Riverkeeper Donny Donovan looks at how things have changed on the river since he took over from his predecessor Vic.
Nowadays the majority of people that fish with me have become good friends of mine and I treat them as such. Everybody calls me Donny and once I know the fishermen I call them by their Christian name and we always have a laugh and a joke and a fair bit of leg pulling. Once the fishermen know the beat they are quite happy to wander off and look after themselves for the day and I can get on and do other work. Once in a while I will spend an hour or two with the rods and sometimes give a little instruction. If they bring guests I will look after them and show them the river. All in all very civilised, very twenty first century.
It was of course a little bit different in my predecessor's day.
Vic Foot is truly a legendary keeper on the Test and looked after the Nursling beat for an incredible fifty six years and is still a frequent visitor to the fishing hut freely giving out advice (whether you want it or not!). Vic always speaks very highly of all his many thousands of fishermen and will never say a word against any of them, no matter how they treated him but going back fifty or so years there was definitely more of a master – servant relationship between rod and keeper.
I remember when my grandad was living at my parent’s house towards the end of his life and a couple of people came to visit him. They were a very well to do couple that had employed my grandad as a gardener for the last few years of his working life. They were pleasant people but from a bygone age and behaved in a very Victorian way. We told my grandad that they where coming to visit him and he was nervous for a week. On the morning of their arrival grandad was dressed in his Sunday best and as they entered the room he almost sprang to attention, doffing his cap. I began to feel a little uneasy about the whole situation and my toes curled when they called him by his surname and he replied with “hello Madam, hello Sir.” My mum told me to leave them to it and try and understand how it was for my granddad who she said would have passed out if they had called him by his first name; provided that is that they knew what his first name was. That was the way it was and they were both more comfortable with it, especially my grandad. I found the whole episode very difficult to understand but my grandad knew of no other way, it was just how it was, how it had always been.
Vic had the same kind of relationship with some of his rods, not that he minded and not that he ever complained, it was all that he was ever used to and as he says the majority of fishermen were very kind to him and became good friends. Vic was more of a ghillie than I am and would spend much of his day with the rod telling them where to fish, carrying gear and tying on their flies. Nowadays if somebody was to hand me a rod I would probably start casting with it. That wouldn’t have gone down well with some of Vic’s fishermen.
To fish Nursling in the fifties and sixties was a privilege indeed and definitely a case of dead men’s shoes. A lot of the rods were invited gentry and Vic looked after many Lords and Ladies and other supposedly important people. Vic could tell some incredible stories about these people but much to his credit, he refuses to tell tales about anybody and speaks about all of his many fishermen with the utmost respect. Mind you, he’s told me a few things that would raise your eyebrows, hush hush, wink wink, know what I mean?
I too meet a great variety of people on the river bank albeit slightly different social set from in Vic’s day but whether they are rich scaffolders or poor aristocrats it matters not, they’re the punters, the clientele and like Vic I try to make them very welcome. They probably show a little more interest in my job and the river than in Vic’s day and almost without fail their parting comment is, “I would love to do your job, you’re very lucky.” That may be true, but I wonder how many of them really appreciate or indeed understand exactly what my job is because the things that some seem to expect of me have very little to do with what I see as my duty as a river keeper.
For example, I am quite sure that most of my rods think that come the end of September I pack my bags and head off to the Seychelles, cunningly returning just in time for the start of the next season.
Looking after the clientele all day can be hard work in itself and a lot of that comes down to me being a river keeper and not a ghillie. Standing idle behind someone watching them fishing is the hardest work I have ever done and I hate it. I have a great admiration for the ghillies on the more traditional salmon rivers of Scotland and elsewhere and fully respect their knowledge and expertise on their respective waters but there’s a big difference between a river keeper and a ghillie. (I somehow feel a false nose and moustache coming on the next time I fish the Tweed.) My point is that there is no need for boatmen on the Test so give me a bridge to build or some weed to cut and I’m happy. It’s not the physical hardness that bothers me but the frustration of being idle drives me crazy.
Some fishermen want to know where to start, where to finish, what fly to try and you don’t see them for the rest of the day. Others want you to set their rod up, tie the fly on, cast the line, hook a fish, pass the rod back to them, land the fish and then congratulate them on a wonderful piece of fishing. You make them tea and coffee on request, chill their white wine and light their barbeque. You listen to their personal problems (on which I could write a lengthy book or two) their financial problems and their health problems (probably a book there too). In other words you’re a doctor, banker and agony aunt rolled into one. Thinking about it now, I remember a fisherman once asking me if I’d mind giving his car a quick polish before he went home. Doctor, banker, agony aunt and a car waxer. With one particularly difficult fisherman, after he’d been in the toilet for ten minutes I’m bloody sure I’d hear him shout “finished!” Add lavatory attendant to above list.
Luckily the days of doffing your cap and being treated like a servant are mostly gone and whilst you do very occasionally meet out dated people, they do eventually leave. Vic used to say, “you spend day with ‘em but you don’t ‘ave to go ‘ome with buggers!” and the one thing that I’ve always managed to do, no matter how hard a day or difficult the fisherman, is to always give them a wave goodbye, if you know what I mean.
The great advantage that you as the keeper, or ghillie, immediately have is that these people need your help. They might be a clever talking politician or a fantastic footballer but standing on your river bank full of your fish, you hold all the cards and the fact that they can give a four hour speech on nothing in particular or can score a goal from thirty yards counts for absolutely nothing on a river.
On the other side of things, there are many people that come who are brilliant fishermen and who can teach me a lot more than I can teach them. It is a real pleasure to see some people fish and the different tactics that they employ and I am always grateful for learning new techniques and methods of catching fish.
Fishing is a tremendous leveller, whether a Lord fishing in the fifties with Vic or a scaffolder fishing with me last week, it matters not, we’re on the river, we’re fishing and we’re enjoying ourselves!
To read more from Donny Donovan you can buy his book telling the story of his life on the river.