James Beeson sticks to the etiquette of being vague as he writes about a trout stream worth keeping secret.
'If you don't know where it is already, I'll have to blindfold you and if we're going to fish it, you have to keep it a secret,' said Pete. It was the first time in my life I'd been sworn to secrecy in a Little Chef car park. He was joking about the blindfold, at least I think he was joking, but secrecy of fishing hotspots is a serious matter. When it comes to their favourite spots, most anglers’ lips are sealed tighter than a Welshman's Button.
Pete and I share an April birthday, mine is the 11th and his the 10th. I won't tell you who is older, another secret. We planned to fish together on the 12th, but conditions were not in our favour. Heavy rain had turned the lowland rivers into muddy brown despair, and high winds meant the moorland streams would be impossible. Despite all that, there was a spot that might be fishable.
Birthdays are difficult things. In the beginning the distance between them can seem immeasurable, and that’s frustrating because a birthday represents one of the few times of the year when presents are available. It doesn’t take long, though, for the gap between them to grow shorter. Of course time itself doesn’t alter, probably, but some weird effect takes place whereby the older you get the shorter a year seems to be. It’s a combination of the snowball effect and the distortion effect from wearing someone else’s glasses. If you dwell on it too long it is easy to become depressed, the only thing to do is forget the whole sorry businesses and go fishing.
In the West Country this last winter has been wet more than cold, up until the start of the new season. Since then, when some mild wet weather would have been welcome, it’s been cold enough to freeze the tail off an arctic monkey. Up on Dartmoor it’s been slow, active fish have been hard to find and there’s been little insect life to speak of. Fish aren’t able to regulate their body temperature, it’s linked to the water they swim in so, as with me, if it’s too cold or too hot they can become torpid and inactive. Trout like cold as a general rule, mountain streams and northern climates, I have a friend who’s much the same way. South is not a direction he would choose to travel in and southern England is more or less the limit of his effective range.
In the last few days we seem to have turned a corner, the air has been a little warmer and the wife has switched off the electric blanket. One of the downsides to living an draughty old farm cottage, you can’t keep the cold on the outside. When the sun comes out it is almost warm, the slightest taste of the summer to come, but the leaves haven’t returned to the trees yet, it is still early days.
Confidence is as important in fishing as it is in most other areas of life. The more belief you have that you’re fishing in the right place, with the right fly, and that the trout haven’t all been swept away in winter floods, then the more likely you are to be paying attention when one does appear. If you’re paying attention then you’re better prepared to react, and the more likely you are to fish well. Lack belief, lack confidence, and there’s a good chance that you’ll give up too quickly, look the wrong way at the vital moment, or just fish badly. For myself, at this time of year, I can always use a bit of confidence building, but everyone knows, even on your birthday, you can’t always get what you want.
This year my birthday present to myself was a stay at The Sea Trout Inn, Staverton and a day ticket to fish the early season sea trout hotspot at Totnes Weir Pool. Pretty self-explanatory, except that I fished at night and it wasn't hot in either sense. Knee deep in the weir pool at 2am, after another heavy rain shower made it hard to tell which end of me was wetter, I packed it in. I would have stuck it out if I'd seen or heard the slightest hint of a fish. Perhaps most tellingly I had the entire spot to myself, unusual enough with recognised hotspots and doubly so at a place where queues are not unheard of. I could at least sleep a little ahead of the next day's fishing with Pete, a short prayer to the river gods for decent conditions and it was off to bed.
The river gods are fickle. On the return across Dartmoor I could see the river was not in its best state. Where it should have tumbled, bubbling around boulders instead it frothed and foamed over the top. There were even white caps on the riffles. Higher up, the water ran clear, but high speed winds rocked the car. Not ideal conditions for any kind of fishing, let alone fly fishing. I rang Pete, he'd had word that a Somerset river might be fishable. We agreed to meet at the Little Chef near Whiddon Down.
Given the circumstances, I think I can be excused my mistake. I drove to the Little Chef near Sourton, a few miles further west. I maintain that two Little Chefs on the same ten mile stretch of road is an extravagance. We sorted things out swiftly and Pete, perhaps not trusting my ability to find his Little Chef, drove to mine. We agreed that what was required was a stretch of river close enough to its source to be running clear and sheltered enough from the wind to make casting possible. A river was suggested, a Cornish river. As we crossed the road bridge over the Tamar and into Cornwall I looked down at the water, high and brown like chocolate soup. The Romans stopped at Exeter, the Saxons at the Tamar, so the water west of here has a Celtic heart.
The river we planned to fish (I’m sorry, I can’t tell you its name) was dark and running fast, but the bottom was visible. We set about deciding how to fish. Whether to go it alone, splitting up the pools and runs between us, or tackling the water together. When I fish with a friend then I want to see them succeed, to catch fish, and have a good time. In difficult conditions, by fishing together, we could pool our effort and hopefully come away with some shared success.
Pete is an excellent angler. One who cares about the welfare of the fish as much if not more than catching them. But catching is what he does. He set up his rod, an 8' 6" Orvis Helios, with a French Nymphing rig. It's not a method I'd used or seen before, but I like new things, especially when they work. I tackled up my no-longer-in-production 7'10" Sage TXL, a rod I won in a Wild Trout Trust raffle and by far the nicest fly fishing rod I have ever cast, with the duo.
This particular stretch flows through a wooded valley with farmland on either side. The river twists and turns over shallow runs and cuts deeper pools of slacker water on its bends. On the walk downstream you could tell that even with a little colour to it, it is a cracking piece of river.
We started at a nice looking run where the seam of faster water pressed up against a slacker area of current. A classic fish holding lie, the flow of the river acting as a conveyor belt carrying food close to a fish that has less current to fight in order to stay in position. Pete went first to demonstrate the French Nymphing technique.
French Nymphing employs a long heavily tapered leader of high breaking strain. None of the traditional fly line is used and a severe taper is needed to aid casting and turnover. At the end of the taper is the indicator, a length of fluorescent monofilament. After that comes the tippet and then the nymph. As in Czech Nymphing, heavily weighted flies are used to get right down on the river bed, but unlike the Czech version, a totally drag free drift is possible. The nymphs tumble along and the indicator shows every bump, twitch, and if you're lucky, take.
It took me a while to get the hang of the shorter, sharper stroke needed to turn the leader over. On one of my better attempts, the leader twitched and I struck into a small, wild brown trout. But that was a solitary success. We fished our way upstream, it seemed the places you would normally expect fish to be were empty. The rain meant a heavier flow of water was pushing through the runs and it may have been too fast for fish to hold in comfortably. In a slower pool the indicator twitched again and a smolt was the result - the adolescent version of a salmon or sea trout before it runs to sea to fatten up.
Having tried the imitative approach without too much success, Pete thought it might be a good idea to switch to something brighter. Rather than stimulate a feeding response with an imitative pattern like a Pheasant Tail Nymph, we would try a white painted bead head, something that we hoped would provoke a reaction. At least there could be no doubt that the fish would be able to see it in the cloudier water.
The change in tactics yielded almost immediate results, not in the shape of trout but a grayling. A good size and a first for me in the West Country, a personal best from anywhere, and out of season so quickly returned. I made a mental note to look for her again after June 16th. The next fish was another grayling, of similar size and this time for Pete. Mental note underlined.
Over the course of the afternoon the water began to clear. The more I saw of it, the more it reminded me of Dartmoor's Cherrybrook. Water so clear that it's almost invisible, with clean gravels and good aquatic weed growth. The last Chalkstream before Devon is Dorset's River Frome, but this is just as good and without the crazy prices or the crowds.
The fishing picked up with the increase in visibility and a sparse hatch of grannom brought a few rises. This early in the season the chance to fish a dry fly is something to be grasped quickly before it's gone. The nymph was cut from the duo rig and we took it in turns to cast at feeding fish. The takes are lightning quick, which suggests smaller fish without the more selective habits of older, larger trout. We miss a couple of chances before connecting with one of them and bringing it to hand, it is small, but wild and wild fish are not really for measuring.
The rise is over in less than half an hour and we're back to the nymph. It's pretty well known that trout take the majority of their meals under the surface, and I know Pete is a firm believer that 'nymphing is not a crime' - no Halfordian chalkstream purity principles here, and with good reason. Taking it in turns to wash the white beaded nymph through all the likely spots, we catch a few fish between us. None of them are monsters, but considering the day began with mournful glances into swirling, turbulent water I think we have done well to find fish at all, and catch them. It does show that, with a little thought and some good local knowledge, you can nearly always find somewhere that is fishable when other rivers are blown. And it’s a timely reminder for me that, sometimes, I do know what I’m doing.
Pete dropped me back at my car near the Little Chef, Sourton, and we headed off on our separate ways. Before going home I couldn't resist a look at the Okement, my local river. The west branch of which flows through the grounds of a ruined Norman castle. Some of the boulders in the stream, those with square edges, could be bits of medieval stone work. It is quite a sight, and the river must have been an important part of life before the castle fell to ruin. An older gentleman, veteran of many birthdays, is fishing a pool that lies in the shadow of the ruined keep. I watch him for a bit but don't see him catch anything. I could ask him how the fishing is there, but if it's good he probably wouldn't tell me.
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