Yesterday, the rucksack was hastily packed and I once again threw myself at the mercy of our train system; three hours and two changes later, I was greeted by the owner of the Amberly International Guest House in Southsea. He took me to the fourth floor, and to the smallest room I have ever paid money to sleep in – fortunately, the dimensions were reflected in the price, and the breakfast I enjoyed this morning was generous.
The family have long connections to the Portsmouth and Southsea area. My father lived there as a boy, and is a life-long follower of Harry Redknap’s blue army. He (and I’m talking here of my father, not Harry) spent his early Navy life drinking and carousing with pals there, earning the improbable nickname ‘Coiled Spring’. Dad occasionally recalls this brief period of hedonism in a story about my parents’ early courting. Allegedly, mother was keen to know if she was his ‘first’. His reply, family legend has it, went along the lines of ‘I don't know, were you on Southsea Common in 1957?’
She wasn’t.
I lived in nearby Fareham for twenty years, and my brother and I had fished for pollock, pout and devilfish from South Parade Pier long as youngsters, and later watched (and played in) the annual Battle of the Bands competitions held in its ballroom. During the train journey, I had worked out that it had been a quarter of a century since I had cast a line there; re-acquaintance was long overdue.
The afternoon walk from the guest house to the pier was eventful; on Southsea Common I encountered a kite flying festival and a travelling fair, and the bandstand was surrounded by hundreds of holiday-makers enjoying a Jam tribute band thrashing out Town Called Malice; rather good they were, too. The pier itself was similarly populated, with dozens of anglers. They were an eclectic mix – families, day-trippers, hard-core bass heads, semi-feral kids, Eastern Europeans in search of fish to sell to the local hotels…twenty yards away, in the ballroom, the Southsea Blues, Folk and Roots Festival was underway. I felt a very long way from my quiet pools and glides.
The pier’s history is a fascinating one, dating back to 1879 and including a number of fires and rebuilds, one or two scandals, a military requisitioning in World War II and the use of the Gaiety Theatre for The Who’s pompous rock opera Tommy in 1974. In the interests of brevity, I shall save details for the book.
Dan’s Tackle – essentially a shed at the entrance to the pier - had no fresh bait, and precious little tackle. The proprietor had informed me, in finest Pompey terms, that due to bad weather throughout August ‘the ‘oliday season’s been fucked, mush – I ain’t bothered to get much in’. He did kit me out with mackerel feathers and a free lead weight, and with these in my hand I found a spot on the end of the pier’s lower stage. The chap next to me was reeling in garfish and mackerel at an impressive rate, and with the aid of some of his bait and a pike float that I’d serendipitously left in my trousers months ago, I joined him in the sport. My first garfish was soon writhing in my hands, and others followed.
As dusk fell, one of the Eastern Europeans landed the catch of the day – a bass approaching five pounds. This was bloodily dispatched amid great excitement. I decided to leave them all to it, and went in search of beer and food.
This being Southsea, and me being the son of the Coiled Spring himself, my search was all too successful.
Monday, 25 August 2008
Saturday, 9 August 2008
Looe sharking
Of all the trips Jon had in mind for the book, the proposed shark expedition to Looe was the one that excited me – and, if I’m honest, worried me – the most. It was certainly the one that took me furthest away from my angling comfort zone of secluded pools and vibrant rivers, in to an altogether bloodier world. It also necessitated stepping on to a boat, and being thrown around the waters of the channel, some twenty-five miles from shore. That concerned me - my track record with boat fishing is less than glamorous. There was the ill-fated barracuda incident off Florida in 1981, and the channel wreck debacle of the early nineties, and both were blighted with vomiting to a degree not seen since Linda Blair’s performance in The Exorcist.
In short, I don’t do boats. They don’t like me, and I’m not overly fond of them.
So, days before my departure to Looe I stood patiently in a queue at the Swindon branch of Boots hoping that the assistant would reach for some magic beans that could guarantee a settled stomach and flat calm seas. I came away with two wrist bands that promised to exert mystical pressure on my ying and yang, and a packet of travel pills with a picture of a boat on the front. They came with a warning about possible drowsiness. My smiling assistant had also suggested that I avoid alcohol and rich food for twenty-four hours before the trip. I accepted this advice in good faith, and promised myself I would adhere to it. I really did.
Looe’s shark angling history is a long one, but its place as the home of English shark fishing dates back only to 1953, when the Shark Angling Club of Great Britain was founded there by Brigadier J. L. Caunter CBE MC. Until recently, it had met in what is now a pub called the Salutation, but the club has recently moved to its own shore-front office. Half a century ago, boats could be hired for £8, and a season’s catches often numbered in excess of 3000 fish. Holidaymakers would wait for the evening to witness the catches being weighed on the quay, but modern sensibilities dictate that specimens are measured and released. In 1958, the tally was 5,744. In the twenty-first century, there are fewer sharks, and fewer boats trying to catch them. A typical season sees two to three hundred blues caught between May and September.
I travelled by train, arriving on the little Looe Valley Line from Liskeard. This final part of the journey was serene – the last mile runs alongside the estuary, and salt air soon filled the carriage. My host in Looe was Cornish Dave and his family. Dave lives in a charming Victorian house overlooking the harbour, and directly opposite the Shark Angling Club of Great Britain’s HQ. We’d met once before, introduced by a mutual friend at a Southampton football match which had ended disastrously – Saints games often do. Perhaps to cancel out our inauspicious history, Dave marched me straight to a pub with offers of Cornish Beer. By the time we arrived at his house an hour later, we’d been in some other pubs, and I was closely acquainted with the local ale. We were both a little shame-faced when Dave’s wife Elizabeth reminded us that there was a barbeque to attend. More alcohol, and industrial quantities of rich food, followed. I imagined the Boots assistant tutting furiously, but she hadn’t reckoned on the formidable allure of West Country hospitality.
The following morning, we met our skipper at Shark HQ. Mally Toms is one of a small group of skippers who run boats out of the harbour on behalf of the SACGB, and his credentials are second to none. He told me that he’d been fishing these waters for over forty years, and it would be fair to say he has the leather-skinned no-nonsense shark hunter demeanour and ‘there be monsters out there’ patter down to a tee. Throughout our long day, he never did spit tobacco towards the horizon and utter the immortal line ‘I think we’re going to need a bigger boat’, but it felt like he might at any moment.
We left Looe harbour at 9 and a two hour journey in to the deep water 25 miles from shore followed. At anchor, the first job was to catch some mackerel, and these were as obliging as ever. There were five anglers aboard – Dave, his son Chris, a chap whose name never emerged but who Mally christened Quasimodo, and a long-time shark man named Tom, who bore the scars of more than a few battles.
Mally set up five shark rods, each with large floats and 12 foot wire traces. Tom, a veteran of this sort of thing, arranged the drawing of lots, and we were allocated a rod each. By this point, I should add, I had thrown up the morning’s scrambled eggs, and much of the previous day’s feast, but was feeling relatively good. Chris was suffering badly, Dave was bounding round the boat like he’d done it all his life. Quasi and Tom were similarly nonchalant, though the former warned me that – in spite of his years working on tugs – he was highly likely to join the ranks of the infirm. It was, Mally assured us, a simple Force 4 to 5, and we should expect action imminently.
Imminence, in shark fishing terms, can mean anything. On that day, it meant 4 hours of inactivity (if the occasional bout of mal-de-mer is conveniently forgotten). In the final hour, Dave’s rod (number five in Tom’s lottery) screamed in to action, as something peeled a hundred yards of line off the old Penn reel in seconds.
‘Shark’ shouted Mally.
‘Shiiiit!’ said I.
Chris threw up, and Dave grabbed the rod.
This was Dave’s first shark, and the next twenty minutes were a tense affair. Eventually (and I will spare you the blow-by-blow details and Hemingway-esque dramas), a blue shark of 7 feet in length had joined us in the boat.
I’d not seen a shark in a boat before, and claim no expertise, but this was one was unequivocally pissed off about being there, spitting the hook out and sabotaging our efforts to photograph it, measure it, tag it and release it.
Within a minute or two, it was spiralling back in to the depths, more or less unscathed. Dave was delighted, and the collective spirit on the boat was joyous. Just seeing one of these remarkable creatures is special, and the identity of the captor almost irrelevant.
At least, that’s what four of us told ourselves. Dave just grinned.
The journey back was quicker, a little over an hour-and-a-half, and we arrived in Looe with the shark flag flying. I’d turned from green to pink, and even Chris had regained his usual pallor. A large cigar was lit, and the wrist bands discarded. My ying and yang had let me down miserably, and the predicted drowsiness had been a chore, but the joy of seeing Dave’s big blue, and the knowledge that its capture necessitated the consumption more Cornish Beer that night was ample compensation.
In short, I don’t do boats. They don’t like me, and I’m not overly fond of them.
So, days before my departure to Looe I stood patiently in a queue at the Swindon branch of Boots hoping that the assistant would reach for some magic beans that could guarantee a settled stomach and flat calm seas. I came away with two wrist bands that promised to exert mystical pressure on my ying and yang, and a packet of travel pills with a picture of a boat on the front. They came with a warning about possible drowsiness. My smiling assistant had also suggested that I avoid alcohol and rich food for twenty-four hours before the trip. I accepted this advice in good faith, and promised myself I would adhere to it. I really did.
Looe’s shark angling history is a long one, but its place as the home of English shark fishing dates back only to 1953, when the Shark Angling Club of Great Britain was founded there by Brigadier J. L. Caunter CBE MC. Until recently, it had met in what is now a pub called the Salutation, but the club has recently moved to its own shore-front office. Half a century ago, boats could be hired for £8, and a season’s catches often numbered in excess of 3000 fish. Holidaymakers would wait for the evening to witness the catches being weighed on the quay, but modern sensibilities dictate that specimens are measured and released. In 1958, the tally was 5,744. In the twenty-first century, there are fewer sharks, and fewer boats trying to catch them. A typical season sees two to three hundred blues caught between May and September.
I travelled by train, arriving on the little Looe Valley Line from Liskeard. This final part of the journey was serene – the last mile runs alongside the estuary, and salt air soon filled the carriage. My host in Looe was Cornish Dave and his family. Dave lives in a charming Victorian house overlooking the harbour, and directly opposite the Shark Angling Club of Great Britain’s HQ. We’d met once before, introduced by a mutual friend at a Southampton football match which had ended disastrously – Saints games often do. Perhaps to cancel out our inauspicious history, Dave marched me straight to a pub with offers of Cornish Beer. By the time we arrived at his house an hour later, we’d been in some other pubs, and I was closely acquainted with the local ale. We were both a little shame-faced when Dave’s wife Elizabeth reminded us that there was a barbeque to attend. More alcohol, and industrial quantities of rich food, followed. I imagined the Boots assistant tutting furiously, but she hadn’t reckoned on the formidable allure of West Country hospitality.
The following morning, we met our skipper at Shark HQ. Mally Toms is one of a small group of skippers who run boats out of the harbour on behalf of the SACGB, and his credentials are second to none. He told me that he’d been fishing these waters for over forty years, and it would be fair to say he has the leather-skinned no-nonsense shark hunter demeanour and ‘there be monsters out there’ patter down to a tee. Throughout our long day, he never did spit tobacco towards the horizon and utter the immortal line ‘I think we’re going to need a bigger boat’, but it felt like he might at any moment.
We left Looe harbour at 9 and a two hour journey in to the deep water 25 miles from shore followed. At anchor, the first job was to catch some mackerel, and these were as obliging as ever. There were five anglers aboard – Dave, his son Chris, a chap whose name never emerged but who Mally christened Quasimodo, and a long-time shark man named Tom, who bore the scars of more than a few battles.
Mally set up five shark rods, each with large floats and 12 foot wire traces. Tom, a veteran of this sort of thing, arranged the drawing of lots, and we were allocated a rod each. By this point, I should add, I had thrown up the morning’s scrambled eggs, and much of the previous day’s feast, but was feeling relatively good. Chris was suffering badly, Dave was bounding round the boat like he’d done it all his life. Quasi and Tom were similarly nonchalant, though the former warned me that – in spite of his years working on tugs – he was highly likely to join the ranks of the infirm. It was, Mally assured us, a simple Force 4 to 5, and we should expect action imminently.
Imminence, in shark fishing terms, can mean anything. On that day, it meant 4 hours of inactivity (if the occasional bout of mal-de-mer is conveniently forgotten). In the final hour, Dave’s rod (number five in Tom’s lottery) screamed in to action, as something peeled a hundred yards of line off the old Penn reel in seconds.
‘Shark’ shouted Mally.
‘Shiiiit!’ said I.
Chris threw up, and Dave grabbed the rod.
This was Dave’s first shark, and the next twenty minutes were a tense affair. Eventually (and I will spare you the blow-by-blow details and Hemingway-esque dramas), a blue shark of 7 feet in length had joined us in the boat.
I’d not seen a shark in a boat before, and claim no expertise, but this was one was unequivocally pissed off about being there, spitting the hook out and sabotaging our efforts to photograph it, measure it, tag it and release it.
Within a minute or two, it was spiralling back in to the depths, more or less unscathed. Dave was delighted, and the collective spirit on the boat was joyous. Just seeing one of these remarkable creatures is special, and the identity of the captor almost irrelevant.
At least, that’s what four of us told ourselves. Dave just grinned.
The journey back was quicker, a little over an hour-and-a-half, and we arrived in Looe with the shark flag flying. I’d turned from green to pink, and even Chris had regained his usual pallor. A large cigar was lit, and the wrist bands discarded. My ying and yang had let me down miserably, and the predicted drowsiness had been a chore, but the joy of seeing Dave’s big blue, and the knowledge that its capture necessitated the consumption more Cornish Beer that night was ample compensation.
Tuesday, 5 August 2008
The Peacock Hotel
What follows is a truncated early draft of Chapter 1.
The first day of the first excursion started early, on the Tuesday following a May bank holiday. To make matters even less convenient, it was raining and I was in Swindon. By lunchtime I was expected by Jon and a friend of his in one of Derbyshire’s oldest fishing inns, the Peacock Hotel at Rowsley. A well-organised Victorian would no doubt have shown greater powers of anticipation and journeyed the night before, but modern bank holiday ticket prices dictated otherwise – no Privilege Ticket for me, or anyone else for that matter. Nevertheless, on Platform 3 at a little after 6.30 a.m., I was a sure as I could be that the day would only get better.
The first train took me as far as Cheltenham Spa, where there was to be a 40-minute wait. I was keen to absorb the best that culture could offer in such a short stop, and so followed the signs outside the station to Rick’s Café, on an industrial estate behind the old Midland Hotel – once a stopping point for weary rail travellers, but now a pub boasting Live TV Football and a Games Room. Rick’s takeaway sausage bap and coffee was as exquisite as one could expect for £2.10, and perhaps even a little better than that. Its peptic side effects were still with me two hours later, when my second train of the day pulled in at Derby.
At this point, it occurred to me that I’d taken a circuitous angular route thus far, that I’d spent twice as much on tickets as I would have done on petrol for the car, and that the Victorians were indeed fortunate to have had access to an emerging, ambitious programme of public transport. It was barely noon, and already I’d crossed rivers as diverse as the Bristol Avon, the Severn, the Warwickshire Avon, the Dove and the Trent. I’d fished all of them in the past, usually for barbel and pike, and always with the comfort of a car to take me there. The perspective from a train’s carriage felt somehow different, though at this point in the adventure it was too early to articulate what that difference was.
It did occur to me - with far greater clarity - that it was still raining. I bought a rejuvenating coffee from a machine on the platform at Derby, but it tasted like floodwater. No matter – there were clearer skies in the North West, and the prospect of wild trout began to grip.
A third, brief journey took me as far as Matlock, and it was here that the carefully-planned first day began to unravel. The intention had been to dash from Matlock Station over the road to a private steam railway running alongside the Derwent, and make my dramatic entrance to Rowsley on Peak Rails’ WD150 Royal Pioneer – a proper, puffing behemoth boasting an Austerity 0-6-0 wheelbase and saddle tank design, according to the guidebooks.
Sadly, there appears to be something of a schism between BR at Matlock station and the enthusiasts trying to revive the old Derwent Line. The former were less than helpful in offering directions to the latter, and I missed the Royal Pioneer by a matter of minutes. A handwritten sign at Matlock Station made it abundantly clear that they had nothing to do with the steam service located ‘over the road opposite Sainsbury’s’. These directions were not as precise as I required, and a less charitable soul might regard them as wilfully inaccurate too. A ten-minute jog along the dual carriageway (complete with rucksack, trout rod and net) finally brought me to the riverside station, but by then the Royal Pioneer was building up its head of steam half a mile away. My eventual arrival in Rowsley – sat in the ‘pushchairs only’ section of a Transpeak bus, next to a hyper-ventilating old boy who wanted to know whether I’d ever caught ‘any of them babelfish below that bridge at Matlock’ – was less than momentous.
It was, of course, still raining when I walked in to the Peacock Hotel and met Jon and Richard. Both had steaming mugs of coffee in front of them, and were busily playing with cameras and looking at the photographs they’d just taken of the Royal Pioneer. I was desperate for some lunch, and perhaps a beer. Apparently, neither was possible; we were going fishing.
We made a brief detour to Richard’s house on the way. I liked him immediately – fifty-something, obsessed with trout fishing, a former racer of very fast cars, and with the kind of subtly outrageous humour that could offend if you were really paying attention – he was clearly a chap with his priorities in the right order. The river ran along bottom of his garden, and at least one room in the house had been consumed by old and rare fishing books.
The Peacock Hotel water on the Derbyshire Wye has been a historic trout fishery since the early 1800s. The river itself, which encompasses 7 ½ miles of the Wye and shorter stretches of its two tributaries, the Lathkill and Bradford, has been part of the Haddon Estate for some 800 years. Day tickets have been available from the Peacock Hotel or directly from the estate since 1820, and the fishery has been dry-fly only since 1865. The current Head River Keeper, Warren Slaney, practices a policy of wild fish only; no trout or eggs have been introduced to the river since 2003, and my hosts assured me that the browns were of outstanding quality. The Wye is unique in that it is the only English river where rainbow trout thrive naturally. Of course, they were deliberately introduced at one time, but this stocking ceased years ago and since then they have bred successfully, and now live alongside the browns and grayling. If I caught one, Richard told me, it would be unlike any triploid stockie I’d ever encountered.
The water available to us that afternoon amounted to three furlongs of wonderful trout stream. Richard, a regular rod there, walked us along the entire beat, pointing out likely lies and the scenes of past triumphs and calamities. Everywhere, the effort of the river keeper to maintain a rich habitat for trout and other creatures was wonderfully apparent. Large numbers of wild fish rose in the clear, ranunculus-rich water; the air fizzed with blue-winged olives, green drakes and a few black gnats. I didn’t think we could fail to catch trout.
Richard advised that we tackle up long leaders – 12ft or more – with 5lb points. It was up to us whether we chose to match the olives or the drakes. The riffles that were a feature of every pool made drift and drag a problem, but a good cast and mend stood a chance of receiving some attention. My first cast fell short, but my second and third both elicited confident takes. I missed both. Richard and Jon, who had yet to tackle up, were highly amused.
Missed takes became a feature of the day; these were canny, educated trout. In 1882, Manchester angler George Sumner described the Rowsley trout thus:
They are thoroughly acquainted with the curious vagaries of an artificial fly injudiciously handled, and they require careful humouring and careful stalking.
Old George was right, and it became clear that the trout had done little to lose their fickle reputation in the subsequent one hundred-and-twenty years. Many of the takes came short, the trout inspecting without taking.
That said, we were on a well-populated trout stream towards the end of May, with two hatches occurring simultaneously. We caught trout. Richard landed the first, and biggest, on a modified Kite’s Imperial. It was a heavily-spotted brown with a distinctive coral edge to its fins and bright red spots towards its tail and on the tip of its adipose. We didn’t weight it, but it was probably over two pounds.
Soon afterwards, I lost one and landed my first. It was a rainbow, perhaps half the size of Richard’s brownie, and resembled nothing I’d ever caught from stocked stillwaters. The depth of its colours, the larger fully-formed fins, the wily aggression and wild demeanour all impressed. I wanted another, and shortly afterwards my wish was granted. Jon, meanwhile, was hooking his share. I had no idea whether the day would provide Jon with the kind of material he sought for the book, but I could tell he was having fun.
Bankside tea and cakes galvanised us as the sun dropped low and the drizzle returned, and in the final hour I managed to hook and hang on to one of the brown trout, using Richard’s cane rod. It took a locally-tied green drake, swallowing it confidently in a momentary whirlpool, and zipping upstream and down for a minute before surrendering to the net. We admired it briefly, marvelling once more at the red spots and coral-tipped fins. The urge to stay longer was overwhelming, but there was a schedule of sorts to keep to, and supper waiting in Shropshire. More importantly, there was a flooded valley, more trout and a few Welsh ghosts to visit the following day.
The first day of the first excursion started early, on the Tuesday following a May bank holiday. To make matters even less convenient, it was raining and I was in Swindon. By lunchtime I was expected by Jon and a friend of his in one of Derbyshire’s oldest fishing inns, the Peacock Hotel at Rowsley. A well-organised Victorian would no doubt have shown greater powers of anticipation and journeyed the night before, but modern bank holiday ticket prices dictated otherwise – no Privilege Ticket for me, or anyone else for that matter. Nevertheless, on Platform 3 at a little after 6.30 a.m., I was a sure as I could be that the day would only get better.
The first train took me as far as Cheltenham Spa, where there was to be a 40-minute wait. I was keen to absorb the best that culture could offer in such a short stop, and so followed the signs outside the station to Rick’s Café, on an industrial estate behind the old Midland Hotel – once a stopping point for weary rail travellers, but now a pub boasting Live TV Football and a Games Room. Rick’s takeaway sausage bap and coffee was as exquisite as one could expect for £2.10, and perhaps even a little better than that. Its peptic side effects were still with me two hours later, when my second train of the day pulled in at Derby.
At this point, it occurred to me that I’d taken a circuitous angular route thus far, that I’d spent twice as much on tickets as I would have done on petrol for the car, and that the Victorians were indeed fortunate to have had access to an emerging, ambitious programme of public transport. It was barely noon, and already I’d crossed rivers as diverse as the Bristol Avon, the Severn, the Warwickshire Avon, the Dove and the Trent. I’d fished all of them in the past, usually for barbel and pike, and always with the comfort of a car to take me there. The perspective from a train’s carriage felt somehow different, though at this point in the adventure it was too early to articulate what that difference was.
It did occur to me - with far greater clarity - that it was still raining. I bought a rejuvenating coffee from a machine on the platform at Derby, but it tasted like floodwater. No matter – there were clearer skies in the North West, and the prospect of wild trout began to grip.
A third, brief journey took me as far as Matlock, and it was here that the carefully-planned first day began to unravel. The intention had been to dash from Matlock Station over the road to a private steam railway running alongside the Derwent, and make my dramatic entrance to Rowsley on Peak Rails’ WD150 Royal Pioneer – a proper, puffing behemoth boasting an Austerity 0-6-0 wheelbase and saddle tank design, according to the guidebooks.
Sadly, there appears to be something of a schism between BR at Matlock station and the enthusiasts trying to revive the old Derwent Line. The former were less than helpful in offering directions to the latter, and I missed the Royal Pioneer by a matter of minutes. A handwritten sign at Matlock Station made it abundantly clear that they had nothing to do with the steam service located ‘over the road opposite Sainsbury’s’. These directions were not as precise as I required, and a less charitable soul might regard them as wilfully inaccurate too. A ten-minute jog along the dual carriageway (complete with rucksack, trout rod and net) finally brought me to the riverside station, but by then the Royal Pioneer was building up its head of steam half a mile away. My eventual arrival in Rowsley – sat in the ‘pushchairs only’ section of a Transpeak bus, next to a hyper-ventilating old boy who wanted to know whether I’d ever caught ‘any of them babelfish below that bridge at Matlock’ – was less than momentous.
It was, of course, still raining when I walked in to the Peacock Hotel and met Jon and Richard. Both had steaming mugs of coffee in front of them, and were busily playing with cameras and looking at the photographs they’d just taken of the Royal Pioneer. I was desperate for some lunch, and perhaps a beer. Apparently, neither was possible; we were going fishing.
We made a brief detour to Richard’s house on the way. I liked him immediately – fifty-something, obsessed with trout fishing, a former racer of very fast cars, and with the kind of subtly outrageous humour that could offend if you were really paying attention – he was clearly a chap with his priorities in the right order. The river ran along bottom of his garden, and at least one room in the house had been consumed by old and rare fishing books.
The Peacock Hotel water on the Derbyshire Wye has been a historic trout fishery since the early 1800s. The river itself, which encompasses 7 ½ miles of the Wye and shorter stretches of its two tributaries, the Lathkill and Bradford, has been part of the Haddon Estate for some 800 years. Day tickets have been available from the Peacock Hotel or directly from the estate since 1820, and the fishery has been dry-fly only since 1865. The current Head River Keeper, Warren Slaney, practices a policy of wild fish only; no trout or eggs have been introduced to the river since 2003, and my hosts assured me that the browns were of outstanding quality. The Wye is unique in that it is the only English river where rainbow trout thrive naturally. Of course, they were deliberately introduced at one time, but this stocking ceased years ago and since then they have bred successfully, and now live alongside the browns and grayling. If I caught one, Richard told me, it would be unlike any triploid stockie I’d ever encountered.
The water available to us that afternoon amounted to three furlongs of wonderful trout stream. Richard, a regular rod there, walked us along the entire beat, pointing out likely lies and the scenes of past triumphs and calamities. Everywhere, the effort of the river keeper to maintain a rich habitat for trout and other creatures was wonderfully apparent. Large numbers of wild fish rose in the clear, ranunculus-rich water; the air fizzed with blue-winged olives, green drakes and a few black gnats. I didn’t think we could fail to catch trout.
Richard advised that we tackle up long leaders – 12ft or more – with 5lb points. It was up to us whether we chose to match the olives or the drakes. The riffles that were a feature of every pool made drift and drag a problem, but a good cast and mend stood a chance of receiving some attention. My first cast fell short, but my second and third both elicited confident takes. I missed both. Richard and Jon, who had yet to tackle up, were highly amused.
Missed takes became a feature of the day; these were canny, educated trout. In 1882, Manchester angler George Sumner described the Rowsley trout thus:
They are thoroughly acquainted with the curious vagaries of an artificial fly injudiciously handled, and they require careful humouring and careful stalking.
Old George was right, and it became clear that the trout had done little to lose their fickle reputation in the subsequent one hundred-and-twenty years. Many of the takes came short, the trout inspecting without taking.
That said, we were on a well-populated trout stream towards the end of May, with two hatches occurring simultaneously. We caught trout. Richard landed the first, and biggest, on a modified Kite’s Imperial. It was a heavily-spotted brown with a distinctive coral edge to its fins and bright red spots towards its tail and on the tip of its adipose. We didn’t weight it, but it was probably over two pounds.
Soon afterwards, I lost one and landed my first. It was a rainbow, perhaps half the size of Richard’s brownie, and resembled nothing I’d ever caught from stocked stillwaters. The depth of its colours, the larger fully-formed fins, the wily aggression and wild demeanour all impressed. I wanted another, and shortly afterwards my wish was granted. Jon, meanwhile, was hooking his share. I had no idea whether the day would provide Jon with the kind of material he sought for the book, but I could tell he was having fun.
Bankside tea and cakes galvanised us as the sun dropped low and the drizzle returned, and in the final hour I managed to hook and hang on to one of the brown trout, using Richard’s cane rod. It took a locally-tied green drake, swallowing it confidently in a momentary whirlpool, and zipping upstream and down for a minute before surrendering to the net. We admired it briefly, marvelling once more at the red spots and coral-tipped fins. The urge to stay longer was overwhelming, but there was a schedule of sorts to keep to, and supper waiting in Shropshire. More importantly, there was a flooded valley, more trout and a few Welsh ghosts to visit the following day.
A summary of early journeys
I mentioned in my ‘welcome’ post that I have already made a few tentative journeys, and some of these will doubtless appear in the final book. For now, the following is a brief summary of where rail and rod have taken me so far.
The Derbyshire Wye in May was magnificent, Blenheim Palace and the Thames in June equally so (but devoid, on my visits, of any notable fish). At the end of the day on the locks at Marlow and Hurley, my host took me to a famous old pub near Twyford where Charlie Cassey’s sixteen pound barbel sits in a case above the fireplace. It was a fish I’d learnt a great deal about during the writing of A Can of Worms, but it was the highlight of my day to finally put a face and fins to the old photographs. It was also some 15lbs heavier than any other fish, live or stuffed, that we’d seen that day.
The Royalty was testing, but two days in the Top Weir with my good friend Chris Quinn rewarded us with good roach, dace and chub, a handful of gudgeon and a lost barbel of unknown proportions. I will expand on this rain-sodden, sun-drenched adventure in a chapter of its own.
Lake Vyrnwy was as indulgent and exquisite as any well-heeled Victorian trout-fisher might reasonably expect. We caught rainbow trout, ate copiously, and discovered a little of the lake’s remarkable history through the archives kept at the hotel. Again, the story merits a full retelling in the eventual book.
I have just returned today from Looe, where Cornish Dave and I spent a long day in the company of Mally Toms, one of the local sharking skippers. Mally lives up to every imaginable shark skipper stereotype, and demonstrated an ability to mercilessly take the piss out of anyone whose queasiness at sea got the better of them.
I’m just glad I wasn’t the only one…
When Dave finally, at the death of the day, hooked his monster blue, I expected Mally to spit tobacco at the horizon and exclaim ‘we’re going to need a bigger boat’. He didn’t, but I bet he thought about it. I’ll write it up fully for this blog when my stomach lining settles down.
For now, I shall post a truncated sample of Chapter 1 – the Wye adventure – as a taste of things to come.
The Derbyshire Wye in May was magnificent, Blenheim Palace and the Thames in June equally so (but devoid, on my visits, of any notable fish). At the end of the day on the locks at Marlow and Hurley, my host took me to a famous old pub near Twyford where Charlie Cassey’s sixteen pound barbel sits in a case above the fireplace. It was a fish I’d learnt a great deal about during the writing of A Can of Worms, but it was the highlight of my day to finally put a face and fins to the old photographs. It was also some 15lbs heavier than any other fish, live or stuffed, that we’d seen that day.
The Royalty was testing, but two days in the Top Weir with my good friend Chris Quinn rewarded us with good roach, dace and chub, a handful of gudgeon and a lost barbel of unknown proportions. I will expand on this rain-sodden, sun-drenched adventure in a chapter of its own.
Lake Vyrnwy was as indulgent and exquisite as any well-heeled Victorian trout-fisher might reasonably expect. We caught rainbow trout, ate copiously, and discovered a little of the lake’s remarkable history through the archives kept at the hotel. Again, the story merits a full retelling in the eventual book.
I have just returned today from Looe, where Cornish Dave and I spent a long day in the company of Mally Toms, one of the local sharking skippers. Mally lives up to every imaginable shark skipper stereotype, and demonstrated an ability to mercilessly take the piss out of anyone whose queasiness at sea got the better of them.
I’m just glad I wasn’t the only one…
When Dave finally, at the death of the day, hooked his monster blue, I expected Mally to spit tobacco at the horizon and exclaim ‘we’re going to need a bigger boat’. He didn’t, but I bet he thought about it. I’ll write it up fully for this blog when my stomach lining settles down.
For now, I shall post a truncated sample of Chapter 1 – the Wye adventure – as a taste of things to come.
Saturday, 2 August 2008
welcome
A Train to Catch began as a conversation with Jon Ward-Allen, during a coffee break at a carp fishing show two years ago. I was deeply immersed in barbel fishing history at the time, putting the finishing touches to my first book for Medlar, A Can of Worms. Jon suggested that I might like to retrace the steps of some of the Victorian anglers who had used their Anglers Privilege Tickets to travel along the Thames - and to Scotland, Cornwall and elsewhere – in search of fish. I liked the idea very much, but was too stricken with barbel mania to pursue it.
Now, with A Can of Worms gathering dust on the remainder shelves, we have decided to follow it up. Furthermore, Jon suggested I ‘blog’ the evolution of this new book, offering glimpses of the journeys made, the fish caught and a few of the juicier anecdotes this sort of adventure inevitably throws up.
The trips won’t be completed as a single event; the Victorians wouldn’t have done it like that, and I simply can’t afford to; the need to teach History to the ASBO generation of Swindon in term-time is paramount if the mortgage is to be paid, and penury avoided. It should also be pointed out that none of these trips will be of the big ticket ‘destination’ variety. No Alaska, no Kola Peninsula, no Cauvery Mahseer – it’s my view that, tempting as these places are, a lifetime’s worth of fishing adventures can be had within these islands.
I’ve made five excursions so far – to the Royalty Fishery at Christchurch, the Derbyshire Wye, Blenheim Palace Lake, Lake Vyrnwy and the River Thames. I’ve tried, whenever possible, to travel by train, but have so far also relied briefly upon buses, shank’s pony and a Fiat that couldn’t tackle steep hills. Accounts of these will appear shortly.
Tomorrow, I shall travel to Looe (by train, of course) in search of shark. Later in the year, there will be bass, pike, mullet, salmon and Windermere char. All triumphs and disasters will be recorded here – so do log on from time to time, and feel free to comment as caustically as you wish!
Welcome to A Train to Catch. I hope you enjoy the ride.
JB
Now, with A Can of Worms gathering dust on the remainder shelves, we have decided to follow it up. Furthermore, Jon suggested I ‘blog’ the evolution of this new book, offering glimpses of the journeys made, the fish caught and a few of the juicier anecdotes this sort of adventure inevitably throws up.
The trips won’t be completed as a single event; the Victorians wouldn’t have done it like that, and I simply can’t afford to; the need to teach History to the ASBO generation of Swindon in term-time is paramount if the mortgage is to be paid, and penury avoided. It should also be pointed out that none of these trips will be of the big ticket ‘destination’ variety. No Alaska, no Kola Peninsula, no Cauvery Mahseer – it’s my view that, tempting as these places are, a lifetime’s worth of fishing adventures can be had within these islands.
I’ve made five excursions so far – to the Royalty Fishery at Christchurch, the Derbyshire Wye, Blenheim Palace Lake, Lake Vyrnwy and the River Thames. I’ve tried, whenever possible, to travel by train, but have so far also relied briefly upon buses, shank’s pony and a Fiat that couldn’t tackle steep hills. Accounts of these will appear shortly.
Tomorrow, I shall travel to Looe (by train, of course) in search of shark. Later in the year, there will be bass, pike, mullet, salmon and Windermere char. All triumphs and disasters will be recorded here – so do log on from time to time, and feel free to comment as caustically as you wish!
Welcome to A Train to Catch. I hope you enjoy the ride.
JB
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