Life of a Chalkstream: January 2022

Sunday 30 January 2022

Is this the unacceptable face of fishing?

Greetings!

The Environment Agency posted this photo on Twitter over the weekend of a licence inspector meeting with an angler the general theme of the post being ‘that is quite the tattoo’. I think, on that, we can all agree. However, having long given up understanding why people put on their skin artwork they probably would not hang on their wall my eye was drawn to the EA inspector.

I can look past the Mohican haircut but what is it that requires someone doing a task as simple as checking a fishing licence to be dressed like an SAS soldier? The stab vest. The hefty devices on the epaulettes. A utility belt that carries enough baggage for a family holiday of four. Let’s be clear this outfit is designed to intimidate and that makes me ashamed.

Our pastime is the only sport of which I know that requires a statutory licence backed up by the force of law. Frankly, I have long thought this to be wrong. National Parks are funded from the central exchequer. The Arts Council doles out billions. I am not having a pop at you should you happen to be a cyclist, canoeist or walker but you have no obligation to pay licence money to pursue your innocent pleasures.

But a shade over a million of us anglers in 2020/21 forked over £24m to the government which in part funds wannabe commandoes to patrol our riverbanks. And to what end? Here are the statistics of their work published by the EA in their 2020/21 Annual Report:

17,106 fishing licence checks carried out by Environment Agency enforcement teams with the support of the Angling Trust Voluntary Bailiff Service (VBS). 867 offence reports were issued, and 340 anglers were prosecuted for fishing without a licence.

That’s on average 50 checks a day that unearths roughly 2 licence evaders a day. Or put another way, all that effort for sixty odd quid in lost revenue. I suspect it barely pays the fuel for the muscled-up 4x4s which I imagine are the vehicles of choice for our ‘revenue inspectors’. As for the prosecutions if only the EA would put as much effort into prosecuting water pollution offences; only 30 reached court in the same period.

Look, I know I am probably being unfair on the many of those who carry out the licence patrols with a true intent to do good and that, in all probability, the uniform that been dreamt up by some misguided bureaucracy. But the point is that we should not be at this moment. Fishing does not require paramilitary licence enforcement. The cost to gain ratio is negligible. If you check 17,106 people and find 16,239 have a licence that is a damn impressive 95% compliance.

Ultimately, the fishing licence should be abolished but in the meantime the energies of the licence inspectors should be redirected to tracking down the truly bad players in the daily life of the Environment Agency – the river polluters.

Orvis UK to be scaled back

As many of you will know I have a long association Orvis, which has its headquarters in Vermont USA, having bought Nether Wallop Mill from them back in 1999.

They were, at that time, embarking on what would be a long period of expansion relocating from the small warehouse here to create a much bigger operation in Andover which was followed by the opening of many retail stores and expanding the familiar mail order operation.

Sadly, just after the New Year Orvis announced that they were considerably scaling back in the UK citing the complexities of running both the US and UK businesses, to offer a narrower scope of business.

We all know how the British high street has struggled both before and during Covid but it will still be sad to see all the stores close sometime between now and 31 March apart from the main shop in Stockbridge. The UK part of Orvis will be significantly smaller, focussing solely on the company heritage of fly fishing products sold through the Orvis website and the Stockbridge store. However, the fishing lets on Abbots Worthy, Kimbridge and Timsbury 5 will continue unchanged.

Writing this today from The Mill it is odd to think how things have gone almost full circle. In the early 1980’s Dermot Wilson’s mail order business was struggling in the teeth of a Thatcher recession so he wrote from here to the Perkins family, who he would call his friends and who own Orvis, to see if they would like to acquire The Mill, the fishing on the Test and Itchen and the mail order business, which carried many Orvis products, as a jumping off point for Orvis in the UK. To this they agreed which began the official Orvis presence this side of the pond which is now in its fifth decade.

But though we might have gone full circle in some respects, this photo kindly sent to me by Laurent at the International Fario Club, shows how much the world has changed. Pictured here at Nether Wallop Mill shortly before Dermot wrote that letter is Charles Ritz, he of hotel fame, the trying to explain Long Flex Long Lift casting (what is/was that?) to an unnamed client or friend.

A trilby, gaberdine raincoat, three piece suit, tie and black shoes. Whoever knew such an age existed! At least Mr Ritz put on wellingtons .....

Wind but no willows

I used to be an avid reader of the ‘satirical’ magazine Private Eye, but it rather lost me some years ago when it became more finger jabbing than satirical.

But, from time to time, I see it on a newsagent shelf and reunite for old times’ sake with E J Thribb, Dave Spart and the Ecological Correspondent Lou Flush. Last week was one such moment though, disappointingly, Sid and Doris Bonkers were unaccountably absent. Maybe they have moved from the green pastures of suburban Neasden?

Regardless, I was delighted to see the water companies getting some stick. On what you might call Private Eye’s editorial page our friends on the coast, Southern Water, are reported as about to spend £12.8m on an advertising campaign to encourage us to use less water because we’ll be short of water by 2030. Which is I suppose why they cancelled the £60m desalination plant that would have been up and running by 2030. But not to worry Southern Water CEO Ian McAulay picked up his £550,900 bonus.

They also carried this depressing, but apposite, cartoon. Doubles all round!

A vacancy at Fishing Breaks

Thank you to all of you who kindly passed on news of our vacancy here at Fishing Breaks; we’ve had many impressive applications and will be interviewing next week.

Of course, the obvious question is why we have a vacancy. Well, sadly for us Kris Kent having found love a long way from the chalkstreams will soon be heading north to join his partner Anne-Marie having secured a job with the Angling Trust.

Kris leaves with all our best wishes in his new life.

Kris (left) at the 2018 One Fly

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) Which novel by Jane Austen was published on this day in 1813?

2) In its 61 years Private Eye has had just three editors. Name one of the other two in addition to Ian Hislop who took over in 1986?

3) The 2022 Winter Olympics start soon. How many gold medals did Great Britain win in South Korea in 2018?

Have a good weekend.

Best wishes,

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk

Founder & Managing Directorwww.fishingbreaks.co.uk

Quiz answers:

1) Pride and Prejudice

2) Christopher Booker and Richard Ingrams

3) One. Lizzy Yarnold in the skeleton to become the first British athlete to retain a Winter Olympic title. As The Japan Times said, “British women continue unlikely dominance”

Saturday 15 January 2022

Ash Tree Corner is no more

Greetings!

I didn’t think it would be possible to become attached to a tree, but I was genuinely upset when Bullington Manor river keeper Si Fields sent me this photo on his return after the holidays.

For as long as I have been associated with Bullington Manor, and I am now into my fourth decade, this ash tree has stood on the righthand bend halfway up Beat 2. Its trunk had become part of the opposite bank; once upon a time the tree stood well back from the river, but over the years the flow gently caressed away the soil and turf that once delineated tree and water.

Was it this that did for the ash tree, the undercut exposing the roots? It might have been eventually, but it was the wretched ash die back that ultimately caused its early demise. No longer will we have the shade afforded by the tree, an insect larder for the fish, the ash being only second to our native oak as home for the greatest variety of insects and bugs, numbering somewhere above two hundred species.

On the plus side it won’t be there as a magnet for your flies; such are the number impaled upon it we did joke that it may have died of metal fatigue. But don’t worry the respite will only last a year or two. We are off to find a suitable replacement from the surrounding woods.

Happier days!

Executive Director Test & Itchen Association

You may not know this but the Hampshire chalkstreams have their own trade union in the Test & Itchen Association.

When I first became a member, it was a long way from the professional body it is today. Back then it was a loose collection of river owners headed for many years by Peggy Baring, a fearsome matriarch. The membership, closer to 300 rather than the 500 it is today, read a bit like an extract from Debrett’s. Was it more or less effective when compared to today?

The truth is, I don’t think it is fair to judge. In the 1980’s we really didn’t have true idea of the ecological disaster that was to later unfold, though the twin evils of sewage and pollution were addressed by the Association. The primary concern was for the fishing which largely involved the schedule for weed cutting which required the only proper meeting of the year. It was usually a two-way fight: in the red corner the river keepers who, given the choice, would be free to cut whenever they wished. In the blue corner it was mostly me, that rapacious agent, trying to suggest that maybe more days spent fishing than weed cutting might be a good idea.

Much of the work the Association does today involves lobbying government, quangos and various agencies. It is through necessity rather than choice; you have to play the game to get your voice heard in the corridors of power or you’ll soon find yourselves on the wrong end of some diktat or unwelcome policy. That is a big change from the past, in the days before the environment movement and privatisation of the water industry. The predecessor to the Environment Agency, the National Rivers Authority and the River Boards before that, preferred to get on with the work and worry about policy later, if at all.

That said there was one huge policy issue in the 1980’s when a group of canoeists asserted their right to paddle on any section of the Test or Itchen. This resulted in a mighty legal tussle. As members we pledged £70,000 (£225,000 today) to fight the case all the way to the House of Lords, calling in anyone on the membership list who happened to have the initials QC after their name to help pro bono. As it turned out it did go all the way to, but not into, the House of Lords, the case being settled on the steps with a compromise that restricted canoeing to the tidal sections.

Today the Test & Itchen Association is a far more rounded organisation, encompassing a far wider range of members and interests. Needless to say, we still have the annual weed cut slugfest but that is minor compared to keeping riparian owners abreast of new regulation proposed or actual, plus a series of annual events aimed at the wider membership who are chalkstream enthusiasts rather than owners.

I tell you all this because our current Executive Director Jeremy Legge is standing down after six years in the job so there is a vacancy for this well-paid part-time role that advises the Board on the strategy of the Association, represents the Association's riparian owners, river keepers and fly fishing members on all issues impacting on Hampshire's rivers; and coordinates and advises on river management best practice.

I’m sure Peggy Baring, reading this beside a chalkstream in the sky, will let out a full-throated laugh at this moment. She styled herself Secretary and received no pay. But as I say, times change as have the rivers and the county through which they flow.

If you know of anyone interested in the Executive Director role, please email Jeremy Legge director@testanditchen.co.uk who will forward full details for the position which is based at Kimbridge on the River Test with some scope for homeworking. Applications close 12^th February.

Feargal Sharkey on BBC New at Ten

I was hoping to bring you Feargal Sharkey on BBC News at Ten talking about river pollution last week.

Sadly, for reasons best known to the BBC and nobody else, the clip disappeared from iPlayer after three days. It is a shame. It is an impassioned 10-minute piece that eloquently explains to a wider audience than usual, the nub of the river pollution debate on prime-time TV.

It was, coincidentally, mostly filmed on Beat 2 at Bullington Manor just days before the ash tree fell.

PS Feargal's pollution tweet is up from 4m views when last reported to 12m.

The Wright Flyer

I am always astounded the huge variety of people who read this Newsletter. Aside from the global spread the knowledge base and vast range of professions is extraordinary. I have learnt that if I get something wrong, I’ll know in less than an hour!

As I mentioned last time, I got it wrong with the question regarding the first aircraft to fly it being The Wright Flyer rather than the Kitty Hawk, the latter being the name of the place it took off from in North Carolina 17th December 1903.

Ged Clarke, a Fishing Breaks regular, not only gently put me right on this but also included the advert he made for Virgin Atlantic on the very topic. Enjoy!