|
I have long wanted to fish the
Beaulieu which is famous for brown trout with a penchant for going to sea
but large sections of it are entirely out of bounds and much of what would
be considered ‘public’ water has been poached to death by cattle and horses,
too wide, shallow and devoid of vegetation to hold anything much more than,
even though we love them dearly, sticklebacks and bullheads. However, there
are sections that have avoided this fate by being either fenced or retained
for less intensive grazing by cattle or sheep. I was to fish on one such
section.
As I walked the beat with the owner
it was apparent nobody had fished here for many, many years – this had been
a farm not a fishery. However, it is not like these rivers need intensive
management. They bend to the landscape with the prevailing rain dwindling
to a trickle in high summer and flooding, as was apparent by the detritus,
into the fields in winter. The banks, shoulder height when wading, are cut
into the sandy soil and the bed is firm, bright gravel with plenty of ranunculus
on the cusp of flowering. As I say, the water carries some colour but is
clear enough to spot fish down to about two feet in depth but beyond that
you are fishing blind, especially in the pools some of which are above
wader deep.
Left to my own devices to fish I
began at the midpoint, just above a ford and no sooner had I stepped in
than a tiny trout threw itself clean out the water and then repeated the
same act. This is going to be easy I thought but it ignored my Parachute
Adams numerously. I made my way upstream, getting in and out for various
pools until I briefly hooked a small fish on a beaded nymph two thirds of
the way up. At the top, in the boundary pool, a rising fish nosed my fly
once and then decided to play no longer.
I then returned to the ford to fish
the pool immediately below, where a good size fish rose to my fly. This is
the deepest pool on the beat, prime territory for evening sea trout I
logged away in my memory bank as I gave up on the riser who would not rise
again. Standing there, drying my fly trying to decide what to do next I
looked upstream above the ford to where I had seen the leaping fish at the
outset which, in a change of tactic, subtly rose just the once. Changing to
a regular Adams, I forded the ford, made my first cast my best cast and
this tiny guy took my fly.
All in all it was a hugely
pleasurable way to add a new river to my list, in the beauty of the New
Forest, with a fantastic variety of hatches: corixa, small midges, olives,
sedges, Daddy long legs plus even a lonely Mayfly!
|
