No pictures available as yet but will persevere with idiot proof camera.
I was showing another prospective rod and subsequently the latest addition to the waiting list, around one sunny afternoon last week and there were half a dozen grayling of around a pound getting jiggy on the top shallows. Completely oblivious to our obvious presence they flirted around for a good five minutes, dark fish, fins out of the water spawning in perfect conditions.
I have been buffing up the fishing hut this afternoon and there were a similar number charging about on the shallows just upstream. For a few years we saw little spawning activity, certainly nothing like the video I took (it’s on here somewhere) around 2012 of twenty or thirty fish spawning on the shallows in front of the fishing hut. Hopefully this will continue the slow resurrection in numbers from a dearth of grayling three to four years ago.
With the trout season fast approaching I have been attempting to engage the forces of crack willow on the far bank. They have been inaccessible for much of the winter due to a combination of depth of water and my diminutive stature (175 cm at the last count) Most of them have been conquered, but there are a few that remain protected by deep water. I made one attempt to tackle them, but with half an inch to the top of my waders and a river that is really pushing through, I sought a safe retreat. Not sure if it is my ageing frame or just a lively river but it was difficult to maintain a firm footing in fast flow and four and a half feet of water.
It also became apparent while fiddling about in the river, just how clean the gravels are and how much silt has been sent on downstream this winter. Inevitably the river colours up when you jump in and start doing some work, but this week it has been very quick to clear once the work is done.
Most afternoons are seeing an increasing number of olives coming off the water with several fish taking them off the top, no hawthorn yet but we’ve a few big bees undertaking slow motion bumbling about the place. No sign of any frog spawn or toad spawn yet, although we are yet to see flat adults on the lane, squashed by cars as they make their way from the bankside verge to the Millstream and river.
They are not the only ones to be caught out by Brer Automobile.
Modern cars are increasingly quiet, especially the ones that run on batteries. What impact this will have on the percentage of all species killed on the road may become apparent in the coming years.
You may or may not recall that in 2019, I lost a lot of hearing on a flight to Toronto and must now wear expensive ear trumpets. I have one very good ear and one ear that hardly works at all. With only one ear left I have made a conscious decision to look after it and invested in an expensive pair of noise cancelling headphones to wear when working with machinery.
I think I made the traffic news last year when cutting the hedge along the road. Engrossed in my work and warming to my task it may well have been half an hour before I looked around and noticed the four cars trying to get past me on the narrow lane.
Even without my magic headphones I get caught out by the few electric cars that now inhabit the parish. Numerous times I have been walking down the road with the dogs, oblivious to the big pile of batteries slowly following me down the road. Moss and Dougal have now learnt to give me a nudge to let me know that there has been a car behind us for what may have been the last hundred yards of the walk.
Not for no reason am I increasingly known as “The walking speed bump”
There’s talk of an Osprey in the environs, but I’ve not seen it yet. It’s not unusual to see one at this time of the year as they make their way north, stopping off for an easy meal of chalk stream trout by way of sustenance. On our fortieth birthdays, my late employer threw a birthday party for us in the big room over the road. An Osprey turned up, perched in a long dead tree by the fishing hut before plucking a fish pushing two pound from the river. With most of the room outside of multiple glasses of champagne, it was decided that this must be a portent from a greater force and major events over the coming years would confirm this,
or possibly we would grow wings and turn pescatarian.
Well eighteen years on we’re still waiting, I still don’t eat much fish (Scallops, Calamari on holiday) and neither of us can fly, although we haven’t really tried of late.
It was a good party though.
The chalk valleys currently play host to a Capybara called Samba. Not yet seen it on the short stretch of the Itchen that I fall in and out of, but it’s been spotted south of Winchester and possibly thirty odd miles away at Stonehenge, although this may have been a sheep. It has yet to be ascertained where Samba will fit in to the fishery management hierarchy on the chalkstreams but the principle fear is that she will join the coup instigated by Brer Beaver and soon our overlords on the chalk rivers will be, with a nod to Orwell, a politburo of oversized toothy rodents.
What times we live in, at which point I’d recommend an excellent article in The Thunderer this week by Sir Monty Don highlighting the bollocks (Monty’s words) that is the cult of rewilding, it’ll be on the internet somewhere, possibly accompanied by an AI generated picture of Sir Monty’s gonads.
We’ve had some fine weather of late but today it turned cold with a wind from the north and tonight we are forecast another frost. All the fruit trees about the place seem to have entered a state of stasis, unsure as to whether to go yet or not, the Wisteria often gets caught out at this time of year, but the Mulberry tree knows stuff and never mistimes its run.
Myself? I have an allotment up the road that has only just dried out. Potatoes, carrots and Broad Beans have gone in a little later than normal and I have a shed and poly tunnel at home filled with plants that will hopefully fill the freezer this summer should I get the planting out time right.
This time last year we had a very late frost towards the end of April that did for my runner beans, although returns of other fruit were the best for many years. The warm weather stuff did well, I froze seventy kilos of plum tomatoes and had oodles of peppers, cucumbers and chillis. Sweetcorn also very good although peas, runner beans and potatoes not so in the dry conditions and lettuce (forellenschluss – Speckled like a Trout, a spectacular Romaine variety) quick to go to seed.
Peppers by the way, don’t pay a small fortune for a packet of eight seeds from the garden centre, just pick a pretty pointy pepper from Aldi, dry out the seeds and sow. Works every time, a hundred or more plants and loads of fruit.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh yes, Horticultural jeopardy at this time of year.
It’s the clocks that do it, plus the gardening frenzy over the Easter break. As soon as the the evenings get longer the barbecue and benches come out and hey geraniums and other tender annuals come on, get out and get with the beat.
Last year I was caught out by a couple of devastating late frosts and this year am proceeding with caution rather than pressing on regardless at the first hint of sunshine, although the first sign of asparagus spears on the crowns under glass make it difficult to resist embracing a frost free period, however brief.
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