Life of a Chalkstream: March 2019

Friday, 29 March 2019

Passionate persuasion

Passionate persuasion

Greetings!

I type the words 'Mottisfont Abbey' dozens of times every week; it is, after all, the name to the National Trust estate that is home to one of the most iconic and beautiful stretches of the River Test with which I have a very special and longstanding connection. However, I rarely visit the Abbey itself. But last week, with a houseful of bored visitors, I put right an absence of at least five years.


	Norman Thelwell

Of course I failed to warn my American entourage of the one most obvious thing about Mottisfont Abbey: it in no way, shape or form looks like an abbey.

It is, essentially, a stately home though something of a small one, the house a melange of architectural styles dating back to the 1500's when the current mansion was build around an abbey rendered obsolete by the Reformation. It makes for something of a rather odd building inside. I forget the name of the guy from TV's Grand Designs but he'd eviscerate the layout of possibly one of Britain's earliest and longest lasting church conversions.

That said, architectural niceties aside, you get a lot for your admission fee. There is the magnificent rose garden, but don't expect much before June. There is the 'font' of Mottisfont, a crystal clear springhead of chalkstream water. There is a walk along the river, home to trout of mind-boggling size, which have fled our beats for the easy life of bread and crisps.

The house itself is interesting rather than awesome, though the Whistler Room, the triumph of tromphe l'oeil painted by Rex Whistler in 1939 took the eye of my party for longer than I could stand so I left them to it finding myself following the signs to the Thelwell: Laughter and Landscapes exhibition tucked up on the third floor.


	Artist proof cover for the Compleat Tangler

Norman Thelwell. I hadn't thought of that name in years. The cartoonist who gently lampooned the Pony Club set of ill-mannered children, overwrought parents and recalcitrant ponies on a mission to turn the innocent hobby of horse riding into a battle of wills. Anyone with a horse-mad sibling will recall the Thelwell books and birthday cards as staple gifts from aunts and grandparents. Thelwell, as far as I can divine, didn't much care for riding but he was a passionate fly fisher living from the 1970's to his death in 2004 in Timsbury village, between Stockbridge and Romsey, where a carrier of the River Test flowed through his garden.

I am not sure that his depiction of our breed in the Compleat Tangler has done much for our cause other than stereotype us as bumbling, ineffectual fools. Maybe he is not that wrong? He definitely had an eye for the absurd, encouraged no doubt by his years as a Punch cartoonist where he was something of an early environmentalist in the 1950's.

There is a cartoon of a harried man, brandishing a piece of paper, rushing into the office of a colleague which is piled high with similar papers. 'It's another memo from J.B.' he says, 'about the paper shortage ...'.

The cartoon (opposite) of the child saying to the angler, 'You can catch them ready cooked down by the power station,' reflects the debate when the first nuclear power stations were mooted.

There was definitely an interesting hinterland to the life of Norman Thelwell who sold over 2 million books. He truly loved the natural world, seeking to protect it by way of passionate persuasion with the gentle prod of humour rather than that of sanctimonious lecture.

If you have a spare hour the exhibition is worth a visit. It runs until April 22nd at Mottisfont Abbey.

Thelwell describing how he came to live on the River Test

BBC Countryfile on my otters

I am guessing that there are not many of you who haven't, planned or otherwise, watched an episode of Flog It! the antiques show hosted by Paul Martin.


	Paul Martin with me last week at Nether Wallop Mill

It is such a ubiquitous staple of the TV schedules that you might be surprised to hear that the final programme was filmed last year. But with 1,300 shows recorded over the past 18 years I think it is reasonable to assume you'll be seeing it on a channel near you for many years to come. In fact Paul tells me the filming came to an end when the W1A executives discovered that old repeats were getting more viewers than the new shows!

I met Paul last week when he came to Nether Wallop Mill to film an episode for the spring edition of BBC Countryfile Diaries about my otters, with a twist on fishing. It seems that an earlier edition of the show had taken some flak from the carp fishing community who, for perfectly understandable reasons, are less keen on the otter revival than others.

Really the difficulty is that the stillwater revolution, for both trout and coarse species, took place in an otter vacuum. At the very time that the otter population was in steep decline, coming dangerously close to extinction in large parts of the country, just about every body of viable water was being turned into some kind of commercial fishery or other. No thought was given to furry predators because well, they weren't around.

The otter renaissance is generally regarded as one of the few ecological success stories of the past three decades. Proof that, despite lobbying by special interest groups, using poisonous chemicals in the countryside does exactly what you might expect - it kills things. It is no small irony that the very revival of the otters since the chemical ban has been helped by the lakes that grew up in their absence; a ready and easy food supply.

So my job for Countryfile was to explain how I cope with otter predation without resorting to deterrents such as fencing. What do I do? Well, nothing. In the end you have to bend to the will of Mother Nature. Accept that if you create something so utterly unnatural as an lake stocked with fish to a number and size beyond native reproduction then you'll become, whether you like it or not, the local walk-in-whenever-you-like-and-eat-as-much-as-you-like food bank.

The BBC Countryfile Spring Diary series will be aired in the week starting April 29^th. I will let you know the time and date of the show in due course.

CHALK easier to watch

I know some of you struggled with the token wallet system operated by Fishing TV, the distributors of CHALK. Good news - it is gone! You can now watch CHALK with regular pay-per-view.

There are two options: pay £3.99 for unlimited access for 72 hours or pay £6.99 for unlimited access forever. Click on this link to watch the film or see the trailer.

If you'd like to see the latest projects by filmmakers Chris Cooper and Leo Cinicolo visit their web site.

Your own record grayling?

I asked last time around how old grayling lived to and I'm thankful for Shaun Leonard of the Wild Trout Trust for providing the answer.


	It could be you!

He has pointed me in the direction of the Grayling Research Trust Practical Guide which, based on individuals that have been captured year after year with electro fishing surveys, suggests that it is around 9 years. Shaun is also confident that, bearing in mind the side of his dorsal fin, our record fish is a boy.

Before we completely forget about grayling for a few months as they do their breeding thing a few dates for your diary:

John Bailey at Ilsington

John can't promise another record but he'll be back in the autumn and winter for more of his guided days on the River Frome.

October 25/26 and February 21/22

The cost is £325 for one day or £595 for two days.

Introduction to Grayling Fishing

Our very own grayling ace Bob Preston will be running a one day course at Bullington Manor at the start of the season. Bob regularly racks up days when he catches 50+ grayling so you'll learn a thing or two!

October 15

The cost is £195 for the day.

To book call Diane on 01264 781988 or diane@fishingbreaks.co.uk

The Quiz

More questions to hopefully entertain and enlighten. As ever it is just for fun with the answers at the bottom of the Newsletter.

1) Memo is an abbreviation of what word?

2) In what country was April Fools' Day was traditionally called Huntigowk Day?

3) In which year was Britain's first nuclear power station opened?

Have a good weekend.

Best wishes,

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk

Founder & Managing Director

www.fishingbreaks.co.uk

Answers:

1) Memorandum

2) Scotland. A corruption of Hunt the Gowk, the gowk being Scots for a cuckoo or a foolish person.

3) 1956

Tuesday, 19 March 2019

It's a record breaker

It's a record breaker

Greetings!

It is hard sometimes not to become jaded by records. We are assailed on every side by the biggest or the best in one form or another. A certain degree of superlative fatigue sets in; that's as true for angling as for many spheres of life.


	Simon Ellis with his 4lb 8oz new British record grayling

I think long ago most of us dismissed the freshwater records for most pond raised fish as, well, artificial. Now I take my hat off to those who have the dedication and skill to nurture these leviathans but are they really records in the spirit of record taking? I tend to think not. Then there is the thorny question of river caught fish. When does a stocked fish stop being stocked transmogrifying into a wild fish? One week? One month? One season? I truly don't know.

The growing of record fish had become so much of an arms race that the British Record Fish Committee closed the lists for all five of what they term 'cultivated game fish' in 2015. You could argue that that is a bit of a shame but on the other hand it does mean that any new native fish record has to be something truly stupendous.

The bars you have to raise date back nearly a century; the Atlantic salmon record was caught in 1922. At 64lb you do wonder if that will be ever broken as with the 28lb Sea trout from 1998. It is classified as a River Test capture but to my mind Calshot Spit is essentially the English Channel. As for the 31lb Brown trout from Loch Awe in 2002, well the mind boggles quite frankly. It even tops the 'cultivated' monster of 28lbs from Dever Springs. Which leaves us with Paul Mildren's 4lb 4oz grayling from the River Frome in Dorset in 2009 which beat the previous record by an ounce, also from the Frome sixteen years earlier. If you want a British game record a grayling would looks to me to be your best bet. As it turns out that just happens to be true.


	Simon with John Bailey who is doing a passable imitation of the worlds happiest leprechaun

I am not great pursuer of records but I do get a little excited by the grayling record. This is probably more to do with proximity than ability. I regularly fish the Frome where the record fish were caught and have come within 15% of the record. That does make me sound a little obsessive but think about getting within fifteen percent of Miss Ballantine's fish - that would be a 55lb salmon. Do the maths on the other records to sort might see where I am going? And the Frome is historically the big grayling Valhalla, the original stock imported by the Victorians from the Derbyshire Dove to thrive in this food rich river; most chalkstreams were stocked with grayling at some point or another, only the Hampshire Avon having a true 'native' population.

Where is all this leading? Well, to a new British record that was caught by Simon Ellis at Ilsington on the River Frome on February 19^th. And it wasn't just a nudge over the record. It was in the words of John Bailey writing the tale of the capture up for the Anglers Mail 'smashed'. At 4lbs 8oz it's a monster. The biggest grayling ever recorded. John actually has to take some of the credit as he was guiding a small group that day, putting Simon on the particular pool choosing a weighted pink nymph below a strike indicator. Yes, this is not just a record grayling but a record grayling caught on the fly.

So, well done to everyone involved. It's a distinctive fish with that damaged dorsal fin so if it comes out again there will be no problem identifying it. That said we are not sure how old it is. The literature on the length of a grayling's life is vague. Five years seems to be a norm with eight possible. Does anyone know? Anyway John and Simon will be putting in their application to the British Record Fish Committee. It is a thorough process that takes some time but however long it takes I suspect Simon and John will still be glowing with well-deserved pride.

As for the fish well, after some tender care he (or maybe she) swam off back into the deep. I might just be in the front of the queue when the new grayling season opens .....

Summer beauty

It is entirely serendipitous but no sooner did I write about the River Meon last time around but then this east Hampshire stream appeared on the front cover of the April edition

of Trout & Salmon magazine.

The article on our very own Exton Manor Farm beat was written by Chris McCully and beautifully photographed by Richard Faulks when they visited in June of last year.

As you can see it is the very epitome of an English chalkstream summer.

I'm very grateful to Trout & Salmon for allowing us to reproduce the photographs here.

Roll on the new season ....

PS We didn't supply Chris's lunch. He is in the most excellent Shoe Inn a 3 minute amble from the fishing (sometimes a 10 minute stagger back) with its own river garden. One of Hampshire's best country pubs. Check it out.

Let it rain, let it rain ..... not necessarily

Fair to say it has been a confusing winter with records broken for dry, wet, hot and cold ..... and that's even before we hark back to the summer heatwave. So, if you haven't been in sight of a chalkstream since last season you might be in slight trepidation as to what to expect.

Well, the truth is rather dull - despite all the huge monthly variations we are in a highly average annual cycle. The Environment Agency (EA) measure rainfall against what they call the Long Term Average (LTA) that being the average annual rainfall in the years 1961-1990. The southern chalkstreams straddle the two of the regions, the south east and south west that the EA compile data for. So, averaging those two out the LTA for the past three months stands at 90%, last six months 94.5% and the last year 97%.

Translated into what you'll actually see most chalkstreams are currently at Normal flow rates or slightly better. The only ones that could do with a bit more rain are those in Berkshire and Norfolk, plus the limestone rivers of Derbyshire but nothing critical.

So when you do venture out I think, all in all, you'll find them looking good.

The Quiz

More questions to hopefully entertain and enlighten. As ever it is just for fun with the answers at the bottom of the Newsletter.

1) Today is the Ides of March. What is the meaning if the word ides?

2) March 15^th 1952 is recorded as the wettest day in history. How many inches of rain fell on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean over the 24 hour period? Clue: the UK annual average is 33 inches.

3) Who died on this day in 44 BC?

Have a good weekend.

Best wishes,

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk

Founder & Managing Director

www.fishingbreaks.co.uk

Answers:

1) In the ancient Roman calendar a day falling roughly in the middle of each month

2) 73 inches

3) Julius Caesar

Friday, 1 March 2019

Better news than you might think

Better news than you might think

Greetings!

A couple of years ago I had the temerity to question the 'spin' put on the publication of research document that was the result of a survey on the upper part of the gorgeous River Itchen. It had revealed a disastrous decline in the shrimp population, a vital food source for trout and something of an indicator species.


	River Itchen

I was as upset as anyone to read this news but one of our most revered campaigning organisations took it upon itself to issue a press release that extrapolated this local disaster into a nationwide Armageddon for the chalkstreams. It was clearly tosh. A great headline grabber that all the national media ran with. But all the same, a complete and utter misrepresentation of the facts.

And I said so both in print and to any poor sod who would listen. All manners of hell was rained down upon me. I became whatever the chalkstream equivalent of a climate change denier might be. Emails were sent. Letters arrived. Someone was dispatched to take me out to lunch to give me 'the talk'. One owner even withdrew his water from the Fishing Breaks portfolio. In the end we all gently moved on. Then last week the Catchment Invertebrate Fingerprinting Study of the River Meon dropped through my letterbox.

I know it is not the most catchy title but please don't switch your brain off just yet; it's really just a study into the health of this small East Hampshire river and contains better news than you might at first suppose. There are essentially six measures to determine how a river is doing: sediment, low flows, phosphates, organic pollution, pesticides and bug life.


	Gammarus hanging out

Sediment is the mineral and organic material washed into the river from all manners of sources, both natural and man-made. It sounds bad but it is essential to the life of the chalkstream - Mayfly nymphs for instance burrow into the silt. However, too much, particularly at the wrong time of year can stifle weed growth, suffocate eggs and clog the gills of fish. Fortunately the Meon has been monitored for nearly two decades so we know where we stand on sediment - since 2002 it has decreased and the conditions for fly life have improved.

A chalkstream derives 80% of its flow from the aquifers, the springs recharged by rain that falls over the winter months. Hoarding that invisible reservoir is the key to avoiding difficulties in dry years. So river restoration helps by holding back the flows, abstraction licences have greater scrutiny and the sympathetic management of the wetland catchment does its bit. Result? Since 2002 the pressure from low flows has decreased.

Like sediment the instant reaction to the word phosphorous is one of panic; it must be bad. Actually it is an essential component to all human, animal and plant life. However, there is a tipping point when too much phosphorous encourages the dense growth of plant life in the river which in turn dies, then decomposes sucking oxygen then life out of the water. Just about everyone is responsible for phosphorus - industry, farming, water companies and us through domestic sewage but despite that multiplicity of sources there had been no change in phosphorus pressure since 2002.

I don't think I need to explain in too much detail what animal and human organic pollution might be; its effects are fairly similar to that of phosphorus plus the physical ability to smother the river bed. There have been great strides in both sewage processing and farming activities; I'm sure you have fished rivers that are now fenced off from cattle. The upshot is, that despite a big increase in the population of the Meon valley over the period of the data gathering there has been no significant change of biological conditions being altered by organic pollution.

I did rather anticipate that the pesticide measures might tell a different story to the above four but apparently not; the pressure on the river has either (surprisingly) decreased or remained stable within the Meon catchment since 2002. However, there is a caution that the nature and use of pesticides, primarily in agriculture but also gardens, golf courses, sports pitches, roads and railways, is prone to rapid change or has long-term effects of which we are not aware.

Finally there is the bug life, ultimately the mother lode for us fly fishers. The historic Environment Agency data from invertebrate monitoring of the River Meon 2002-2015 concludes that 'environmental pressures have deceased or remained unchanged .... resulting in improved conditions for those invertebrate communities.' The much talked about Gammarus that caused all the furore on the River Itchen are generally in rude health on the Meon.

So, what to conclude from all this? Should we all being doing high fives? Some might say that a comparison back to a time as recent as 2002 is no comparison at all. I'm not sure that would be a true assertion. Chalkstreams have been my business since 1990 and my refuge since 1973. I don't recall a golden age, one better than this, in all that time. The fact is that the Fingerprinting Study proves beyond doubt that we are not locked in the inexorable downward spiral that some might have you believe.

The six indicators show, even on the most glass-half-empty reading, that we have at worst reached a point of equilibrium. However, we should not be complacent. The dangers are still there. Bad things are happening. Pollutants and practices that have no place in our precious countryside still need to be eradicated. None of us should pause in our efforts to lobby, pressurise and reform where we can. Support those organisations that can help. Do our little bit by adapting our lifestyle to protect the things we wish to preserve.

Summer on the River Meon

But just occasionally it is worth lifting your eyes from the fray. Gaze upon the wondrousness of the chalkstreams and salute the fact that, in one of the most densely populated parts of the planet, they survive at all. And so let's just pause to take stock and to thank those, many of whom are long dead, for being the guardians of what we have today. They appreciated and preserved with cool heads. We should do the same.

Not so new broom

After 32 years working on the Shaftesbury Estate in Dorset, which includes the source and first three miles of the River Allen, Stewart Hand has taken early retirement. Weirdly this is great news for this lovely piece of river because Stewart, still an ox-strong sixty, has swapped his multiplicity of Estate jobs to return to his original passion - river keeping.

I think we can hold our hands up to say that in the past few years the river hasn't been the way we'd like it.

The demands on Stewart's time were such that he couldn't do the river justice and it suffered. But now Stewart has, with the help and agreement of Lord Shaftesbury, taken over the fishing as his own project. Being realistic it is a three year plan. Essentially the fishing divides into two sections spread over four beats.

At the top, where the river emerges from the ground, is the Village Water. It is long (more than a mile) but very narrow and very wild; you can read about my fishing adventure last year here. Beyond sorting out the access and stiles don't expect any change this year; this is marked down for work in years two and three.

Below the Village Water the river disappears from view for half a mile as it flows through the private grounds of Shaftesbury House. At one point it does truly disappear from view, flowing through a tunnel under this Elizabethan stately home. The tunnel hasn't always been a great success; until the recent renovations the best furniture on the ground floor stood on four inch oak blocks in anticipation of the worst. The river then flows into the lake which is famous as the venue for an episode of Passion for Angling, the one where Bob James and Chris Yates deployed a dummy to fool the prize carp.

Emerging from the lake there are now three beats collectively known as the Home Beats; Upper Brockington, Lower Brockington and Bowerswaine. Stewart has nearly completed his work on Lower Brockington (pictured) and will now fan his way out onto the other two.

For the first time there will be a fishing hut at Wimborne St Giles, located at the top of Lower Brockington to be shared by the Home beat fishers. In a world where we are too often assailed by planes, trains and automobiles it is a delightfully peaceful spot to relax and make a cup of tea.

For those of you who don't know this part of the Allen it is the very definition of crystal clear. It is not deep but best waded; I wear thigh waders or wet wade accepting I'll have to crab around a few deep spots. Other than that it is mostly small, wild fish plus some stockies. There is a Mayfly hatch, largely late May to mid-June that Stewart describes as steady rather than spectacular.

The season opens May 1^st. Prices start at £50/Rod. The Home beats takes one to four Rods. The Village beat one or two. More details here ......