Great things by good people

Great things by good people

After 15 years the Avon Roach Project, dedicated to restoring the roach to the middle reaches of the Hampshire Avon, is shutting up shop. But this is, contrary to what you might anticipate, a cause for celebration. And the chance to pay tribute to the work of two amazing guys. Let me take you back a while.

	The Common Roach (Rutilus rutilus)

In 2005 the Environment Agency conducted a survey of fish stocks on the thirty mile stretch of the Avon from Salisbury downstream to Christchurch, just before it reaches the English Channel. It confirmed what regular match anglers had long suspected - the roach population was crashing catastrophically. A combination of weed cutting, floods, pollution and cormorant infestation had bought us to the point where the roach population was no longer self-sustaining. In a few years the roach would become effectively extinct on a river where it once reigned supreme.

But two Avon regulars, Trevor Harrop and Budgie Price had other ideas. Frankly the situation was too far gone for something as simple as habitat improvement. Restocking was the only answer. Now the easy way might have been to raise some funds to buy in commercially reared roach. But this wasn't exactly what Trevor and Budgie had in mind. Yes, this might save roach on the Avon, but it would not be saving the Avon roach.

So, with no experience of fish farming but a germ of an idea Budgie and Trevor, after a few misfires, came up with as Baldrick would say, a cunning plan. They scoped out the prime roach sites that remained on the Avon and just prior to the spawning season tethered spawning boards in the river.

	Spawning boards in the River Avon

These homemade devices are essentially three-foot floating planks of wood that have fine gauge mesh arranged in ruffles on the underside, which the roach take for the river weed Willow moss, their preferred aquatic vegetation for spawning, around which the competing males gather until they are joined by the females. The plan was helped by three roach attributes, two natural and one learnt. Firstly, roach are great creatures of habit returning to the same spawning site each year. Secondly, they came to prefer the 'artificial' weed to the real thing. And finally, each female releases up to 100,000 fertilised eggs so there was plenty of raw material to be harvested. The boards were then gathered up and taken to fry tanks in Trevor's garden where they would spend the next year.

This might be a moment to ask why? Does the Avon roach really matter? Well, I suppose in itself maybe not but in the wider ecological balance of English nature it does. And it tells us something about how we care, or more accurately don't, for our rivers; of all freshwater fish the roach is the most tolerant of polluted water. Mother Nature has a pecking order, what biologists like call the food chain. It is balanced and organised, evolved over centuries. It is the original Jenga tower of co-dependence. You can keep pulling away the pieces one by one but eventually, however careful you think you might be, the whole edifice will collapse.

Back to Trevor's garden, which, however commodious, was no place for a growing roach but fortune arrived in the form of Jac Sykes, who offered our pair the free use of some disused trout stews at Bickton Mill. Here the roach would spend the next two years and on reaching sexual maturity at three would be returned to the adjacent River Avon in early spring to spawn themselves just five weeks later.

After twelve years of this annual ritual Budgie and Trevor are all but done. The Avon Roach Project has been a huge success. The population is restored, perhaps not to the same level as in those wonder years, but certainly to a point where their numbers are self-sustaining. Anglers regularly catch 50-60 in a day. Trotting for roach, the most exulted form of coarse fishing, on the Avon is no longer a fool's errand; best in a generation plenty are saying. So, as Trevor says the fish he loves are now 'on their own'. The Bickton stews will be gradually wound down over the next two years until the last of the stock are returned to the river.

	Budgie Price & Trevor Harrop

It is a job well done. A tribute to not only Budgie, Trevor and all the supporters of the Avon Roach Project but living proof that we can pull back from the brink. And it doesn't need to be complicated. Expensive. Or require global grandstanding from politicians and activists.

Good people, away from the limelight, can do great things.

The You Tube video about the project released a week ago has already had 25,000 views. It is 17 minutes long, the first 7 minutes covering the project itself.

The Fishing Cast

I have teamed up with my old friend Charles Jardine to bring you The Fishing Cast, our distinctive monthly podcast.

Recorded in what used to be the Fishing Breaks office at Nether Wallop Mill, but now the room we grandly call the riverside studio, we'll be bringing you views, news and gossip from the world of fly fishing. You will be welcome to chime in after each episode (the plan is the last Thursday each month) via social media (or old-fashioned email if you wish ...) and in time we hope to have guests join us.

The February edition is now live. We celebrate Howard Croston's recent World Fly Fishing Championship success, the first British victor since 2007. Charles asks is his victory in Tasmania something to celebrate or are there downsides? I reveal the results of my Angling Attitudes Survey on catch and release with some surprising results. And as we enter the last month of the grayling season we ask: grayling fishing. Curse or saviour?

The Fishing Cast should be available via your normal podcast provider or listen directly via our dedicated web site. Happy listening and do give us your feedback. 

Click here to listen

Click to listen on iTunes

Click to listen on Spotify

2-for-1 with John Bailey

	John with one of his more modest catches

Join John Bailey for his one-day grayling masterclass on the River Frome which last year resulted in a new British record.

I think we can be fairly sure that that particular lightning bolt won't strike again, but you never know. The fish went back unharmed. And John knows the exact spot and seam of water. The day is on Special Offer as a 2-for-1.

The cost is £325 for two on Friday February 21^st or Saturday February 22^nd. Details and booking form here ....

Following up

For all its downsides the internet is the ultimate connector. The electronic strands uniting us fly fishers despite the diverse and far flung nature of what you might call our community. This Newsletter is just one tiny part of that ever-expanding web but it still never ceases to amaze me the nooks and crannies of memories it jogs. Take for instance the last edition The love of mistletoe.

Writing about the poplar trees that were planted half a century ago for match production I wrote, "The promise of cash-for-trees is as long forgotten as the souls who planted them." How very wrong I was as within a day an email came my way from the very man (and a Fishing Breaks regular) who had planted the trees all those decades ago.

	John Simms

And then if that was not enough a couple of days later another email about the fishing exploits of ex-Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Paul Volker who had died just before Christmas. He was a regular visitor to Jackson Hole in Wyoming, which is one of the great fly fishing destinations out West and, coincidentally (!) the venue for the annual Economic Symposium of prominent central bankers. In response to my piece came this:

Dear Simon,

Interestingly, I was privileged to be Paul Volker's guide while he was here in Jackson Hole for meetings with bankers to discuss the fact that the prime interest was incredibly high at 19% as I recall.

We had a great time on the river, and he said something about literally unwinding and finally relaxing. 

Prime rate started dropping that Monday!  Paul sent me handwritten personal letter practically giving me credit for lowering the prime rate!

Fortunately, I still have the letter..........

Best Regards,

John Simms

I believe this is the same John Simms who founded Simms Fishing Products in Jackson back in 1980. Unfortunately, when I have tried to reply to John the email address comes back Return to Sender. John, if you are reading this do get in touch again. I'm sure we'd all like to hear more about the day

The Otters' Tale: How Otters Returned to Hampshire

I'll be returning to the village of my teenage upbringing in February to give an evening talk on The Otters' Tale: How Otters Returned to Hampshire.

It is actually a fundraiser for the Cheriton village church St Michael's in which the talk is held, just a mile downstream from the source of the River Itchen. 

The cost is £15 a head, including a glass of wine. 175 tickets are already sold so if you'd like to come get in quick as this particular house of God has a finite capacity.

Click here to book online

Quiz

No theme this week other than tangentially the Newsletter topics. As ever the quiz is just for fun, with answers at the bottom of the page. 

 

1)      The British roach record stands at:

       A) 1lb 13oz B) 2lb 7oz C) 4lb 4oz D) 7lb 1oz

2)      In what year was the word 'podcast' invented?

3)      What is an Oxford comma?

Have a good weekend.

Best wishes,

    

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk

Founder & Managing Director

www.fishingbreaks.co.uk

Answers:

1)     4lb 4oz

2)     2004 by The Guardian columnist and BBC journalist Ben Hammersley who merged iPod+broadcast

3)     The Oxford comma (also known as a serial comma or the Harvard comma) is used in a list of three or more items, placed between the conjunction and the final item on the list. Some say it should have been used on the latest commemorative 50 pence coin.

The love of mistletoe

The love of mistletoe

There are many tall poplars that grow along the margins of the water meadows in the Test valley south of Stockbridge; they are remnants of the British match industry. Long ago matchmakers would pay landowners around these parts to grow these water loving trees on otherwise unproductive patches of damp land.

	River Test at Timsbury (The Parsonage)

But that was half a century ago. The promise of cash-for-trees is as long forgotten as the souls who planted them. Today they continue to grow, becoming taller, but with no corresponding increase in utility, with each passing year. For poplar is not a sought-after wood. So, upwards they reach until some storm slays them or the landowner swallows the cost of felling. However, just lately they do seem to have acquired a new friend. Mistletoe.

Mistletoe in not traditionally a plant of southern England, its recent(ish) arrival from the Welsh/English border something of a mystery. But arrive it has and trees that once stood bare in winter are now bedecked with large, green baubles that stand out as oddities against the skyline. But why is this parasite, part of the folklore of love, now here? Will it hasten the demise of its hosts before the storms or chainsaws? How does it take hold, with apparent ease, in places it never existed before?

Mistletoe seeds, properly called drupes, are generally thought to be spread by birds who eat them and then 'deposit' them on branches where they stick tight with a sort of glue that envelops each drupe. It is a rural myth that mistletoe requires cut or rough bark to take hold. In fact, what it needs is smooth, healthy bark into which it grows a sort of root that will eventually tap into the sap of the poplar. At this point, two to three years after germination, the mistletoe becomes a full parasite relying on its host tree as it starts to grow exponentially with each passing year as each stem bifurcates, or divides into two, to create a slowly growing ball of green stems and leaves.

My photo doesn't really do justice to the height of the poplars at Timsbury, so by association the size of mistletoe clumps, but having squinted up the height of three or four average houses I'd say the bigger ones are the size of a space hopper. Now I'm no expert on mistletoe but I'm guessing that this puts them in the 15-20 year age bracket which explains why we see them today but would not have seen them in the past for the poplars would have been matchsticks long before the mistletoe took hold.

	Eurasian blackcap

And therein probably lies part of the answer for the increasing frequency of mistletoe. Poplars, the second most popular host tree behind the apple, are living longer. And the longer they live the larger the mistletoe balls become, producing an ever-larger crop of the white berries each winter. But strangely most birds don't like these white berries which they digest in thirty minutes, excreting the drupe minus the vital glue. Birds generally prefer red, orange, black or blue, with mistletoe being the only native British plant species with white berries.

Step forward the Blackcap, a summer visitor from Germany. This little bird, a bit smaller than our native House sparrow, has the knack with drupes whereby they only swallow the berry skin and pulp, wiping each sticky seed off their beak onto a convenient branch, before swallowing. Ah, but I hear you say they are summer birds and the drupes require winter distribution. But, like many birds, the Blackcaps are no longer making their winter migration preferring to stay with us. So, they eat more drupes. Distribute them more widely. And in turn more mistletoe grows. And the Blackcaps have even less reason to return to Germany.

I am not sure whether this is what you might classify as a virtuous circle, but it certainly demonstrates, for good or ill, the happenchance, speed and ease of evolution.

Water, water no quite everywhere .....

This time last year I was close to despair. Every weather forecast that showed rain travelling towards us saw the front veer north east somewhere off the coast of Ireland as the rain comfortably bypassed southern England.

But this year the north/south divide has flipped. Just to give you some idea of how wet it has been (just in case you didn't notice ...) here are a few highlights from the latest Environment Agency data:

• The Upper Dorset Stour aquifer at Woodyates has recorded its highest groundwater level since recording began in 1942.

• No wonder our guide Andy Buckley has been tearing his hair out as it has been the wettest year on record on the River Dove in Staffordshire based on records used since 1891.

• River flows were above normal, notably high or exceptionally high at over three-quarters of indicator sites.

After seven consecutive months of above average rainfall it feels that, for the chalkstreams at least, we can be confident of the year ahead. That said it is not all good news in parts of the country that rely on reservoirs. Overall capacity is still at 91%, with the northern England reservoirs of Kielder and the Dee system below normal for the time of year.

You may read the full report here .....

Summer rain

Walk and talk

As I wrote this headline I went to Google to remind me who said that famous quote (this might give you some idea how my mind works ....) "He can't walk and chew gum at the same time."

	Halford's Oakley Hut

As it turns out the truth is absolutely nobody. What Lyndon B Johnson actually said of his political rival Gerald Ford was "He can't fart and chew gum at the same time." The US media deliberately misrepresented the remark in the interests of decency. The 70's - such innocent times.

The Otters' Tale

I will be giving an illustrated talk on the return of otters to the Itchen valley and chalkstreams in general at Cheriton in Hampshire on Saturday February 22^nd at 7pm.

 

River Walk

Join me for breakfast at The Peat Spade near Stockbridge before we head out for a day visiting my favourite spots in the Test valley including the eel traps, Halford's hut at Mottisfont Abbey and the water meadows at Wherwell Priory on either Monday June 15^th or July 22^nd.

For more details and to book click here ....

A sporting summer

Maybe I have been living in a bucket somewhere but when I came to check the dates for the UEFA Euro 2020 Cup I was amazed to see that the final was being played in London on July 12, along with the semi-finals that same week. It is part of a competition that has 12 host nations stretching from Russia to Ireland, which also seems to me to be something of a stretch to the term Euro.

But regardless of semantics you may want to plan your fishing around the key football dates for the two home nations left in the contest, England and Wales, which largely fall in the June weed cut period. You just have to love football for that reason alone.

Wales

Saturday June 13              vs. Switzerland

Wednesday June 17         vs. Turkey

Sunday June 21                 vs. Italy

 

England

Sunday June 14                 vs. Croatia

Friday June 19                   vs. tbc

Tuesday June 23               vs. Czech Republic

 

Even after a month of football we'll have little relief from sporting endeavour as the whole caravan moves to Japan for the Summer Olympics that run from July 24 to August 9. You have been warned.

Quiz

No theme this week other than tangentially the Newsletter topics. As ever the quiz is just for fun, with answers at the bottom of the page. 

 

1)      For UK readers: Mistletoe is the county flower of which county?

2)      For US readers: Mistletoe is the floral emblem of which state?

3)      Which country is hosting the 2024 Summer Olympics?

4)      Which country won the 2016 UEFA Euro?

Have a good weekend.

Best wishes,

    

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk

Founder & Managing Director

www.fishingbreaks.co.uk

Answers:

1)      Herefordshire

2)      Oklahoma

3)      France

4)      Portugal

How China is extinguishing the European eel

How China is extinguishing the European eel

There are currently over two billion of them swimming the oceans but are deemed 'critically endangered', as close to becoming extinct in the wild as the Beluga sturgeon or the black rhinoceros. Despite being so numerous it was only less than a hundred years ago that it was discovered how and where they reproduced and even today, despite many attempts, nobody has yet observed and recorded the act itself. We are, of course, talking about eels.

	Glass eels

There was a time, not so long ago, when eels were commercially harvested on the chalkstreams.It was of sufficient value that even as late as the 1970's the Leckford Estate retired the iconic traps that have been there since medieval times, with a modern concrete and steel version. Twenty years ago, I can regularly recall eels appearing from the gloom to snatch away discarded fish guts. Today? Well, that would be something of a rarity as eel numbers have crashed by some estimates as much as 80%, hence its endangered status.

We don't, in Europe, eat eels like we used to. That working-class staple, jellied eels, has all but vanished. In my days as a bookie I recall going to a true East End wedding where the pride of place was a giant silver bowl of black/grey, pock-marked dirty yellow jelly. As the vol-au-vents went ignored the true Londoners piled their plates high, the delicacy (I use the word advisedly) coated in turn by ground pepper and vinegar. Soon the flock carpet was a mess of eel vertebrae, each sucked clean of flesh.

But in the southern hemisphere eels retain high culinary status, traditionally in Japan, but more recently in China. Like its European relative Anguilla japonica is in decline but into the breach have stepped eel farms, numbering close to a thousand on the Hong Kong/China border. However, since nobody has yet managed to breed eels in captivity the farms have to be seeded by glass (baby) eels that are netted as they migrate to the rivers where they would otherwise spend the next 10-20 years reaching sexual maturity.

You might wonder how this might impact our natives but Europol (EU police force) reports that eel smuggling is now the world's number one wildlife crime as the more prolific (and less expensive) European glass eels are being illegally exported to China in huge numbers to replace Japanese eels. It is estimated that 300m baby fish, a quarter of the North Atlantic annual migration, are smuggled each year. That translates into £1.8bn worth of eels on Far Eastern fish counters. It is big business with 174 people arrested in Europe in connection with the illegal trade in 2018.

	Original Leckford eel traps

I don't know about you but this makes me truly sad especially when set against our own apparently feeble efforts to preserve the eel species by removing the numerous redundant structures that have impeded progress on their up and down stream journeys. 

But when you see this wholesale rape of the seas you do wonder, why bother? In fact it makes me more than sad. It makes me truly angry.

Let me entertain you

I can't promise you Robbie Williams as a guest but even without his presence on the riverbank it is pretty damn hard not to have fun on a fishing day.

People choose all sorts of reasons for a fishing party; by way of a thank you. A day out of the office. A special birthday. A chance for old friends or family to reunite. There are plenty of reasons and plenty of ways to enjoy the day.

If it is just the fishing you want we have beats that take groups from six to sixteen. Don't fancy the laborious task of tackling up your guests? Add one of our Guides who come complete with a sackful of kit, flies and a deep reserve of patience. Mostly novices who won't be happy without a fish? Nether Wallop Mill is hard to beat.

One way or another I think we'll be able to entertain you, but more importantly, your guests. 

More details here.

 

Brrrr .... a long, cold day in Iceland

For all the scenic, high summer photos you see of Iceland it would be fond to imagine that the country never saw a flake of show; I have a sneaking feeling the Nordic marketing powers-that-be might just want us to believe that.

	"Welcome to Iceland" Full Film

But if you board a plane for the opening day in April snow is what you will get, with ice hanging from the rocky riverbanks, the icicles slicing the water. To be fair it is not uber heavy snow but it looks cold nonetheless as you will see in Brothers on the Fly, a video selected for the Rise Film Festival, that tells the tale of Icelandic guide, Matti Hakonarson, and his client, Duncan as they brave the bitter temperatures of Iceland's early spring to catch brown trout, rainbow trout and appropriate to the conditions, Arctic char.

Watch the full film (20 minutes) here. Shorter version here.

Grateful Dead

Continuing the rather thin theme of rock allying with fly fishing I see that Buff have just issued a Grateful Dead snood which follows, albeit a while later, the Grateful Dead Abel reel of 2013.

Once again, I am unable to ascertain any connection between Jerry Garcia and the band with fly fishing, though the 1984 Dead Tour poster does allude to some sort of macabre interest. 

However, it does at least give me an excuse to relate a story I was sent from Australia about AC/DC following on from their equally inexplicable iteration of an Abel fly reel.

"One day in the late 1980s the owner of the Compleat Angler in central Melbourne, Jim Allen, was looking out from a window in the upstairs fly fishing section when he saw some unusual looking characters entering the general sports fishing section on the ground floor.

After they'd purchased some gear and left, he went downstairs to find the junior sales staff in a high state of excitement. "Jim, Jim, they were AC/DC!"

"I know what you mean", said Jim, who was and is very straight and traditional.

"No, you don't Jim, they were AC/DC!"

He was eventually enlightened."

Kurt Jackson - The Fonthill Brook

The famous Messums Gallery in the swanky art district of Mayfair, London has long had an outpost in deepest Wiltshire, in an amazing medieval tithe barn not far from the Fonthill Brook.

	Stillness and birdsong, Fonthill Lake, 2019

It is, at any time, always worth a visit with ever changing exhibitions, lovely grounds and a place to eat. However, if you are down that way anytime soon take the opportunity to view Kurt Jackson's exhibition of paintings depicting the Fonthill Brook, a tributary of the River Nadder. 

Jackson has numerous exhibitions to his name and has been artist-in-residence for the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, The Eden project and Glastonbury Festival.

The show is being run in association with the Wessex Chalk Stream & Rivers Trust from January 11th-February 16th. Admission is free. More details here.

Quiz

No theme this week other than tangentially the Newsletter topics. As ever the quiz is just for fun, with answers at the bottom of the page. 

 

1) In what year did the first Glastonbury Festival take place?

2) What percentage of produce or earnings did the English Church take by way of an annual tithe or tax?

3) Into what sauce do the Japanese dip eels prior to grilling?

Have a great 2020.

Best wishes,

    

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk

Founder & Managing Director

www.fishingbreaks.co.uk