Seven!

Bitterly cold weather delayed the start of the Mayfly which is only now just starting to get going, and as I write the first dance is forming up above a hedge at the bottom our garden. Wind is lowering marks and not many are getting a “seven!” from Len. Many take respite in the pear tree before returning to the floor and several of the successful couples retire to my shed door for l’amore.

The dance is a dangerous one as squadrons of swallows fly through the mass of mayflies plucking them from the air as a shark would a herring from its swirling mass. Many of the fish still rise clumsily to both the natural and artificial but most now have their eye in and fill their boots at tea time.
The biggest fish so far are a four and a half pound lump taken on a Klinkhammer. It was in great condition and has been in the river for at least two seasons. Tucked away below a weir pool it was difficult to spot as it lay hard up against the bank, its safe haven betrayed by a flurry of olives that drew it from its lair. A fish just shy of five pounds topped it and must have been lost earlier in the season as it had a Greenwell’s Glory lodged in the roof of its mouth. Both fish were caught on a Friday, by different anglers.

A few overwintered fish have been take that have been a little on the skinny side, which is surprising as many fed steadily through February and March. The stream in the garden is full of minnows as is the Mill Stream which draws the attention of a pair of Kingfishers who have nested in the steep bank at the top of this beat. Last year there was a rival pair of Kingfishers on the beat below and several times there was the blue flash of a kingfisher dogfight as each staked its claim for the bounty of Minnows. The candles are out on the conker tree and each afternoon the slightest breeze sends clouds of willow blossom

dancing across the water confusing angler and fish alike as to what is a fly and what is not. The decline of the cuckoo has been lamented in the press of late although they obviously didn’t interview the poor bird detailed to bring up its ravenous young, we have a few around at the moment and if ever a bird warranted an ASBO for unsociable behaviour and neglecting its offspring then this is it. Another prime candidate for an avian ASBO is a brute of a Cob Swan who along with his Pen has been in this parish for a few years. They have set up shop in a spring hole below our bottom boundary with their sole offspring. They have made a couple of forays upstream and each time the void behind has been filled by up to a dozen or more swans who have deined to nibble the shoots of ranunculus on our bottom shallows.

The introduction of the world’s worst and wobbliest spaniel unsettles this alpha Cob (that dog doesn’t behave as other dogs should), and they gently drift back to their spring hole with the Cob raising merry hell with the interlopers who have dared to sally forth to his precious spring hole, where the happy threesome remain like a cork in a bottle protecting the precious ranunculus at the bottom of this beat. Recently the Cob has drifted north alone for a few hours for a break from the demands of fatherhood, but as long as he keeps the swans downstream at bay for the coming season he can be tolerated, although the world’s worst spaniel has other ideas.
A current warm spell has sent the few carp that remain in the flight pond frisky and the fiddling around in the roots of the willows has begun. There are some fry in the river which may be Roach or Grayling who could do with a little more weed cover for protection
The Section 30 application was successful and confirmation received by phone from our excellent fishery officer on Friday. I also received a disk through the post to guide me through future online applications, I will give it a go next time.
The relevant authorities have been busy with a diesel spill, the perpetrators purported to be the salad farmers on the Bourne. Sponges, booms, pumps have all swung into action along with blanket media coverage of the clean-up operation. I have not heard reports of any significant damage, no oiled seadbirds or dead dolphins have been seen, so I can only assume that the operation went to plan.

Riddled with pox?...no chance!

The wettest April on record has caused flooding in parts and led to questioning of drought orders which is typical of the short term thinking that prevails in many parts of the media on a range of subjects. The rain has certainly had an effect on this chalk stream, the chronic conjuring trick where a river is made to vanish slowly before our very eyes has been halted and the level has even inched up a tad, one of our spring ditches that bowls out of the bottom of an iron age defence ditch has even started to flow again after drying up a few months ago and the prospect of a season

curtailed through lack of water looks to have been averted. If we experience the wettest and coldest May and June on record the river could even be in fairly fine fettle by September. We have had one wet month after twenty odd dry ones, in football parlance a consolation goal for a team six nil down, in the battle with Dr Evil and his drought ray that diverts the low pressure systems away from the south east a bloody nose and nothing more. It is steady rain over a prolongued period of time that recharges the aquifers.If this were “It's a knockout”t and a measuring cylinder had to be filled with water through a lid perforated with tiny holes, the team that poured their water the slowest would fill the cylinder quicker than the team who tipped the bucket straight over the top to the guffaws of Stuart Hall. Slow and steady over a pronlogued period of time fills the aquifers not a quick tip over the top.

Our Trout fishing season is now underway and the first day saw the first significant hatch of Hawthorn, plenty of fly were blown down onto the water on a zephyr that made fishing in some spots a bit tricky but the fish responded and quite a few have already been put on the bank. As is often the case during the Hawthorn several fish rise clumsily to the first significant surface food of the year missing both the natural and the carefully presented imitation. The slight lift in water has added a tinge of colour and stimulated weed growth and if the weather warms up the grass growth is going to go bananas. The first leaves are unfurling on the Field Maple next to our house and the first Ramsens are out adding to the valley's heady scent that is dominated by the whiff of balsam poplars. There are some beautiful Roach in the river, a few of which top two pounds drifting around fat with spawn in groups of around a dozen, there is a lone Chub on the middle bends and in the pond the carp have increased their activity but have not started fiddling around in the willow roots preparing to spawn.

Although we have plenty of Brown Trout in the river we will soon need to stock with fish reared from our own fish in our own stew ponds. The river water flows through the ponds and in effect all we are doing is moving them from one side of the inlet screen to the other. To do this we must apply to the EA for a section 30 movement order. To gain a section 30 movement order they must be passed fit and a sample of thirty fish culled and sampled for Parasites (CEFAS do the bacteria). Now if the fish were being moved from one river system to another it makes sense to undertake this health check particularly in these times of heightened Biosecurity (imagined or otherwise) But in this case the fish in the ponds have been subject to the same river water and all its bugs and beasties as the population of fish that they are about to join in the river. The screen is not parasite or bacteria proof yet we are required to fork out over £300 and sacrifice 30 fish for a health check. The fish in the ponds are subject to regular checks for bacteria by CEFAS the fish health inspectorate arm of DEFRA and a sensible bunch who keep an eye out for notifiable diseases and make sure we are all keeping our records up to date. This used to be good enough for a section 30 application, but a few years ago “ they who must not be named” deemed that an extra shufty for parasites would be a good idea. A chap at Sparsholt College briefly carried out this task before departing on the Wild Trout crusade washing his hands of stocked fish. His replacement carried out the service for a few years before departing last summer for antipodean shores. The check must be carried out by an approved “health checker” so a call was made to the call centre of “fisheries command centre central” and enquires made. They were not aware of any list of approved health checkers and suggested a call to DEFRA who at the slightest suggestion of a fin pushed it on to CEFAS....... who sighed a weary sigh and gave me the number of the relevant number at “fisheries command centre central”. The call was made, and a helpful cove accepted responsibility for the request and put me on to the IFM (Institute of Fishery Management) where there lay a link that would reveal a list of people approved to carry out this task. The link was pushed and bounced straight back as “page not found” Now at this point I stopped and thought:

Costs incurred: £300+ for health check value of fish
plus delivery to vet £250 of live samplet,
half an afternoon on the phone and website trying to locate someone to carry out the task,
several more grey hairs.

I have twenty five years experience looking at fish in ponds and rivers and would back myself to identify when they have are riddled with pox or parasites, why don’t I just take the risk and go ahead without the relevant licence?

I didn’t and continued to play the game,

A list of approved health checkers was eventually located/compiled and received the next day. The money was paid, the fish bonked on the head and the relevant box ticked stating that they were “good to go”

With the Health Check done by an approved health checker in the bag the next stage is to apply for the movement order that allows the fish to be moved from one side of the metal grill to the other, or from the pond to the river. Centralisation and the establishment of "fishery command and control centre central" promised to make the process a ruthlessly efficient one, but on registering I was informed that it could take ten days for the registartion to be approved before I could get anywhere near an online section 30 form.

In evolutionary terms several backward steps were then taken although thumbs were retained. An old application form was sourced, photocoiped and filled in with a pen, stickered with a stamp and delivered in a red van by a man in shorts.

I expect approval by phone by the end of the week.

Is it me?

Two weeks to go

Two weeks to the new season, a wet week at last and more rain forecast for the next few days. It hasn’t done much to the river bar add a tinge of colour, and only one puddle has formed on the water meadows, the top layer of soil had turned to dust and has soaked up much of what has fallen. If groundwater flow into the river increases due to rainfall there is a time lag between the rain falling and the river rising. If spring fed rivers such as this creep up a few days after heavy rain the groundwater flow has increased. Weed growth is patchy, on the top shallows the ranunculus is luxuriant and close to the water’s surface, further downstream it is only just poking from the gravel. Over on the stretch of the Itchen, ribbon weed predominates and is already a foot long. No sign of any hawthorn yet, just olives and the odd sedge but there have been few rising fish in the pouring rain. Otters are about on both rivers and most mornings I have found fish dead on the bank. Half a Roach that would have topped two pound when complete, the end of an

eel and several trout that appeared to have overwintered well until that tinker Tarka took a fancy to them. I have replaced the batteries on the electric fences that surround our stew ponds but the fish in the river are easy picking in the low clear water and must take their chance. In two weeks there will be Fishermen tramping the banks that may move the Otter on but in the interim a few more fish will bite the dust.

The first swallows have turned up and appear a tad grumpy after their long journey if this photo is anything to go by. Four arrived to nest in the stables, feast on fly and perch on the cables that hum above our house, in a few weeks there will be many more along with house martins and a few swifts who nest in a gap in the gable of the mill house. The

cettis warbler has also returned and sounds the alarm anytime I approach the flight pond, and there are a couple of hen Pheasants on eggs in the christmas trees. I have also put up an owl box on a large ash next to the river. The old pig hospital a hundred yards up the road used to be home to a barn owl who hunted over the meadows at dusk. The building has been converted into a dwelling and the owl box erected in a neighbouring tree often has a cat asleep in it. The barn owl is still about, one evening last year my son and I were driving up the lane to football practice and he flew alongside us fifteen feet from the passenger window for about a hundred yards of our journey. Hopefully he will like the box, although a few owl boxes in the valley end up with mandarin duck nesting in them. Our own “tree duck” a mallard who nested in the crook of a tree five feet from the ground has hatched off nine chicks all of whom made it to the ground and onto the river.

On the short stretch of the Itchen on which I work, the trout fishing season begins next week. Unstocked and lightly fished it poses different challenges to the stretch of the Dever for which I am responsible. One particular factor holds true for both stretches of river, coils in the river bed. Here on the Dever, magic magnetic coils were installed in the river bed seventeen years ago at great expense to monitor discharge. These were deemed obsolete last year and replaced by an ultrasonic contraption. The discharge on the Dever could have been monitored manually daily by a man drawing a wage that attracted the top rate of income tax for sixteen years at half the cost of the installation. Anyway it transpires that the coils in the bed of the stretch of the Itchen that I work on are also obsolete and have been replaced by the wonders of ultrasound that fire signals back and forth across the river at fifteen minute intervals. Unfortunately the miracle of bankside ultra sound struggles with weed and silt. So a man in a life jacket replete with distress flares and kendall mint cake is employed to cut ten yards of weed once a month and another stands with a life preserving buoyancy aid, having first completed a one day course with lunch on how to throw the thing, should he fall over. The two are transported, along with their scythe, safely sheathed, to the river bank in a two year old 4x4 pantechnicon and their progress monitored from space. Why do we need such detailed flow data on the chalkstreams when they don’t flash flood? it seems an awful lot of time and money to spend on what must be one of the most uninteresting flood hydrographs around.

Away from the river it’s been a tad hectic. The BBC got in touch about an appearance on a show about the drought, it hasn’t stopped raining since so plans may have been put on the back burner, that or my regional accent wasn’t thick enough although it passed muster for a seminal performance in “Village voices” a few years ago when I mistakenly stated that I would do my job for free. Some while ago I was interviewed by Meridian TV for a local news piece on rural employment. The presenter and camera man were very chatty as we walked up the river, I jumped in and pretended to work, and “action” was called. The presenter came at me like Kent Brockman with his best TV voice which startled me somewhat although if Robert Peston had been the interviewer I would have assumed he was unwell.

I have just submitted my first 850 words for a fortnightly column in The Shooting Times, the photo isn’t too hot and I am a prime candidate for the airbrush not the hairbrush (hair, I remember hair) but it is quite an exciting and interesting opportunity to see how writing regularly for a magazine works.

Le Mans 24hrs of rain

Currently I sit under an umbrella in the pouring rain; an annual four day fishing trip to France for Dads and boys in pursuit of all fish Coarse. I cannot remember when I last experienced twenty four hours of rain as we just have and if we have room in the boot on return I shall bring as much back with me as I can. Like any fisher, bridges are a welcome diversion from an interminable journey a brief peep over a succession of parapets revealed the Somme, the Seine and the Sarthe well down from the last time we ventured this way.

We are chasing Carp on this visit and four of us have laid siege to a lake twenty kilometres south of Le Mans. A “guilty pleasure” it is not the purest form of fishing but fun nonetheless, and a change from our usual pursuit of Chub and Barbel, very social with wine, bread and cheese to the fore and much mickey taking throughout. The water is chilly following snow last week and the fish are relatively inactive although we have managed to put three fish over twenty pounds on the bank.

We are surrounded by cows, one of which has been fitted with a bell along with another, who, deprived of a bell chooses to batter seven bells out of its tin shed. The two combine to form a tuneless Cow calypso with steel drums and bells that seems to go on for much of the day and night. They are two of fifty odd Charolais that have been overwintered outside and while the fields are a little torn up they are not the muddy morass that you would expect at the end of a typical winter. Before the rain there were a couple of cuckoos and each night we hear boar bumbling around a neighbouring wood. The trees that surround the lake are further on than at home` and the buds are breaking on an Oak that stands next to my swim. We often see our first Swallows and Martins on this trip but no sign of any yet, only a brace of Tern who carry out regular sorties of the lake.

Back home we have received countless pieces of advice in the post from all quarters on how to get through the coming season. Pretty straightforward stuff on maintaining levels and preserving what little water we have. If fish are to be rescued from anywhere on this river it will be interesting to see what stance is taken over the licensing of such movements or whether they will be allowed under special measures that will compromise the Biosecurity bumph that we have been bombarded with in recent years. I still have concerns over the fish in our stew ponds that are starting to look large and numerous in the small amount of water that is flowing through them. Weed growth in the river will help raise the level a little and send more water through the inlet pipe, but a couple of errant Swans running fast and loose through the bars of ranunculus could see the level drop back to its current level. Our abstraction licence is for a quarter of a million gallons a day which is all that will go through the pipe, I doubt whether we are currently getting half that.

"Marsh marigolds" are starting to show, the first few “Lady’s Smock” are up and out and it won’t be long before the Ramsens are in flower. No sign of any early Hawthorn here yet, the hedges are in full bloom but I did see several of the cumbersome black flies at

the Eurotunnel terminal in Calais. The odd sedge and a steady trickle of Olives from late morning to mid afternoon hold the interest of the Brown Trout several of whom look to the surface and after a brief break, a few Grayling are hard at it again in the shallows with around half a dozen males charging around after the arrival of the final few gravid females.

We have had a herd of Fallow Deer in the field behind our house for much of the past ten days, There are fifteen of them, which is the most I have ever seen over this way although there are numbers a few miles north of here. They may have moved into this parish following a recent “deer society” day on a neighbouring estate when guns from all corners of the globe turned up. Or it may be that their numbers are on the up and they will become a more regular sight around here.

The world's worst and wobbliest Spaniel was due his "spring coiffure" so the lady who sleeps on my left went at him with the clippers in the garden. A wide variety of objects were removed including twigs, a lost Christmas tree decoration and a small family of shrews. The garden is full of hair and feathers from our first and last Spaniel, smelly fluff that provides useful nesting material each year for the birds in our garden.

I counted them all out and I counted them all in

This week the river has dropped. We have had a mini heat wave in March which brought some butterflies out but is not the principle cause behind the river’s recession, the first effects of a dry winter are kicking in and as everything wakes up and reaches for the bedside glass of water, the demands on nature’s water reserves increase substantially. The roots of Alders that are normally submerged are out in the open and an old bank repair from well before my time sticks

out from the bank like the ribs of a dinosaur. An invitation has been received to a “low flows” workshop not “ indicators and effects of a dicky prostrate” (although there will be talk of interrupted streams of flow) but sensible action by the Test & Itchen Association to ensure riparian owners are doing all they can to preserve the aquatic environs in the arid months to come. Donning other sporting hats, advice has also been given on the watering of cricket squares and the preparation of football pitches, we hope the swimming pool community received similar advice.

On this river contingency plans mentally formed months ago, are fast “firming up”. The local “big fish water has snapped up extra aeration for lakes and ponds that diminish by the day and calls have been made to local eateries to push the trout on the menu in the coming months. Our own stew ponds are starved of water and I am not able to feed the fish hard to pack on weight in these growing months. Fish are on half rations and the inlet pipe that is twelve inches in diameter would normally be submerged at this time of year; currently we have half a pipe full pushing through the ponds and the river is only going to get lower.

We won’t dry up......I think. When the weed flourishes it will be possible to maintain a level, and early season fishing could be quite spectacular, we have high hopes for the Hawthorn, crystal clear water and a river full of fish, but by August the river’s source will be considerably closer to this parish than it has been for a very long while and we may have to move fish from our stew ponds if we are unable to get any more water through them, particularly when the water warms up.
I have given up on the tinning, there is insufficient flow to have any significant effect and have turned to titivating and tarting up in preparation for the new season. The Fishing hut has had a new coat of preservative as have fences gates and a bridge in the house garden. We have several Mallard sitting on eggs, tadpoles in the pond and the Coarse fish are very active, particularly in the afternoon. We are still inundated with Geese, and a Kestrel is slowly building a nest in a large beech tree near the bottom bends. I have been patiently scanning our back field for some weeks now to photograph hares at the frolic as they have out there most years, but have seen none. Only stunning Cock Pheasants in a crop that I have not come across, it may be some kind of Vetch or a “save the world” Biomass crop, the pigeons loved it early on as did the Pheasants but it doesn’t seem to float Hartley Hare’s boat

On the Itchen the leaky transformer continues to drip, not into the aquifer, but a cutting edge bucket; Lesley continues her quest for justice and has the electricity people firmly by the short and curlies.

Today the local school paid us a visit. Many wouldn’t, deterred by the Health & Safety and Risk assessment involved with walking ten year olds alongside a channel of water. They have visited every other year for quite some while now as part of their river studies and each time, in the words of Brian Hanrahan, “I counted them all out and I counted them all back” It’s all about erosion, deposition and ox bow lakes and every year eddies are a bit of a let down when it becomes clear that they are not the raging whirlpools that they were sold in the classroom. Chalkstreams don’t always to stick to the rules. We have bends where deposition occurs on the outside rather than the inside and the same with erosion which can take some explaining to a persistent ten year old, and inevitably turns to tales of overwidening caused by the devil’s own tree.

Midway through a satisfactory retail experience at our local countryside supplies emporium I bumped into a retired keeper who was employed on a stretch of the upper main river. After several years he had returned to the stretch and was dismayed at the condition of the river following a lengthy period of not being keepered and concerned that the new owners did not realise that a chalkstream must be managed, thoughts echoed by parents and pupils on the school trip who were unaware that the rich environment in which they were walking has been heavily influenced by man and his hand over many hundreds of years and is what it is because of that.

PCBs and ipads

Spring equinox and still we wait for the winter rain; the Merlin didn’t turn up either. Slash and burn has continued for much of the week, along with a bit of spraying, no end of praying (for rain) and burning the bits of the last reed beds off. All week the Grayling have been hard at it on the shallows, a dozen or more dark minded and dark bodied males charging across the gravels to compete for the lighter coloured females who glide up from the holes below. Mostly fish of around a pound and a half, the water is of sufficient clarity for courting couples, triples and multiples to be visible from space.

The same is happening over on the Itchen in slightly deeper water with fish at least a pound heavier, the water is not as clear as the Dever although the Ranunculus is a little further on. I had added the final flourishes to the covered seat when my attention was drawn by the owner to a transformer slung on a telegraph pole fifteen yards from a spring hole. The oil from the transformer was leaking onto the ground below. The owner is a bit of a whizz where chemistry is concerned and was aware of the possible contamination by PCBs. Calls were made to the Environment Agency and Scottish Electric who, for some

reason, service the poles in the South. Scottish Electric put a mat underneath the transformer before removing it the next day along with the top inch of soil; the transformer remained, leaking. After an underwhelming response to a pollution incident on the Dever last year I did not hold out much hope of seeing an EA man before the end of the week but they responded magnificently. Lesley was despatched from Romsey with a van

full of stuff and a light on top which disappointingly was not switched on and flashing; the “guys in groundwater” were concerned, along with someone else whose name I fail to recall but may well have been Newt related. Lesley, after donning a very bright coat and some very safe shoes, took copious notes and photos, Emails have subsequently been flung far and furiously into the ether, mats have once again been placed under the still dripping transformer and we await the results of Lesley’s ire!

The pole and transformer lie next to a spring ditch that runs through the village joining the river at the bottom of this beat, a spring lies fifteen yards from the dripping pole. Throughout the winter the crack willow has been cut back, the channel cleared out and a soft line established to the banks as marginal growth has quickly returned. In a normal winter the channel will be three times the size so it is important not to put too many “hard” features to determine the line of the bank, a soft line of marginal growth can easily be cut back during times of high water. It is stuffed with minnows plus the odd trout and with effective management would make a perfect nursery stream, provided the PCBs don’t do for it in the coming weeks.

I am called to do many things in the line of duty, I work alone so all tasks must be tackled. I have run up the final furlong at Cheltenham in my best shoes in front of a crowd of 10,000, chased an errant hound around an arena with the chap from the “Horse of the year show” commentating on proceedings, played Chris Tarrant in an over 60's "Who wants to be a millionaire and much more besides. On Friday at 7am I was outside the local “Apple” emporium in Barbour and wellies, not queuing for Cox but the latest version of the Ipad, a generous birthday present from my employer. Not the technological type I declined conversation with the two hundred or more geeky guys in the queue and avoided the eye of the “appleteesers” employed outside the store to ask how excited we were about our prospective purchase. At 8 am the doors slid back and the thirty or more employees lined up outside to give us two minutes applause for what I can only assume was “doing good queue” before purchasers were allowed into the store. A bubbly man in hat and microphone welcomed each customer individually outside the store and formally introduced `them to the “i dude” who was to guide them through the purchase. Each customer was subsequently clapped into the store to much “whoopin and a hollerin”, high fives, hugs and the odd tear. Money was paid and a brief ten minute intro to the machine by an “i guide” followed. Alex was my “i guide” and during the process he ascertained that it was my birthday. Fearing another round of whoopin and hollerin and cries of "You the man" I swiftly hissed that if he started banging on about my “special day” he would be pulling apples from places that apples don’t normally grow. Alex quickly replied that several had expressed concerns over the edgy guy in the smelly coat and wellies in the queue so best tread carefully, the "birthday thing" would not be mentioned

After an emotional retail experience, I left with my fantastic birthday present and was not clapped out of the store.

Not Rhianna naked in the back field again!

It has been mooted in some circles (painting and decorating mostly) that I have been banging on about the lack of water a little too much of late. Now that it is very much in the public eye and action plans are to be implemented to stop everybody getting too thirsty, I will try not to mention it again for a while.

There are some good looking birds in the fields around here, and I don’t mean Rhianna getting her kit off for another album cover with an agricultural theme. What Cock Pheasants remain following the winter’s shooting are in pretty fine fettle, tip top plumage to catch the ladies’ eye. The valley is still inundated with geese, well over a hundred Greylags and Canadas on the top water meadow; the sheep will be out there soon which could make it a tad crowded. There are also plenty of Pigeon feeding hard on the field behind our house most mornings when I draw back the curtains. Only the odd hare out there at the moment. It’s only six and a bit acres but some Springs can see a dozen Hares out there mucking about.

Earlier this week we played host to a car clad with bits of wood and a camera crew shooting the front cover for a book that is soon to be released. Most who saw the car, commented that they had owned one once and hankered after days when motoring was much simpler. Give me ABS brakes, powered steering, air conditioning and air bags any day. The memory of my first car, an 850cc minivan that we hand- painted with Hammerite green just to make sure we got all the rust, is still fresh in the memory. Brakes that must be pumped two or three times to work, sliding windows that didn’t shut, a heater that didn’t heat and a mixture of cross ply and radial tyres that drew £36, (one week’s living expenses for a student at the time) of fines in a day. The car clad with wood was plonked on the lawn and photographed with the author and a dog for most of the morning, an exhaustive process the results of which will soon be available at all well known bookstores.

To add to the car parking chaos of the day, one of our regular Grayling fishermen arrived for a last cast before the close season, at the same time as the camera crew, beautician, publisher, and wooden car man. Fresh from the Frome he had caught a fish of a lifetime earlier in the week, a 3lb 12oz Grayling that was well over 50cm long. They don’t go that big here but there are a few 2lb plus fish in the river. He bought along a film making friend who had just returned from Mahseer fishing in southern India. He is responsible for some of the better fishing programmes that have been made, including my favourite with Bob James and Chris Yates, who Paul Whitehouse said of recently:

“He’s that bloke who uses split cane everything, he’s even got split cane hair!”

There are a few fishing programmes that I find hard work, the presenter of “River monsters” paints the riverbank as a scary place to be, and if Robson Green were fishing on the opposite bank I would spend most of my fishing time firing all manner of things at him with my catapult, particularly if he took his clothes off and jumped in the swim, as he seems prone to do on occasion. Anyway “film man” and “regular”, negotiated the sprawling photo shoot. “Regular” picked up Grayling throughout the day, all to nymphs, and “film man” having bagged 60 Mahseer the previous week on baits that sounded suspiciously similar in shape and size to the fat balls on our bird feeder, took a dozen Roach to a pound and a half on trotted single maggot.
That’s it now for the Grayling, Roach Pike and Perch who will soon turn their minds to spawning. It used to be a frustrating time for me as my birthday falls on the final day of the coarse fishing season, any new tackle given as gifts would not see frontline action, only practice runs in the garden for three months until the season re opened on June 16. Nowadays stillwaters stay open throughout the year and in most cases the coarse fishing close season applies only to rivers, although there are some regional byelaws that change things in some places.

On the river the interminable battle with Crack Willow continues but I shan’t go on, needless to say it is attritional, not very pretty, but victory will be mine. The water is clear, and the first shoots of Water Celery and Ranunculus are poking through the gravel. There are some very big fish in the river although the large hen that has been on the middle bends for the past three seasons seems to have gone. Olives continue to trickle off in the early afternoon and several fish feed sporadically on the surface, nothing regular just a rise every now and again.

Late last week I was asked to look at a short stretch of the Pilhill Brook, or what’s left of it (Sorry low water’s back) A tributary of the Anton, in turn a tributary of the Test, I would be surprised if it’s still running in June when it should be fifteen feet wide and a foot deep.