‘You can’t choose where to live based on fishing,’ my brother said to me when I explained why I was leaving London and moving to Devon. I thought the same in the beginning, that fishing was something you made the most of when you were there rather than something to build into the fabric of your life. I’ve changed my mind, and a whole lot else along with it.
As I was driving down the M4, with all my belongings stuffed inside a clapped out VW Polo that I’d bought the day before, I was left to reflect on my time in London. In the last ten years I’d graduated from University, worked my way to a well paid, self-employed career, given it up to study for an MA, got married, and graduated again. In between, I went fishing.
Scattered around London are plenty of reservoirs and smaller stillwaters and a good few of them are open for fly fishing. It is pretty well established that every fisherman has his own reasons for fishing, and every fly fisherman has his preferences.
My preference is for rivers and in London that is a far more limited resource. Of course there’s the bloody big brown one in the middle, but that’s not suited to the fly. I had some good days on the Wandle and the Chess, both chalk streams no less, but it was never perfect.
A great deal of hard work has gone into restoring the Wandle from the open sewer it was in the 70s and that work has really paid off as the improvement is astronomical. The river has true fishing pedigree as the place Nelson learnt to cast with his one remaining arm after losing the other to the French at Santa Cruz.
A little further out, but still inside the M25, is the River Chess. The Chess is a lovely river, and for me fishing it was extra special as my family originates from Rickmansworth through which it flows. I once caught a fine 10” brownie a special moment in my fishing life that felt something akin to the return of the sea trout to its natal river to spawn.
It is said of London that you are never more than six feet from a rat. Worse than that from a fishing point of view is that you never seem to be more than five minutes from another person. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with other people when in their natural habitat, some of them I even quite like. I just don’t want them around me when I’m fishing, walking their dogs or their children, standing in the way, asking me if I’ve caught anything yet. I had to get away and find a place with more rivers and less people, to continue as I was would have been akin to masochism. I weighed anchor on that VW and set sail for the South West.
‘Why Devon?’ is a question I’ve been asked by some of my London friends. I don’t have a satisfactory answer. At least I don’t have an answer that satisfies them. OK so we know I wanted better fishing, but I could have found that in Scotland, Wales, the North East, almost anywhere in fact. The answer is threefold. Firstly, I am not the first of my kin to make a home on the South Devon coast. My great grandfather, George William Beeson, left Rickmansworth behind and set up a hotel in Torquay. Then the First World War intervened, he survived the end of the conflict only to die from the long term effect of his injuries, in 1929. He’s buried in Paignton Cemetery so I have blood in the ground here. The second reason is that some old London friends of mine moved to Devon not long after they got married, so I would at least have someone to talk to if the local community shunned me completely, but the third reason is by far the most important.
When I was 17 I got lost on Dartmoor. The Duke of Edinburgh expedition I was in ran foul of a classic Hound of the Baskervilles fog. It’s the only time I’ve known the expression ‘I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face’ to be the literal truth. To cap it off, no one had told us that, close beneath its surface of peat, Dartmoor is mostly granite. Granite is magnetic. Granite plays havoc with a conventional compass. I think we walked for the best part of six hours before we realised we were travelling in a large circle. At which point it started to rain, great sheets of water hammered us from all sides and I began to form the impression that the very landscape was trying to kill me. I’ve loved the place ever since.
In the past all my fishing had been done in short bursts, I had never had the time to justify a season ticket. Now that I had moved to Devon I had both the time and the opportunity, it was almost too much. Choice is the enemy of decision and there is a great deal of choice in places to fish, even if you restrict yourself to rivers as I do, and all the rivers have different characters.
I spent a lot of happy hours in the depth of my imagination, particularly as I picked up a few temporary work assignments, fishing the waters of the Crediton Fly Fishing Club, the Upper Teign Fishing Association, or the Westcountry Angling Passport. In the end, surprising no one, I bought a brown trout season on Dartmoor. The Duchy of Cornwall ticket set me back £70, so cheap it almost felt like poaching.
As much as it is accepted that a fly fisherman enjoys a challenge, it is generally also said that most people don’t like change. Yet variety is a good thing, hard to have the one without the other I would have thought. As it happens I like both, and the great thing about the fishing on Dartmoor is that there is plenty of variety. My £70 gave me access to eight rivers and brooks including the main branches, east and west, of the River Dart before they become one at Dartmeet.
It was a new experience for me, being able to jump in the car and go fishing without having to buy or book first, and having seven months to fish the same patch and watch the landscape change with the seasons. It was a little unfortunate that I didn’t get off to the best of starts.
Being the sort of chap who enjoys symbolic gestures I was always going to fish the first and last days of the season regardless of the conditions. With hindsight it was a mistake to open the season on the lower reaches of the West Dart. The logic I used was that more water must mean more fish and so a better chance of catching. What I failed to consider was that more water would also be colder and mid-March is almost winter. I blanked. When next season comes around I think I’ll start off on the East Dart which seems to hold more brownies, despite the fact (or perhaps because) it’s a less significant salmon and sea trout river.
Confidence is everything in fishing. If you don’t believe what your doing will catch fish then you’re probably not going to be concentrating properly and that means you’re going to miss takes, sometimes without even knowing it. I knew that March fishing, in less than ideal weather, would be tough but that didn’t stop a little nagging doubt from forming in my mind; had somebody hidden all the fish? The best way to dispel those doubts was to break my duck, and I did that on the East Dart a week later. Things really got going from then on.
I fished a little of the Teign and the Tamar last season too, and if I’m honest I caught more fish in those sessions than on Dartmoor, but the moorland fishing has a wild remoteness that those other rivers lack. I don’t mind catching fewer fish (as long as I catch some fish) if the landscape is beautiful.
If you spent last year in the UK then I don’t need to tell you it was a wet summer. On more than one occasion I arrived at the main river to find it in flood, now I’d read that fish will seek shelter in tributaries under those conditions but I’d never had the chance to test it out, I certainly got the chance last summer and I can confirm that it is indeed true. There is something very satisfying about learning something and seeing it work, even more so when the reward comes in the shape of a fat Dartmoor brownie. The Brown Trout of Dartmoor are particularly beautiful, but I suppose I’m biased in that respect.
Aside from the Cherrybrook and the parts of the East and West Darts that are crossed by bridges most of the best fishing comes at the end of a long walk. And that means a lot less people. For someone who had come from the most populous city in Europe, that was fantastic. As I fished around I think I only saw two or three other fisherman all season. At the same time, and as my skills improved, a new challenge formed in my mind. I wanted to catch a reasonable sized trout from all the feeder streams. At this point I’d already had red letter days on the Swincombe and Blackbrook but I knew the super tight confines of the Stannonbrook would prove a more difficult proposition, and the Cowsic, which runs entirely through the high moorland, would be different again.
I found that the trout of Dartmoor aren’t as selective as their better fed cousins but they are far more easily spooked. If you can present a fly that is a reasonable imitation of something that might be available to eat then the chances are a fish will take it. However if you are the least bit careless in that presentation then the chances are there will be no fish left in the vicinity to see it.
In the middle of July we had a short spell of hot weather. It was warm enough that I left the chest waders at home and opted for a pair of flats boots I’d bought long ago when on sale and never used. The water is a little colder than in Cuba but it isn’t unbearable and the extra agility when climbing up the Cowsic over rough and swampy ground was worth a little discomfort.
I was a long way from the car as storm clouds began to gather up the valley and I hadn’t yet caught the fish I was looking for. In the last pool before I would have to turn around a trout was rising steadily from the near bank. It was a one cast, one shot situation. Exactly the sort of thing I would have made a rickets of in the past. I crouched low on the bank and crawled forward into casting position.
The dream of course is to deliver the fly, it was an Olive Klinkhammer, with delicate precision. The trout, resplendent in golden waistcoat with red buttons, would then rise to snaffle it. What usually happened is that I would deliver the fly with the delicate precision of a lofted breeze block, the fish would scatter, birds would take flight, and the buffalo would stampede. Not this time. I can’t say that my cast was perfect, but it was good enough as the water swirled where it landed and I caught my trout. The best fish I had all season, and then of course it started to rain.
Regularity is as healthy in fly fishing as it is in the bowel. In London I was fishing sporadically and that meant the first few hours, nearly always the time when the trout were rising, we're spent familiarising myself with the mechanics of casting and getting into tangles. This in turn breeds frustration. Catching fish is not the reason to go fishing, especially fly fishing, but frustration is not fun.
In Devon that hasn't been a problem and I'm a much better fisherman for it. Regular practice has improved my casting, I no longer fear making casts over my left shoulder, I can execute a catapult cast without hooking my thumb, and I no longer save fishing upstream for the last hour of the day when I’ve finally developed some rhythm. The best part is I can do all of that and catch fish.
The upper East Dart is easily reached from Postbridge, a place where pensioners and German teenagers a like are shipped in by coach to stare in wonder at the clapper bridge. A little upstream of said wonder, the Stannonbrook joins the main flow. The brook is quite overgrown on both sides and most of it is a little more than ankle deep. If I was to complete myself imposed challenge of a fish from every stream then I had to find a decent trout in it somewhere.
It was the Olive Klinkhammer that did it for me, a fly that accounted for about sixty per cent of my fish last year, and it was a catapult cast that delivered it, only a few feet upstream of where I was standing. The trees on both banks had joined over the middle to create a green tunnel, beneath which a large granite boulder had deflected the current to scour a deeper hole. A pretty little brownie was hiding in that hole and he shot out to intercept my fly. It was by no means one of the larger trout I caught that season, unless we can start measuring fish on a scale that takes into account the size of the water, but it was one of the most rewarding.
Much of my childhood was spent standing in small streams chasing minnows with a net. I was driven by a compulsive need to have a closer look at them, to possess them for a brief moment, and then return them to the river. I still have a soft spot for minnows. September can be a tough month on Dartmoor, I didn’t believe it at first but having experienced it first hand I think there is some truth to it. The last day of the season only produced one average sized brownie, but it was memorable for a different experience.
I was standing in the middle of the lower West Dart, keeping very still and trying to figure out how to present a fly across three currents to a rising fish. I’d already seen a Kingfisher rocket up the river and I was trying to savour the last moments of being out on the water. I must have been keeping very still as a Sea Trout of about 3lbs swam between my legs like a silver submarine, it moved effortlessly against the current. That is something I wouldn’t have had a hope of experiencing in London and is an image that has sustained me through the winter months. The burning, jam jar desire is back.
In 2013 I want to achieve two things. I want to teach myself to cast left handed, (though I don’t expect to be involved in any Naval battles with the French you never know) and I want to catch a Sea Trout. I want to see one at close range, to occupy the same moment, and then, because it will give me the greatest pleasure, give it back into the river.
Read more from James HERE