The Klinkhammer at 40

 

Greetings! When I heard Hans van Klinken, the inventor of the Klinkhåmer, was writing a book about his creation I knew we were in for a mighty tome. As the postman hefted the review copy on to my desk I was proved correct as 350 pages, containing 675+ photos, landed with a thud. How did I know? Well, I have known Hans for many years. He sometimes weighs in on topics I cover in this newsletter and when, if you recall, over a thousand of you readers voted the Klinkhåmer The Greatest Fly of All Time I contacted him for a pithy quote. Back came a 36 page history of the Klinkhåmer …..

Hans van Klinken

It is a remarkable thing to invent a fly that circumvents the globe. In recent times Frank Sawyer did it with his pheasant tail nymph and Lee Wulff with his eponymous super buoyant dries. To be fair to Hans the book might be long, but it is far from just the history of the Klinkhåmer which celebrates its fortieth birthday this year which takes 70 pages of the book, but also about Hans’ fishing life, thoughts on how fish see flies and tying in general. It is a book of great beauty, with gorgeous photos of Hans fishing across Scandinavia, Slovenia and Mongolia all in the name of field testing The Klink which, for all its success, is still a work in progress. It is not a cheap book at £50 but aside from the technical fly tying stuff it is thought provoking and will make you look at trout (and grayling) in a different way the next time you have a fish that refuses your offerings.  The book is available from the publishers www.merlinunwin.co.uk Mottisfont Abbey update I have not bought you news from Mottisfont Abbey recently because, well, there has been none of any substance. From time to time I get an email from the Abbey with an update that the River Test fishing will be put out for tender very soon, but that is a song that has been sung for nearly a year. Most of what I hear comes from the river keeper grapevine that tells of the river being barely tended, river weed left to grow out of control and the banks reduced to a narrow pathway with fringes as high as your head. This is, as far as I can tell, a deliberate policy of benign neglect dressed up with some bogus eco-credentials. Quite how the river team get away with it I have no idea – I suspect poor oversight from management who are deliberately kept in the dark. I cannot tell you how frustrated I feel about this. Chalkstreams have been managed with a light hand for both fishing and conservation for nearly two centuries in which time the fly life, trout population and salmon runs were unsurpassed. What assails our chalkstreams is not unique to chalkstreams. It is part and parcel of a small, densely populated nation where the ecology of the countryside, rivers included, has been ignored by successive governments who have allowed agriculture and the water industry to basically do what the hell they liked, regardless of the cost to Mother Nature.

Halford's hut and the Oakley Stream, the spiritual home of fly fishing In times like this nature needs every available helping hand and the National Trust, who lovingly nurture vast swathes of England, seem to hold rivers to a different standard than say the many wild flower meadows for which they are so rightly proud. But how does a wild flower meadow come into being? Certainly not by leaving a field to its own devices which, in a matter of a couple of years, will become monoculture of the most dominant weeds. No, to be a wild meadow it has to be intensively cared for by a series of management techniques that implicitly require the intervention of man. Rivers are no different, but the National Trust seem to be deliberately blind to this inconvenient truth. What, you might ask, has prompted me to raise this thorny issue? Well, I was kindly sent an extract by a friend of Fishing Breaks from the National Trust Mottisfont SW Hants May Newsletter that raised my hackles. To be honest the article by Countryside Manager Dylan Everet was fairly unrevealing as to what is happened to the river mostly focussing on yoga by the river and guided river walks. The irony of both these activities is that there is absolutely no reason why they cannot both exist alongside fishing, not least because even when there was fishing at Mottisfont Abbey, there were extensive sections of the river already reserved for public use. It is pretty clear both activities are something of a smokescreen. Before I sign off as Angry of Nether Wallop I will just enlighten you as to the economics of the guided river walks which are charged out at £3 a head, with a few hundred having signed up to date. It will take close to 35,000 walkers a year before the National Trust recoup the same amount of money as they received for the fishing.

That was the month that was May "How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard?", wrote A A Milne in Winnie the Pooh. I sort of feel that way as we reach the end of the Mayfly; fishing would be awfully boring if it was this way 12 months a year. What always fascinates me about the end of the Mayfly is how quickly fish forget. You would have thought that a week or month later something in their little fishy memory would prompt them to grab at a well presented Mayfly by way of some conditioned response. But no, when it is over, it is over. The only exception I can think to that is on the River Avon, which for reasons I do not understand, sees occasional Mayfly hatches through the summer which will most definitely bring fish up to an artificial.

I would say 2024 was a good Mayfly which has been steady rather than prolific. As with most years the Itchen came on first, followed by the Test, then Frome and Avon with the witching hours mostly 4-7pm. Top fly according to the guides was a French Partridge, with black gnats and small wulffs in between times. Of course, the real struggle has been the condition of the banks where in some places you have this unusual inversion of a perfect river but one that is hard to get at. But hey, we should never complain about too much water with the prospect of a chalkstream summer like no other I can recall. Our May winner of the feedback draw is Peter Fink who fished at Wimborne St Giles on the River Allen and collects a magnificent selection of flies from our vice master, Nigel Nunn.

Rivers for sale A little rush of fishing properties on the market this week. River Itchen at Brambridge, Hampshire  Running parallel to Kanara on the Itchen Navigation this stretch was for sale last year but returns to the market at £425,000. River Bourne at St Mary Bourne, Hampshire An unusual opportunity to buy 242 yards of single bank fishing on the Bourne Rivulet at the head of the Test valley plus planning permission to build a pair of 3 bedroom cottages on the 6 acres of water meadows. £390,000. Read brochure .....

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)     What does the D in D-Day stand for? 2)     Which American general fished the River Test as a guest of the Houghton Club in May 1944? 3)     Which Prime Minister was re-elected for the first time on this day in 2001?

Have a good weekend.  Best wishes,

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk Founder & Managing Directorwww.fishingbreaks.co.uk

Quiz answers: 1)     Day, so in full Day-Day 2)     General Eisenhower 3)     Tony Blair

TIME IS PRECIOUS. USE IT FISHING

The Mill, Heathman Street, Nether Wallop, Stockbridge, England SO20 8EW United Kingdom