Plague, Pike and an Imminent New Arrival

Apologies, not another hiatus but a brief period of the plague.

 

Two and a bit weeks ago I started to go a bit funny, had a body temperature of thirty nine and a half degrees and briefly spoke in tongues. After a forty eight hour period of coughing and struggling to breath properly, Madam contacted NHS111 online and an hour later I was on the phone to a medico. The conclusion drawn was that I should proceed to Winchester hospital where, after a series of tests – blood oxygen level – 90%, raised heart rate and blood pressure and a body temperature that was still on the high side, the diagnosis was pronounced as Pneumonia. 

Big bits of antibiotics were prescribed and after a few days of coughing up blood the pills kicked in and I am now firmly on the mend and undertaking lightish duties. 

For most of the time I spent in bed or in the chair (The Cheltenham Festival helped), the weather remained fairly dry and the river is now back within its banks and the whole place is starting to dry out. We had three mornings of frost towards the end of last week that put a pause on some of the buds that seemed to be in a rush to break, but overall you can sense the sparkle that comes with the onset of early spring. 

In the river there is no sign yet of any Grayling spawning. Conditions are perfect with plenty of water on clean gravels and ranunculus beginning to push on through. The general consensus from those who have fished here for grayling for some years is that numbers are recovering from a few years ago when they were decidedly thin on the ground. Several large fish were present throughout last summer, but no sign of them on the shallows just yet. 

There are signs of a few pike nosing around the entrance to a couple of spring holes. Regular spawning spots, the pike are mostly small jacks, probably males waiting for a larger female to enter stage left.

The coarse fishing season on this river has now closed, but a productive tactic in the last few weeks of the season when spinning for pike is if a jack is hooked, keep chucking your spinner or wobbly sprat back into the same hole until you hook the larger female that is drawing the attention of the amorous jacks. Child B and his mate when spinning on the middle Test in their teenage years pulled three jacks between two and four pound from a hole under a larger chestnut tree, before latching on to a large female a shade under twenty pounds from the same hole. 

All pike are returned now as, like many species, their numbers have taken a hit from good old Tarka, but a decade or more ago, a local French restaurant of some renown, would take smaller pike for a particular fish cake recipe whose name I forget.  Germaine the proprietor insisted that chalk stream pike have a superior flavour to any other pike due to the purity of chalkstream water. 

I shall back up this theory with a story about my Dad who once caught a largish pike from a lake next to the Rugby Cement works. In different times, it was banged on the head and taken home to provide sustenance for his family. I didn’t try it but both my Mum and Dad insisted that it tasted of cement. 

During the ten years or so when we travelled extensively in France in pursuit of coarse fish various in many different rivers, the locals would invariably hammer the pike and zander for some such recipe or other, and when I fished the Shannon (Lough Ree, Lough Derg) in the eighties there were several parties of Germans filling their car boots with pike to take back to Westfalia and other teutonic parts.

This seems to have drifted off into a reverie on Esox Lucius, so I shall conclude with the recent popularity for fishing for chalkstream pike on the fly. I’ve had a go here a few times, but our pike don’t reach much of a size. On the middle and lower river fish have been taken to over thirty pounds. It’s a clunky cast with a wire trace and large pike fly that threatens to pierce ears or wherever else you choose to take your peircings, but great fun on a 9ft 8wt single handed fly rod. 

Pike done! 

We are now four weeks away from the start of the Trout season on this stretch of the Dever. For much of January and February I was preoccupied with wet weather jobs, keeping away from the riverbank to avoid making a muddy mess. With the river now a little less angry I can begin to think about some of the crack willow on the non fishing bank that needs attending to and I also suspect that the ranunculus will need a trim before the start of the season, a sign that we have received a reasonable amount of winter rain. 

A dry day or a brief period of sunshine brings out a few olives in the afternoon and fish are beginning to look up. We have a lot of trout in the river that have had a proper winter workout in the high water and will be fit and raring to go at the beginning of the season. Before Christmas we had a few vacancies for syndicate places, but these have now all been filled and we are in the fortunate position of once again having a waiting list for rods. 

Oh yes, I turned fifty eight this week. Not sure how that happened and what with some of the capers over the years (a lot of them chainsaw based) I’m pleased to have made it this far. 

I have just completed thirty four years falling in and out of this stretch of the Dever and in early August it will be forty years since I left the North West to work on the southern chalkstreams. Several of my contemporaries have either retired or are on the cusp of retirement, mostly due to the physical nature of the work. I ache a lot, am no longer as quick across the ground as I used to be and can’t lift as much as I used to, add into that recent health issues(recalcitrant back, bursitis in both elbows, psoriasis plus recent respiratory events) and it does cross your mind that it may be time for a life on easy street with biscuit wheels. 

Ok sums must be done and the prospect of a managed decline with fewer hours does appeal, but the breaking buds, the clearing river, the increasing presence of fly and the imminent arrival of another season of trout fishermen leads me to conclude – Nope, not just yet.

 

Oh yes, in other news. Child A and her husband are expecting a baby in September, 

Madam and myself are over the moon and to paraphrase the Iron Lady “We are soon to become a Grandmother”

Water Water, Celine Dion and a Boy with Heavy Bones

Erm, what to write? 

Apologies, did I say that out loud? 

Well you can see by the photos that it has been raining a lot, with the sun seemingly on a sabbatical. It’s quite remarkable (After David Coleman) that having endured the lowest river levels in recent memory less than five months ago, we are now where we are with Spring Bottom bursting forth and decidedly soggy river banks.

Increasing extremes in climate are undoubtedly a thing and could I encourage all who encounter a “flatearther” who suggests otherwise, to flick them on their nose, clap them round the ears and call them out for having self interest in denying what is plain for even the most addled eye to see. 

I’m not complaining about the rain, although a little more sunshine may help with the onset of grey sky induced melancholy. The river is bank high, with gravels that stood proud of the water in November, sparkling and silt free now under many inches of water. It all looks good for the impending trout season, but prospects didn’t look half bad this time last year and then the water went away at an alarming rate to leave little left by the end of June. 

Conditions have affected normal work at this time of the year. I have trees to attend to in the wood and the forces of bankside crack willow need to be confronted, but currently I have to limit my movements in the tractor and most of the errant bankside willow hangs over water that is currently unwadeable. 

Another bridge has been buffed up and taken off the endangered list and I have been planking up some beech that Lord Ludgershall and myself dragged up the road quite a few years back for more seat tops. The beech has some beautiful markings that are enhanced when they are wet. 

The bar in The Swan in Barton Stacey is made from a beech that toppled over on the back track two decades or more ago. I know this because I helped to get it out and it was heavy. The markings are also enhanced if you spill your pint on it. 

I’ve also started on a large field maple trunk. Inch and a quarter thick planks about six foot long. It too came came from along the back track just along from The Andyke and I remember dragging it home with the tractor because I couldn’t get it up into the trailer. It seems well seasoned and is also beautifully marked, although very different to the beech. 

To the best of my knowledge, and over the years I have conducted extensive research, there are no bars in the surrounding valley made from field maple. 

Oh yes, as promised, this is Dougal. A work in progress and one year old, he thinks like no Labrador we have ever had before. More news as we have it. 

We’re also back in the poultry game. Three Light Sussex and three Bluebells. They have settled in very well and like all of our previous flocks are very sociable and slowly starting to produce results/eggs.

This is head hen, and very much the leader on their expeditions about the place. Previously when we have had chooks sans cock, a head hen has assumed control and even attempted the odd “cock a doodle doo” although no tune of any merit emanating from this one as yet.

Looking back on previous guff in an attempt rediscover the person I once was, I find that we used to gad about quite a bit. I won’t go into the fine details of where we went during my self imposed hiatus from chucking up guff, but from memory we’ve been in Malta and Gozo, Brussels, Dubrovnik, Montreal, Zurich, Lucerne, Sicily, Bath, Basingstoke several Test matches and the shop. 

In the words of Celine Dion, who we may or may not have bumped into in Switzerland, It’s all coming back to me now. 

Returning to the river and all it’s water. This is the water meadow upstream from here that is doing just what it should be doing at this time of the year. 

This is the winter bourne that carries Spring Bottom’s contribution to the river flow. It runs through the village and along with the spawn of Spring Bottom’s loins it carries much of the direct run off from the roads on the south side of Barton Stacey, which can be quite a bit. Anything on the road or chucked down a drain or placed in the bourne ditch when it is dry, ends up in the river. 

Just sayin folks.

There’s a similar stream that runs through the village in Easton that empties into the short stretch of the Itchen that I fall in and out of (yes, I’m still doing that too) that gets a bit “foamy” at times.

In trout news, we had plenty of redds in the river as it began to rise before Christmas and on the grayling front numbers seem to be on the increase following a steep decline in numbers in the past ten years. We continue to play host to teams of Tarka, who did not play a fair game during the high heat and low levels of last summer. Cormorants are increasingly present, although this may be due to easier fishing in the deeper water. They don’t normally stop off here, seeking out easier fishing elsewhere in the valley. 

I don’t think there’s much else. Madam is still employed at the local primary School, where she has now clocked up 26 years (how did that happen??) Child A and her husband (Wedding was three and a bit years ago?????) have sold their place in Kingsclere and moved just up the road to Overton where they have many friends, and Child B has bought a flat in Putney and lives with his musical partner and harbors hopes of a career in rowing. It’s not going to happen, he isn’t buoyant and has always sunk like a stone when introduced to water. 

Today the sun came out for five minutes to reveal the first hint of cherry blossom that had been hidden by the grey and the gloom of recent days. It always goes early this cherry but normally takes silver medal to a nearby Almond. The daffodils are also having a go despite the abundance of the old eau and we have wild garlic/ramsens starting to put in an appearance, which makes it hard to believe it's still January.   It's February - Ed

ELP, Samples and a Dog called Dougal

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends we’re so glad you could attend step inside, step inside. 

That’s right, Back! Back! Back! 

Well sort of, because we never really went away, just maintained a self enforced silence. After a lengthy period of uncertainty over the future of this place and concerns over whether a prospective new owner would want an online “gobshite” as an employee, a sabbatical/hiatus was taken from chucking up guff. 

The house and river remain in the hands of the family who have employed me for thirty four years and the daughter of my late employer has now moved in to the house, along with an extensive menagerie. 

Fishing has continued throughout the sabbatical. 2025 was particularly challenging with water levels the lowest I have experienced in all my time here. The water temperature in this stretch of the Dever touched eighteen degrees and most trout just concentrated on getting through the day. We have a small number of syndicate vacancies for the coming season. If anyone is interested, don’t be a stranger. 

As I write Storm such thing or other has passed through and the river is bank high and rattling along. Aquifers are steadily being recharged, although the big pool of water in the field known across the ages as “Spring Bottom” has yet to appear, and springs about the place remain soporific at best, it will be interesting to see how they respond given a couple of months of all of this rain percolating down through the ground. I'd caveat this with the river looked in great shape at the end of March 2025, then it stopped raining for three months, the Dever dropped at a remarkable rate and we all know how the summer went.  I have been operating on a reduced budget for the past two seasons, I noticed several fishermen this past summer crossing their fingers when using some of the bridges. I am now slowly replacing these, albeit in a more brutalistic style. 

Water sampling is a thing now. 

Once a week I fill my bottle in the recommended fashion and take it a couple of miles for it to be tested for a variety of water quality parameters. Most beats from Stockbridge up are in the same scheme and the idea is to have a database that can be used to hold the Weasels at the water company to account should they return to their old ways of knocking out dodgy date, or failing to measuring data when they are up to no good. 

We have also been fitted with a SONDE (after DJ Trump.) This has a solar powered monitor that measures several water quality parameters every fifteen minutes or so, before sending its readings out into space where it bounces off a satellite back down to somebody’s computer. It’s a further trove of data to hold water company weasels upstream from here to account, and will ensure that they don’t get up to any shenanigans in the night hours, as has been the suspicion in the past. 

The Andover Ring continues in the planning phase with no spades in the ground as yet. To recap, the plan is to move water from the lower reaches of the Itchen via the medium of a big pipe. Its destination will be Andover, where it will provide water for local town society and enable them to wash their cars during periods of drought. The aquifers in this part of Hampshire have been classified as “at the maximum point of abstraction if the environment is not to be impacted upon” for over a decade. However the Andover Ring won’t guarantee a reduction in the amount of water pulled out of the aquifers, but enable more and more houses to be built around Andover, which seems to be marching on Basingstoke. 

There are also concerns over the quality of the water pumped into the Anton following treatment and the impact of an increase in the percentage of the river’s flow coming from treatment works and a reduction in the percentage of the river’s flow emanating from the aquifers. 

When work begins, the big pipe will pass through a tunnel under this stretch of the Dever. Work on the tunnel itself will take many months and over the past few years we have been the subject of gazillions of surveys. The Environmental wallahs were a fun bunch who kept coming back and liked what they found, there were geologists and and other “ists” who looked at many things, but failed to tell us their findings, despite our protestations that if you start poking around too much in sub strata such as these then the river can sometimes disappear underground, which isn’t good for trout and grayling fishing.

 

Anyway, we are where we are, which is something that I seem to have said a lot of late, along with “What times we live in” 

Oh yes almost forgot, Moss is still with us and will be eight in April. We have also acquired a loon called Dougal who turned one year old just before Christmas. A work in progress he’s a quirky fecker and like no Labrador we have ever had before. Moss went through a period of watching the horse racing on TV. Dougal’s pick is “Dogs behaving badly” which I am not sure is the ideal evening viewing for a dog of his nature. Pictures to follow.

I think that’s it, other than to say I’ll try and keep this going in some form of regularity now that things are a little more certain.

Mine Shafts, Floods and The Harwood Arms

Happy New Year everybody, 

Covid for Christmas, which is not what we asked for and resulted in a funny forty eight hours of sleep, sweating and unusual dreams, before the immune system kicked in and conquered all. 

Spent the run up to New Year in Cornwall on the beach with Madam and Moss in some spectacular storms. Porthtowan was the place, plenty of people with dogs about. Not so many surfers, but then the waves were enormous, and the wind so strong that we thought twice about walking along the cliffs. 

There was also the thought that Moss and windy cliffs could be a disastrous combination. He doesn’t listen at the best of times and we were minded that our cries warning him of a cliff edge or a mine shaft may be carried away on the wind. 

Back in Bransbury now and with the place still unsold, currently working towards what increasingly appears to be another summer of trout fishing at Bransbury. 

Mostly maintenance stuff at the moment. 

The chainsaw has remained in the workshop for much of the time, only putting in an appearance in emergencies such as the two small ash trees that cashed in their chips during recent winds, falling into a decidedly swollen river. There are bankside willows that need some attention, but any activity near the river turns the bank to a muddy mess, creating further work for later in the winter, so I’m standing back for the time being and being very careful where I take the tractor. 

Fences, gates and any other outside wood have been treated when the weather allows, I also have two small bridges in the workshop that are drying out before treatment and attention. All the hedges are now cut, every tool in the workshop is pin sharp and the fisherman’s wash room has been decorated. Its just the trees that need some attention, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon. 

We have had a tremendous amount of early winter rain and the river is in great condition. Ranunculus is already pushing through sparkling silt free gravels. Currently the river’s catchment area is completely saturated and thankfully we have a relatively dry period forecast. 

Last week storm some such name or other dumped several inches of rain in the valley in the space of twenty four hours. The river rose remarkably quickly and coloured up in a matter of hours as a result of the principle contribution to its flow coming from direct run off of rain rather than groundwater, behaviour not seen in these parts for some years. 

The field known across the ages as “Spring Bottom” has a spring in it and ditches are flowing well. I have seen groundwater levels higher here, 1998/99 and 2013/2014 spring immediately to mind, but we have a lot of winter left to go for further aquifer recharge which bodes well for summer trout fishing. 

The road into Bransbury is also carrying a lot of water. Again I have seen this several times. 

In early March 1999, I made my way slowly along the road in welly deep water and disturbed half a dozen grayling swimming along the road, probably gone spoony and looking for somewhere to spawn. In 2013/14 this part of the road was flooded for several months and this may well be the case again this winter. In 2013/14 the flooding upstream on the water meadow and in the village was considerable. Currently there is no flooding on the fields and meadows upstream around the village, all ditches are doing what they were designed to do having been maintained regularly in recent times. 

The reason the river is flowing down the road in Bransbury is because a small carrier stream on the main river Test has been “let go” – “Rewilded” if you will. 

There is a lengthy section where it emerges from under the Highway to the Sun, that is unmanaged and has become overgrown and is unable to take the water it used to. (There was a lot more water about back in the day when it would have been maintained to preserve grazing in the substantial meadow upstream) 

Currently the water backs up, breaks out across its bank, makes its way around the electricity substation, that never thought water would be coming its way, 

before making its way across the meadow to run down fifty yards of Bransbury lane before entering the Dever via a ditch by the road bridge. 

Don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of water and a flooded meadow at this time of year is my kind of thing. 

But rather than abandon any management programme for the errant carrier, manage it in such a way that biodiversity is maximised and most of the water ends up at its original intended destination.

Snowdrops are out and the daffodils are thinking about doing something. Down in Cornwall camellia were in flower as was a large hebe in the small garden of our surf shack overlooking the bay. The current cold snap and first dusting of snow should restore some order to what has so far been a confusing winter for some of the flora and fauna in these parts. A lot of geese have turned up, along with a few snipe, which usually means its very cold somewhere else. We’ve another Muntjac taken up residence in the garden and the fallow deer were up on the fields between Bransbury and Newton Stacey, presumably because there’s a lot of standing water about on the common where they normally like to hang out.

 

Off up to the smoke this weekend to see Child B for lunch, who is somehow turning 29 next week. 

All trains are off with replacement bus services invoked. We’ll stump up the ULEZ as our oil burning pig of a car is considered a health hazard, despite it attracting an annual car tax of just £30 for its friendliness to the environment– work that one out. 

We will then park for four or five hours having purchased a solid gold pay and display ticket virtually by phone. I assume it’s solid gold judging by the price of the thing, but having purchased it virtually we will never know, could be bitcoin for all we know.

An exceptional lunch will be taken at The Harwood Arms, where wine, food and company will provide succour to a mind swirl of questions, such as:

Why is it so difficult to get into what some would have as the greatest city in the world? 

Why is our car so efficient, cheap to run, cost £30 to tax, yet still be considered undesirable in the ULEZ zone?

Where is my solid gold parking ticket and why do I just receive a message (possibly a scam) assuring me that I have made such a purchase from a man called Ringo?

How is it that Child B is now 29 and it is the year 2024?

Wasn't he at school only a few years ago?