Hawthorn are here

One week to go before the season starts. We have our first Swallows and the Cuckoo has turned up. Lady’s smock and marsh marigolds are all out in the meadows and each morning the dawn chorus builds. The river is low, Hawthorn flies are about and we have had the obligatory flush of April Daddy Long Legs. A dry winter normally results in us being inundated with Daddies midsummer and imitations will catch a fair share of fish. Not seen too many Olives on the water this week, with Brown Trout taking smaller stuff off the surface, with the weed yet to get going many of the Browns remain bunched up in the deeper holes. The Grayling look to have done their business and have also vacated the shallows. I have caught a couple of magpies in the Larson trap, but currently lag behind the neighbouring Trout lakes who currently have birds to spare. For whatever reasons the number of Jay and Magpie stalking this parish appear to be down on recent years, which is good news for the remainder of the bird population.

With low flows, tinning has been a waste of time this winter, and some silt remains on some of the bends, there is nothing like good winter flows for scouring and cleaning the river, in motherly terms the equivalent of a rough face scrub with a wet flannel. It looks like we are in for a summer of letting the margins grow in, and leaving as much weed as possible to make the river channel as small as possible to maintain maximum speed of flow. Right now we are stuck with what we have got, as little rain is forecast for the foreseeable future. The fish in the hatchery are tubby and huge (about half an inch) and will soon be out in the pond supplied by river water, while the Rainbows that we grow for the neighbouring big fish water are ravenous and would eat twenty four hours a day if asked.

Earlier this week, we pushed the defrag button and headed off for a few days Carp fishing. Two Dads and two lads sitting behind bite alarms on a five-acre lake in the Champagne region of France. In fishing terms, a beach holiday anywhere in the sun. If pushed, it would not be my first choice of fishing, but it is very relaxed with cheese, wine, books to read and much joking from all quarters. The weather was fantastic, apart from one night when we had frost, and every night we were serenaded in our bivvies by a trio of Nightingales in the trees around the lake. We all caught fish from this newly opened lake, with three fish over thirty pounds and twenty something over twenty pounds. All the fish were in fantastic condition and provided great sport at all hours of the day. A similar lake that we fished a few years ago has recently been hit by an outbreak of SVC, a devastating disease that requires the culling of all stock and the lakes lying fallow for a considerable time and all bookings and income for the season have dissipated. In the Carp fishing business, stock and a reputation for quality fish is everything and a huge proportion of money invested is tied up in the fish in the lake. An outbreak of SVC can finish a Carp fishery off, as can predation or fish theft.

It's the Taste!

What a warm week, the roof is nearly done and I anticipate a return to something like alpha male status once the roof candy has gone. Otis is also having a hard time, he passed his third birthday this week, twenty-one today, and some bitch in season has been parading up and down the road for the past few days, reducing his brain to mush. Twice on a walk he has bolted, stopping after a hundred yards to sit down and look back at me quizzically and ask “ Why the hell did I just do that?” thankfully the world’s worst spaniel has long since given up on that kind of caper, although by the time he’d followed the trail to the pot of gold, there is every chance that the mood would have passed and she would no longer be in season.

Buds are breaking out all over, and the birds are making a right racket for an hour from first light. There has been fly on the water from midday and well into the lighter and longer evenings, providing a welcome feast for much of the bird life although fish rise sporadically. The Carp in the pond have woken up and are quite active; I have been feeding them for a few weeks now, although this has also attracted the attention of a pair of swans who look like they may be about to nest. Bridge rebuilding plans have now moved on to plan E or was it plan F, I managed to save much of the oak deck from the smashed wreckage of the old bridge, and have replaced the runners with another split telegraph pole although getting the second hand timber to resemble something safe and straight is proving tricky. The fishing hut has had its annual timber treatment, and shows few signs of decay and the table and chairs patched up in preparation for the Brown Trout season, which is now just over two weeks away. Because of the roof chaos we did not have our annual fishing lunch, to which all the regular rods are normally invited, so the opening day of the season will be the first sight many have had of the river since they were last here in September. We have a few new faces, although an elderly lady who fished with us well into her eighties is now filing her return in the great fishing hut in the sky. We have a waiting list for midweek rods and any gaps are soon filled. Weekends are for family and friends, charity days and a few days let through Strutt and Parker.

We also attended the funeral of the lady who used to live next door. A chocolate box cottage with thatch and a large garden it also had a small bit of river frontage, she lived there for over thirty years before moving in with her son in a nearby village. At the end of each weed cut, I would clear down any cut weed from in front of her house, that, if left, caused water to back up a spring hole and flood some nearby allotments as well as having an affect on the bottom reaches of the stretch that I am responsible for. As I worked down the river she would invariably appear, no matter what time of day, with a steaming cup of something laced with liquor, rum usually, and would stand and chat until the cup was empty. She was great fun and when younger, our two children would bumble down to see her several times a week to bang away on her piano and eat better biscuits than they did at home.
When she told us that she was leaving she asked us if we would like the piano, as she had no room in her new quarters. We readily agreed and one day when my brother was visiting I asked if it would be ok if we came down in the tractor and trailer to pick it up. The lady was out for lunch, but as I was a key holder for her elaborate alarm system, it was ok to go on in and take the piano. All went well as we backed the trailer up to the patio doors heaved the piano up the ramp and closed the doors and reset the alarm, or so I thought. We put the tractor into the lowest gear possible, crawled across the back paddock and started to make our way up the road. After twenty yards, we heard the sirens. Police cars appeared, the road was blocked and our stately progress of less than a mile an hour was halted. My eight-year-old daughter ran home to leave her dad uncle, brother mum and grandma to give up their story. The alarm had triggered and alerted the police because I had not reset it correctly, the lady was summoned from her Sunday dinner with her son to reassure the law that we were not pedestrian piano thieves, or filming a new PG Tips ad, but neighbours who had been given the piano. We got it home and my daughter appeared from under the bed to bang away on the thing to grade four, before being distracted by boys and booze.
Toady the house is owned by some who live in town, and bar a few holiday lets is largely unused, a man lives in the garage to keep an eye on the place, and for some time someone would be summoned to shout things at me as I passed down the river with my scythe. Ipods are a wonderful invention, and I missed much of what was said, but a solicitor’s letter followed asking me to keep out of their river.
Unfortunately what they believed to be their river wasn’t. They owned some bank and a soupcon of fishing rights. The far bank is common land and the riverbed throughout the short stretch is owned by our neighbour on the other side who is happy for me to walk up and down on it clearing weed.
Riverbank, riverbed and fishing rights are three different areas of ownership where rivers are concerned, and fortunately I am permitted to cut the weed through this short section, because if I didn’t no one else would.

The Cuckoo is a pretty bird it singeth as it flies

One line from a nursery rhyme ingrained on my memory from an interminable march north to fish the Tummel below Pitlochry one spring. Three year old and Five year old enthroned on the back seat insisted upon the tape for much of the drive. Somewhere around Shap my wife and I were in open rebellion and were arguing with the tape. The Cuckoo was not an effing pretty bird, was of questionable moral code, and had few friends; we only herald its appearance for one brief moment of the year before it drifts into the background to continue its sordid life! The Muffin Man who lives in Drury lane also copped some verbals around Ecclefechan. We stayed in a nice house on a hill above the town, but as with so many of our Salmon trips north we didn’t catch many fish. The highlight of the week was a drive along Loch Tay, that I have fished a few times and from which I once miraculously hauled a 21lb Salmon, before cutting round the side of Ben Lawers to drive down Glen Lyon. At one point we stopped for a potty break and the chosen spot was one of the most stunning places that anyone can have chosen to open their bowels, Five year old daughter wasn’t at all impressed by the four thousand foot peak that formed a back drop to a steep sided valley with twinkling stream and occasional signs of habitation, she just tinkled away loudly listing Pokemon, oblivious to the hundred or more Red Deer who had popped their heads over the brow at the sound of Pikachu and Bulbasaur.

Here no cuckoo “singeth” or “flyeth” but with twenty degrees forecast for the weekend it can’t be far away. The ink black flowers on the sedge in the fringe have popped out and the balsam poplars are starting to smell. A Cetti’s Warbler has turned up, they must have “bolt on app thingies” attached to their voice box because they are significantly louder than any other warbler, and sometimes don’t sound off until you are almost upon them. Ducks are paired up and there is a great deal of rape and pillage on the water. A pair of Swans are also gliding around, looking for a spot to nest. This time two years ago an Osprey stopped off on its way North, no surprise visitors so far this year although there are reports of a White Tailed Fish Eagle cruising the south coast, I think even my decaying eyes could spot that one if it turned up in a tree round here.

Much of the week has been spent getting ready for the start of our Trout Fishing season which is just under four weeks away. I have split a couple of telegraph poles down the middle and am halfway through replacing the bridge that was squashed by a an Ash Tree last October. I have also been patching up a weir, part of which blew out just after Christmas. There has been a weir on that particular spot for a very long time, with old piles in the river bed and bank, and heaps of broken staddle stones thrown in behind. The Ranunculus is pushing through in most places now, although I don’t see there being any to cut in late April other than the bit on the top shallows that flourished mid winter. Mid day hatches of fly continue to increase with most fish, bar the spawning Grayling, showing some interest. There is very little fungus on the Brown Trout in the river, although this may come on as the water temperature rises a few more degrees. The Fish in the hatchery are now an inch long and, with the river water as clear as it currently is it may be possible to get them out into the stew pond earlier than usual, too many suspended solids in the water and fish reared on crystal clear spring water inevitably pick up gill problems. Several new seats have been put up along the river carefully sited to give a vista of open water that can be observed for any sign of rising fish, although a call for cushions has fallen on deaf ears and been discretely ignored.

You can leave your hat on

In the clear water I can see that a few Chub have turned up, nothing huge but half a dozen between one and two pound. A few years ago we had one of around four pound that moved around quite a bit. The Chub has a reputation for finding a tree root to sit under and being a sucker for slugs, but the fish that we have had here have always been reasonably nomadic and tricky to catch. The four pounder stuck out like a sort thumb and would move between the top and bottom of our stretch, once dropping right down the beat to come up the bottom of the mill stream and sit in the mill pool by the house for a few days before returning to the main river. I don’t know where this current influx of Chublets have come from, it may be pre spawning behaviour and there are plenty a few miles down in the middle river, although our friendly four pounder moved around regularly throughout the year.

The Grayling are looking to spawn and there are some very black fish currently on the shallows, no signs of any fungus but a few of the bigger ones will inevitably wash up white nosed and dead on the screens post spawning. The warm weather has also led to an increase in mid day hatches of fly, mostly medium Olives but more than enough to get the Browns excited, and the majority appear to be in good knick. The reed beds that I burned off a few weeks ago are now turning from black to green and the first blackthorn blossom has just put in an appearance. It will be interesting to see how the Hawthorn fishing is this year. The winter has been relatively dry which is good news for a fly based on terra firma, however we did experience some extreme and prolonged falls of snow and cold weather which may have done for a few.

My bionic loins saw a return to action this week and once again gave battle with Crack Willow. To date, I have rotated the areas with which I have slain the beast, trying to tackle each section around every five years. This year, under heavy fire, I have resorted to chemical weapons. Some of the stuff I cut down five years ago on the top shallows had grown to the thickness of Chris Hoy’s thigh. I have once again felled the f****** things and have administered a lethal injection to a few defiant stumps.

It’s chaos around here at the moment. Eight weeks of problems parking and heightened security as the roof on the Mill House is being replaced. A quirky roofline that has developed over five hundred years, it is more like five roofs of differing shapes shoved together. Grade II listing requires all of the tiles to be hand made from clay and come with a fifty-year guarantee. The logistics alone of getting twenty-six tonnes of tiles down from a higgledy-piggledy roof three storey high are mind-boggling. There is no room for skips and the only place a vehicle can draw alongside the scaffolding is at one end of the building. All twenty six tonnes of tiles were thrown five at a time along a chain of ten men lining the top of the scaffolding and dropped into a truck that whizzed up and down the road to a landfill site. depositing the broken pegs. The new tiles took the same return route with two roofers ripped with muscles and the shoulders of Atlas throwing new tiles, five at a time, to the third storey where a nimble cove in Hermes’ winged boots plucks them from the air and sets them on their way back along the chain; a “technology free” solution to a problem that would have set most heads scratching.
It has been warm this week and on the roof shirts have been shed. It’s a bit like "at home" with the Chippendales, and feelings of inadequacy are never far from the surface although the gloom is lifted by my wife, who has surprised me with her interest in roofing projects and normally has various extra curricular duties in her special needs role at the local school, promptly returning home when the school bell sounds.

Simmering anger at Woody Debris

It has been brought to my attention that there is someone masquerading as me in the April issue of Trout and Salmon, an older brother perhaps? Whoever he is, he has far less hair than myself and appears far less virile. My daughter suggested the facial expression conveyed anger, determination or simmering madness. On reading the Wild Trout Trust article on Woody Debris in the same issue I think it is possibly the first and the last.

I can only speak from my own experience of managing a chalkstrem, where woody debris has its place and in some situations can be of some benefit to a stream. There has been woody debris in place on some parts of this river that predates the formation of the Wild Trout Trust, although on chalkstreams where weed cuts are heavy and coordinated so that everyone cuts weed at the same time, its uses are limited.

The Wild Trout Trust is undoubtedly well intentioned, but applying general rules to all rivers does not smack of “knowledgable river management” rather a “little bit of knowledge being a dangerous thing”.
I don’t believe that all successful management practices implemented on one river would work on every other river, and to issue the cry “To the woody debris everyone” is irresponsible.

One job at a time!

The days have warmed up a little this past week, a trickle of Olives breaking surface, shaking the Brown Trout from their winter torpor to rise sporadically. The Grayling have other things on their minds; several hens of around two pound are shooed from the shallows on the ford each time I pass through on the tractor. No redds yet but undoubtedly frisky. The river is low and clear at the moment and they will soon draw the attention of the Little Egret and Heron that stab away at spawning fish on the shallows. I have seen fewer Cormorants this winter than recent years, although Otters are still rampaging up and down the valley. My son and his mate had quite a few Pike these past few weeks, nothing huge but numerous jacks to around six pound, good sport on a six foot spinning rod with a small mepps, but it requires a bit of local knowledge to avoid picking up the Browns. There is the odd Perch about, nothing like the two-pound fish he hauled out a few years ago, but none came to the mepps.

Officially I am still off lifting duties following a couple of hernias, so I have been on the digger much of the week, clearing out a couple of ditches that connect the mill stream to the main river and clearing up crack willow that I felled in a frenzy of cutting before the operation. I also had a go at some “multi tasking” by burning off a few reed beds while sitting on the digger clearing silt from a ditch. Following dry weather and a few frosts to draw the moisture from the ground, the reed bed burning had been going decidedly well, on this occasion things picked up further, half an acre of spearbed disappeared in a matter of moments, the wall of flame leapt the ditch I was clearing and, in a flash, a forty foot Christmas tree behind my head was full of flames. Ditch work was abandoned and a hasty retreat made through what remains of the Christmas tree plantation. It always looks a bit stark after reed beds have been burned, and it isn’t the best place to walk a liver and white spaniel with wobbly legs especially when your wife has cleaned the kitchen floor, but within weeks, verdant growth appears from charred ground thicker than ever, providing a haven for all manner of flora and fauna.

The Brown Trout Fry in the Hatchery are now up on the fin and feeding well. Currently in an oversized tank I hand feed sporadically and keep out of their way as much as I can.

The wood alongside the river is full of Pheasants, I came across nine hens scratching around one afternoon with a senior cock looking on, their plumage is as good as it gets at the moment, and boy don’t they know it, even our chickens swoon! Ducks are paired up, the group of Swans in the water meadow above have dissipated and the Hares in the field behind our house are bumbling about doing daft things in the middle of the day. Buds are swelling on the trees and there is a hint of blossom on the cherry tree that always goes too early. We could be on the cusp of spring, but then again it could snow. It would be great if we had weeks of cold rain before the trees wake up, but I fear that this is all the water we have for the coming season, and it ain’t very much!

Erotic frogs and an ultrasonic bridge

Erotic Frogs and an ultrasonic bridge

Last week we had cause to drive up the Bourne Valley in the name of under sixteen football. The bourne at St Marybourne is barely a trickle. Before the ban, we used to attend several Alresford Coursing Club meetings on ground just north of St Marybourne always in late February or early March around the time of the Waterloo Cup. The Bourne would always be rattling along under the bridge in St Marybourne and on one occasion it had broken its banks and sandbags were in use around the doors of several houses. I don’t want to labour the point but we need a few wet weeks if the river is to sustain a decent level throughout the season.

The particular coursing meeting in question was held over two days and was quite a grown up affair with one big stake offering a decent amount of prize money and drawing entries from far and wide. There would always be a party over from Ireland, a Cornish contingent, plenty from East Anglia. The North was well represented with Yorkies, Scots and several from the North West, a large Pakistani contingent would turn up from the midlands, plus a few over from Europe. The mix included Racehorse trainers, game keepers, bookmakers, chefs, landed gentry, a lifeboat coxswain, a fireman, celebrities of varied standing and many many more. A Rolls Royce would stand next to the most beat up dog van in a muddy corner of a field. It wouldn’t be my first choice of field sport and more often than not I was performing some role on the day, either beating, flanker, taking dogs in and out of slips or catching them up after they’d run. But those who chose to be there showed incredible dedication to their sport. It doesn’t happen now, and I would challenge anyone to come up with a field sport that attracts such a wide mix of people. Horse racing must come close, but for several years after the ban the club’s annual barbecue and duck race would be held here in midsummer with the same bunch travelling miles to talk over the past season and bet on plastic ducks floating down the river, Mr Younis in his Shalwar Kameez, beard dyed red, with the coxswain of the Cromer lifeboat taking in the yellow plastic ducks on a bench by the river, you couldn’t make it up!

Each afternoon our pond in the garden plays host to a raucous frog orgy. As each gravid female flops into the pond she is immediately pounced upon by half a dozen randy males. One confused hopper (who will obviously try anything once) had a four-ounce Goldfish in his clasp for much of yesterday afternoon.
The Pike are grouping up, my son and his mate had three out of one hole while fishing at half term. They were helping me out up the river, clearing up a load of wood that I cleared before I had my hernias dealt with, not sure how the Pike rod got to be there.
A few Cormorants have looked in this week, although nothing like the numbers of previous winters, they seem to be sticking to the main river at the moment. The local put and take trout fishery reports having seen none on their water all winter.

Sixteen years ago the road bridge in this village was taken apart and two electro magnetic coils inserted in a concrete base in the riverbed, the bridge was then reconstructed over the top. The river was diverted and the road closed for four months. The electro magnetic coils would provide flow data for the River Dever every thirty seconds that would be transmitted back to a desk somewhere in the south of England. The cost to the taxpayer was around one and a half million pounds (at 1995 prices). This week while on a restorative potter with the dogs I came across two technical types tinkering with the bridge. They informed me that the electro magnetic coils in the riverbed are now obsolete. Flow data would now be measured by ultrasound via this silver box they were attaching to the bridge, but the really great advantage was that flow data would now be measured constantly as opposed to every thirty seconds.

I scratched my head for much of a very long walk.

Why do we need flow data every thirty seconds? Why do we need flow data for every second of the day? A man in a van measures all of the water quality parameters manually, at regular intervals. Why does flow data need to be monitored so closely? There is no danger of flash flooding on this river. Why did they put it under that bridge anyway? A hatch at the mill a hundred yards upstream (that has been in existence for hundreds of years) will compromise data every time it is opened?

A man could have measured the flow data manually every day for sixteen years and been paid a wage that attracted the highest rate of income tax, and still come in at half the cost of these coils in the river bed.

Was the close monitoring of flow data a national strategy implemented by flood defence following serious flooding in other parts of the country twenty years ago? Was the decree issued that all rivers should be monitored for flash flooding, even the chalkstreams that don't flash flood. An action group was formed, media campaign arranged, all who lived near rivers would be saved by people in cutting edge wet weather gear and shiny wellingtons who would issue flood warnings through their giant copper coils. And the bill? Oh don't worry about it, now what's next a national monorail scheme or roads in the sky, I know lets do both!

If the flow is monitored every thirty seconds or every second of the day for flood defence reasons then it is completely unneccessary on this river and a lot of money has been wasted. If it is for another reason, I would love to know, because I can't for the life of me think what it is.