The Wild Trout Trust's Denise Ashton looks at her fly fishing history and where you can access wild streams in wild places.
Finding new places to fish is less of a challenge than it used to be, with web searches and social media in all its forms providing access to a network of knowledge. It wasn’t always that way, and even now it can feel as though you are on the outside of a mysterious network as an angler who is graduating from stillwaters to rivers, from stocked to wild trout fishing.
How do you get onto that river or into that club?
This article is a little bit about my journey from not having a clue where to go fishing to having a list of places to fish that will last me a lifetime; mainly it is about finding great places to fish!
I was a latecomer to fishing. I am so envious of the many friends of mine who caught their first fish at the age of six, who graduated from minnows and sticklebacks in nets to roach on bread, then trout on worms and wet flies and, finally the pinnacle (some say …): dry fly fishing. And they had a dad or an uncle and a load of fishing mates. A network of knowledge to tap into long before Google had been invented. I arrived late (forty-something) and entirely alone, save for a lovely man in his nineties who taught me to cast a fly but only knew the river five minutes from his house – an expensive and exclusive chalk stream stuffed with stockies.
Like many (most?) newcomers to fly fishing I started on stocked stillwaters because they were easy to find and easy to access. After my three basic fly casting lessons and a few outings to muddy puddles, I read that the Arundell Arms in Devon ran ‘female friendly’ fly fishing courses. The hotel was even run by a lady angler – the remarkable Anne Voss Bark. I had never met another lady angler. I still meet very few. It’s not a cheap hotel, but it was worth every penny as this was where I had my epiphany. I looked it up. It is the right word! ‘A moment of sudden and great revelation or realisation’.
Standing on the River Lyd, untangling my leader. A heron to my right. A kingfisher to my left. And (some considerable number of moments later) my first wild brownie, all of eight inches long. This is what I wanted to do. And, lucky me, for a lot of the time, it is what I do. And when I am not fishing, I am running the Wild Trout Trust auction and talking about fishing and places to fish.
Having returned from my trip to Devon, I knew I wanted to fish wild rivers for wild trout. I live in Hampshire, the heartland of expensive, exclusive, often stocked and highly managed chalk stream fishing. Devon was three hours away and, other than the Arundell Arms, I had no idea where else to fish.
I can’t remember why, but at some point I had joined the Wild Trout Trust. The auction catalogue arrived in the post and it was full of rivers that I had never heard of and hadn’t a clue where they were, but where there were wild trout and you could fish. I spent a lot of time with an inadequate road atlas trying to work out where those rivers were. There is now a map of auction lots on the WTT website, to save you the pain that I went through!
A lot of marker pen blobs and notes all over the catalogue, my eBay id set up, I was ready to bid. I had no idea how eBay worked and was dismayed to be outbid by a pound or two on almost everything. But I did win two lots. I fished two rivers (very badly – remember, I hadn’t a clue), the Leach in Gloucestershire with David Reinger of the Cotswold FlyFishers and the Itchen with Brian Clarke, former WTT President and author of ‘The Trout and the Fly’. I made two friends, who helped me learn to fish a river and who generously pointed me to more people and more places to fish.
Helping to run the WTT auction, which is over 250 ‘lots’ of fishing, means that I talk to our generous donors and, in doing so, learn a little bit about a lot of places to fish. It is the dream job for anyone curious about where to fish for trout.
I do continue to buy fishing lots in the WTT auction because there are so many places that you really can’t get onto in any other way. There are beats that are privately owned, or fished by small syndicates or clubs with long waiting lists, or no waiting list because the old boy's network (and it is mainly old boys, I am afraid to say) keeps it quiet and exclusive. I also buy lots to fish with interesting and knowledgeable people. A day with Stuart Crofts, Matt Eastham, Kenny Galt, Ben Lupton, Theo Pike, Kris Kent, Pete Tyjas (yes!) and many more is bound to be an education as well as a lot of fun. And those lots which are not guided but ‘accompanied’ or ‘introduced’ by the donor will give you an invaluable insight into the river and the fishing, and very often, a new friend and contact.
The auction reveals surprising places to fish. You can fish for wild trout in Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Kent, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire. And in south London, or the centre of Wimborne or Bradford. Some of the fishing is ‘free’. You just need to be taken there with someone who knows.
So the big step forward on the journey to finding new friends and fishing new waters for me, and for many other anglers, is the Wild Trout Trust auction.
A few other suggestions for finding fishing:
The Wild Trout Trust website has a page called ‘Wild Trout Fishing’ with a list of fishing clubs that you can download. Some of those clubs also issue day tickets.
The online version of the auction catalogue often has links to a relevant website for the auction lot.
The Rivers Trust's ‘Passport’ waters are fantastic value. The largest scheme is with the Wye and Usk Foundation, which acts as a booking office for fishing on the Wye, Usk, Monnow and a host of other Welsh rivers from the Towy to the Dee. A few other Rivers Trusts (e.g. Eden, Ribble, Westcountry) continue to operate the ‘passport’ scheme where you buy tokens and post them in the box on the beat. A full list of these schemes is here: http://www.wildtroutfishing.co.uk/
The FishPal website is a very comprehensive summary of rivers and fishing beats well beyond salmon fishing in Scotland. http://www.fishpal.com/
Other useful websites include the Angling Trust Fishing Info site http://fishinginfo.co.uk/index.html
The Association of Salmon Fisheries Boards has created a website highlighting accessible and affordable fisheries for both salmon and sea trout around Scotland: http://fisheries.asfb.org.uk/fishery-map/
Jon Beer’s articles for Trout and Salmon are almost all about accessible and inexpensive fishing. He has published a book of his articles called 'Not All Beer and Bezencenet', price £20 available from his website www.riversidestuff.co.uk