothing intrinsically bad about cow parsley as compared to its poisonous non-native cousin the giant hogweed, originally imported from Russia and also a member of the carrot family. But cow parsley, though pretty in itself, is a menace in many respects. First of all it is one of those first growth plants that crowds out the smaller meadow plants – given half a chance the field would become a cow parsley monoculture. Secondly, alongside the river it looks lovely in May but by June it will become woody, outgrowing itself, to collapse across the width of the Brook. It is, as every fly fisher will know, a wicked magnet for a miscast fly. Enlisted help on the cow parsley cull

So, to head off all these eventualities I spend my early April evenings, with enlisted help, going to war on the cow parsley with my trusty long-handled rip hook. There is a definitive art to cow parsley slashing. Go too low and the blade jams into the thick stems at the base. Go too high and the lack of resistance allows the fast travelling blade to whip dangerously behind you. Get it just right and it is the proverbial hot knife through butter satisfyingly decapitating the carrot-like tops that fall to the ground in a pleasing open symmetry. As I move from one hated clump to the next, a carrotine smell wafts over the scene of this vegetable massacre. It is really quite hard work, so I measure out the war over a series of evenings. As you will see from some of the before and after photos, the effect is instantaneous. I guess, it is a sort of gardening writ large for the easily gratified. Anyway, it is a long war but I am winning. Give it another five years!

Clockwise: Before the cull. The far bank which is never culled. After the cull. A job well done.

The Madison I am beginning to feel like a TV critic what with Dirty Business last time and The Madison this time. For those of you who have not yet seen The Madison it is the latest series from Sheridan Taylor, the slayer of all things woke who has clipped into the Maga vibe with Yellowstone, Landman, 1883 and Tulsa King  to name just four of his recent hits. This time the plot centres around a wealthy New York family where the father retreats a few weeks each year to Montana to refresh his soul trout fishing with his fishing guide brother on the Madison River.

I will not bore you with more of the plot and, in truth, The Madison has been panned by the critics (The Guardian called it ‘yawnsome’ but they would …), which is a shame because, in the first two episodes especially, there is so much fly fishing and much of it impressively shot- including fishing in the very spot that the iconic scene from A River Runs Through It was filmed. For once we have actors that can actually fly fish and it shows. The two brothers, played by Kurt Russell and Matthew Fox, do a great job though things get a bit weird when they have to play and net fish for the camera that clearly do not exist. You will see what I mean. However, aside from that anorak comment from me, it is a joy to see a filmmaker trying to express the beauty of fishing in beautiful places and for those of us who fish, we are even treated to a bit of the nymph vs. dry debate. Who knew Hollywood cared that much? I did try to find out who was the angling consultant on the show but the best I could find was an Animal Coordinator. You may watch the show trailer here (BEWARE: contains scenes of fly fishing) and watch the series on Paramount+, Amazon Prime and YouTube.  A River Runs Through It

New season. New hatches I have finally given in. After years of my makeshift hatch on the stream by the mill, which I made from oak offcuts at least two decades ago, I called in Derek Janes, who is of a profession you will not often see listed on LinkedIn – millwright. I have known Derek for a long while as he first worked with me in the early years of this century when I was restoring the mill and, in particular, the mill wheel which had three apparently terminal problems. Firstly, the giant cast iron spindle had fallen off its supports, the wheel leaning at a drunken angle against the wall of the wheel room. Secondly, someone had nicked the bronze wheel bearings and thirdly the steel gate and lifting mechanism, which controlled the water flow, had rusted away to the point of being useless. Read more about Derek’s successful restoration in Tales from The Mill. This time, the task was a little simpler. It was not, modesty aside, that my makeshift hatch did not work it was just that it was both hard, and sometimes a bit perilous, to make it work. The concept of the makeshift hatch is pretty simple: it slides up and down in the steel grooves held in position at the correct height to regulate the flow by a nail placed through one of the holes in the centre upright into a cross member across over the opening. So far, so simple. However, the flaw in my hatch is the pressure of the water which jams it tight making raising it next to impossible by simple lifting. This can only be done by grabbing a 6ft steel crow bar, donning waders and levering the hatch from below. Prepare to get wet and swept away by the sudden rush of water. Anyway, such antics are for those younger than me so I have given into the passage of the years with Derek’s masterful creation which, I think you will agree, is a thing of great beauty.

Old & new

More Dirty Business Not everyone was happy with my assessment of the impact of Channel 4’s Dirty Business; others think it is significant. I am told Windrush Against Sewage Pollution (WASP) have received 1,200 emails since the series went out and £50,000 in donations. I still remain to be convinced but if history proves me wrong, I will be happy to be wrong. One reader, Dave from Oxford as we will call him for reasons of discretion, was sufficiently empowered by Dirty Business to write, “Enjoying your newsletters as always. A good review of Dirty Business. As I watched the final episode I checked my local area on GOVAQUA Welcome to the Oxford Rivers Portal! to see my nearest treatment plant, South Moreton, was actually discharging at the time [29 March 2026]. And as it is right now as I write. [4 April 2026].”

Upstream of discharge 29 March

Downstream of discharge 29 March

I do not know whether to be shocked, enraged or despairing. To misquote King Henry II, will no one rid us of these pestilent polluters?

Chalkstream Conservation Day Have you ever wondered exactly how the weed cut happens? Wanted to try your hand at some river restoration? Get down ‘n dirty river keeping? Well, in July why not join us for Make Waves: Chalkstream Conservation Day led by our Head River Keeper, Si Fields.  Join us at Bullington Manor on the Upper Test for a river conservation and restoration day in support of Sportfish Rivers Month on Friday 17 July. Along with Si, you will have the chance to get involved in: Invasive species removal with a focus on monkeyflower Kick sampling to discover river life Practical river restoration work And watch the famous weed cut in action! You will need to dress for the outdoors - bring your own waders and gloves. Be prepared for uneven and potentially wet ground. All tools and equipment will be provided. Light refreshments will be available but please bring a picnic to enjoy by the water. No prior experience needed- just enthusiasm! To register for this free event, click here. Si Fields

Quiz The usual random collection of questions this week inspired by the date and the Newsletter topics. 1)      What fruit went on sale for the first time on this day in 1633 in a London apothecary? 2)     Which two time Oscar winner played rancher John Dutton in the TV series Yellowstone? 3)     The herb Parsley (Petroselinum crispum), now common around the world, is native to which European country? A) Balkans  B) Italy   C) Spain The answers are below.

As you read this I will be heading to a sound recording studio in Soho for day two of narrating Tales from The Mill as an audio book. Wish me luck .... not something I have ever done. More on that next time. Have a good weekend.  Best wishes,

Check & book dates here

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

1)     Bananas 2)     Kevin Costner 3)     Balkans