Our good friend Peter Anderson headed to the West Country in search of trout. He headed for the Culm, a beat available on the excellent West Country Angling Passport Scheme.
My wife watches birds. When she decided to go bittern watching on the Somerset levels it was the perfect excuse for me to go fishing. I am a fan of passport schemes but, lamentably, most have failed. The Wye & Usk, Peak Passport and Tyne Rivers Trust schemes all now require pre-booking. I understand why, the schemes are costly to operate and don’t, frankly, generate a lot of income. But for those of us who travel around a lot for our fishing and who want the pleasure of fishing a stream because it looks good and we just happen to be passing, the passport schemes were great. Now we have to pre-book then run the risk of being flooded off on the day (is it obvious that I speak from bitter experience here?). Anyway, the West Country passport scheme continues, at least for now (as do the Severn and Eden schemes). So I rang my mate Julian Kinsey and we trundled to the Upper Culm, it cost two tokens each, or in real money, a fiver apiece….bargain!
This beat is unusual in that it is in Somerset rather than Devon or Cornwall where most of the West Country beats are. The character of the water is therefore different. It is a lowland stream rather than the usual unruly, boulder strewn water we often find further west. We had a nice day, temperature in the mid teens, dry with a bit of a breeze (though nippy at times, reminding us that we were fishing in April, not June). It is a long beat which splits neatly into three sections. The downstream section is below Gladhayes Bridge where the voucher box and parking space is. The middle section is between the two bridges and the top bit is above Bridgehouse Bridge which we didn’t fish, we ran out of time. Don’t be put off the by directions given on the website and in the handbook, it sounds involved but it really isn’t.
So, what to expect and how to fish it. It is a small stream, maybe 10 feet wide. There are trees in places but this isn’t jungle fishing. A lot of the water is pretty shallow but there are loads of interesting deeper runs and also some surprisingly deep holes. This tends to be a feature of lowland streams, you can’t just get in and stay in! There was very little surface action, not surprising given a chilly April day. The stream lent itself very well to the duo though, with the fly line held off the water to minimise drag. We kept it sinple: size 16 parachute adams supporting a size 18 hare’s ear nymph with a 1.5mm bead. The reel wasn’t used, flick out the flies, rod held high to keep the fly line off the water, short but drag free drift, repeat. A typical drift would have been more than about six feet.
Did it work, was it worth it? Yes and yes, but at a fiver each this isn’t exactly high price fishing. The fish were small, the best no better than 8”, but they were all beautiful…..and wild! We fished for about three hours and had 10 or so between us, all on the nymph but I missed two on the dry, although I am not sure that either took the fly rather than slashing noisily at it and missing.
Each to his own I suppose – if paying a king’s ransom to fish a chalkstream for fat stockies floats your boat then good luck to you. Give me a small, wild stream any day!
More from Peter via his Walks and Fishes blog