Life of a Chalkstream: Cultural vandalism

Greeatings!

As many of you will know we had eighteen happy years at Mottisfont Abbey, the spiritual home of modern day fly fishing and the amazing Oakley Hut, built by none other than Frederick Halford where he fished, held court and expounded on the merits of the dry fly until his death shortly before the outbreak of World War One.

Over those eighteen seasons I had a close association with the Mottisfont Fly Fishing Club who were the leaseholders to the four beats, three on the Test and one on the Dun. During that time there were two renewals of the lease with the owners, the National Trust, which allowed for fishing by the Club members and Fishing Breaks clients six days a week, with a day set aside to rest the river and for essential maintenance.

The National Trust were never an easy institution to deal with even though paying a king’s ransom of a rent. Decision making is slow and the organisational structure, to put it politely, opaque, with frequent changes of personnel. However, when it came to the care of the river that they provided with an in-house river keeper, I think it is fair to say it was a job well done. That is not to say we always all agreed on everything: stocking levels and the ‘natural’ state of the banks were frequent topics of discussion. But those were minor frustrations in the general scheme of things for fishing where you walk in history, part of a landscape barely changed since Halford’s time. On the walls of his hut are photographs he took – the polymath that he was Halford was an early adopter of colour photography and the images of the river from the early 1900’s are almost a perfect facsimile of what you will see today.

The Oakley Hut, Mottisfont Abbey

Or what I should say that is what you will see today if you like yoga; let me explain. With the benefit of hindsight there was definitely a change of mood in the National Trust in regard to their relationship with fishing after the pandemic. Long-time river keeper, Neil Swift, who was furloughed for many, many months even though fishing continued relatively unaffected by Covid, left and after a brief stint by his replacement, the river keeping was taken on in an ad hoc basis by the team of National Trust wardens who have many responsibilities ranging across Hampshire and the New Forest.

And so it was that when discussions about the third lease renewal began towards the end of the 2022 trout season (the lease officially expired 31 March 2023) the National Trust dropped the bombshell: there was to be no more fish stocking in accordance with a policy agreed by the Trust at a national level. It was made clear that it was not up for discussion, regardless of the merits of such a policy in relation to the chalkstreams or the slight absurdity that the Main Mottisfont Abbey beat, where the opposite bank is in different ownership, would continue to be stocked by others.

Cue sharp intake of breath. It is my personal opinion that if you want to create a wild trout paradise then the middle Test, that section from Stockbridge to Romsey is probably not the best place to start. It was never bought into being for trout; in the three thousand years or more since the wetlands were drained in the name of farming to create what we now call the River Test, brown trout have only reigned supreme for about two hundred years since the advent of recreational fishing in the Victorian era. And even then, Mother Nature needed a helping hand with stocking starting half a century before Halford took the lease of the Mottisfont Abbey fishing in the 1890’s and continued to stock himself. In fact, just behind the Oakley Hut you can still spy the remnants of his fish rearing ponds.

In good faith, the lease discussions continued, albeit sporadically, to find a way to make this new policy work. "Let’s suck it and see", I think was our general view; you never know, it might turn out better than hoped. That was until the Trust suggested they had an even more radical view on the overall management of the river and its environs. It was never entirely clear to me what this entailed and since the lease was not renewed I have not set foot on the property since the end of last season, I cannot offer any personal insights as to the current state of the place. However, thanks to an article in The Guardian by Amy-Jane Beer on Monday this week, we can all, me included, see the direction of travel.

F M Halford, who used the name Detached Badger as a nom de plume for magazine writing

“Disembarking at the tiny Mottisfont and Dunbridge station, I’m met by cheery painted cutouts of grayling and trout, schooling along the platform fence: avatars of a celebrated river. But the welcome fades fast as I join the Test Way and encounter a plethora of fences and signage designed to keep walkers away from the very thing most people come here for. I meet an agitated elderly man struggling to clean his hands because he’d inadvertently touched a gate daubed with black anti-climb paint. By the time I manage to (briefly) encounter the famously clear, bright chalk water from a bridge, I’m starting to regret coming.

The estate upstream is Mottisfont, owned by the National Trust. There I meet Alex Olejnik for a tour of the four river beats immortalised by the father of dry fly fishing, FM Halford. Alex is not what you might expect a head river keeper on this hallowed water to be. She’s been in post for 18 months, during which time her boss, Dylan Everett, recommended she learn all she could about traditional fishery management, then forget it, because things are changing here.

Last year they stopped stocking fish, mowing banks, cutting waterweed and removing fallen trees. In March, fishing was paused while the river restored, and wild fish grew in number and size. Alex no longer spends time gardening, provisioning huts with water and charcoal, or cleaning up fishy barbecues. The only grass she’s mowed today was for a yoga group, and they’re looking into opening up some stretches for swimming.

The banks are now thick with loosestrife, forget-me-not, great willowherb, watermint, yarrow, hemp agrimony and vetch, and there’s movement everywhere: clouded yellow, peacock, red admiral and gatekeeper butterflies, tiny moths and beetles, dragonflies and damselflies. New reedbeds have established. Bees nest in one of the thatched fishing huts. There are tiddlers in the shallows and trout flickering faster than the eye can follow over golden gravels between thick tresses of water crowfoot.

“It’s a challenge to find the right balance, but we’re supposed to be a conservation and access organisation,” says Alex. “Fishing is an important part of local heritage, and we hope there will be anglers here again. But they’ll be sharing the river with more wildlife and more people.”

I’m glad I came, after all.”

I agree with Alex – the National Trust is indeed a conservation and access organisation. But it is also, based on the Act of Parliament that bought it into being, an organisation charged with preserving our cultural heritage. Abandoning two centuries of fly fishing tradition at a stroke strikes me as an abdication of a responsibility to preserve the birthplace of sport that is now practiced by tens of millions worldwide who look to the River Test in the same way that others do to Wimbledon for tennis or St Andrews for golf.

Let us take that analogy a step further. Would anyone seriously suggest that the fairways and greens of St Andrews be let to grow wild, the golf reduced to a narrow mown path between tee and green? Of course not but, apparently, when it comes to fly fishing such an act of cultural vandalism is absolutely fine based on what seems to me a whim rather than any thought out strategy beyond some rewilding fantasy.

What a difference a year makes

Chalkstreams are sensitive souls; this time last year with annual rainfall running at 90% of normal we were on our knees. This year at 100% we are doing high fives, albeit sometimes cursing the worst of the weather. You would not think that a 10% swing would make such a difference but it is as much about the timing of the rain as the quantum that determines the outcomes.

I did hear of somewhere in the UK where July rainfall has been four times normal; we have not had anything quite like that in the chalkstream regions but it is going to be pretty well double the average, a contrast to June which was half the average. The July river flow map drives this home with only a quarter of rivers at Normal flow, the remainder either Above Normal (Avon/Test) Notably High (Frome/Itchen) or Exceptionally High for the time of year.

See the full EA rainfall July data here

And the winner is .......

I am pleased to be continuing to give away bespoke flies from our vice king, Nigel Nunn. In keeping with the tradition we have established this year our July winner Scott Amero, who fished Shawford Park, will receive flies picked for August deployment.

Nigel Nunn flies

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 invention of which drink by a French Benedictine monk is ascribed to this day in 1693?

2) Which French chalkstream (pictured) rises in the wine region of question one?

3) Who is hosting the 2023 Rugby World Cup?