Graham Waterton leaves the chalkstreams of Dorset behind and heads over to Devon to fish the rain fed rivers of the county.
After a mile or so down a deep banked Devon lane there's a muddy pull in by a two arch stone bridge. There are other places to park but I like this one to enjoy that tantalising first peer over the parapet: a glimpse into the future. Water level, clarity, fly, a rising fish perhaps, all hint to the day ahead. It wouldn't be the first time that expectations are dashed by that first peek, but this year, it looked promising. After endless cold winds, at last some warmth. The bright sun and cloudless sky wouldn't spell disaster here. Most of the water is shaded by bankside alders even without leaves and this early the fish are hungry. The river was running summer low but I know this perfect little stream and it just felt good.
As I pulled on waders a warm breeze covered me in that most evocative smell of Devon spring, wild garlic. So many memories.
The bottom of the beat flows beside a lane (and often floods into it) and a footpath and this provides access for picnics and paddling. As I walk up to the quieter reaches my mental checklist of Devon stream sights and sounds are ticked and ticked again. Bobbing dippers and wagtails are a good sign, if they're about there's some fly. Noisy cock pheasant standing guard and buzzards wheeling overhead. Kingfishers but no martins yet and the early bursting buds giving brown skeletal trees a bright green bloom. My boots kick up more riverbank garlic.
This streams provenance is high on Dartmoor and after rain, roars dark but when settled it runs with amber tinged clarity which exposes its secrets. At this height there are clearly defined pools. It curves and dips, splashing riffles and smooth glides. Stones and ledges, natural large woody debris all visible. Its features are there to be read. This isn't water for the speed reader though, which suits me. My chalkstream heritage gives me a modicum of self control and even here time spent in watching and pondering is seldom wasted.
I reach a small gravel island which splits the flow into a fast riffle on one side and a slow shallow run on the other. With another six inches of water the shallow run holds fish but today they will be on the other side, on the edge of the tumbling rough water. So far, no rising fish and no obvious hatch but I'm sure there has been and will be later, some olives. To start with, it's prospecting with a New Zealand rig, #14 Olive Klinkhammer and a #16PTN. Unoriginal, I know, but it's an oft used rig because it works, my default opening gambit.
From the bottom of the island I cast just upstream of square, the Klink just off the fastest part of the stream, the PTN into it and swinging round from fast to slow water across the seam.
Every year I forget the speed of these small hungry brown trout. True opportunists, typical of fish in fast water there's no time to consider or examine, just react. If they don't make a grab for it, it's gone. Third cast and out of the orange stones a fish flashes to the surface and grabs the Klink. It's so quick, before I can react it's hooked. After a few seconds of frantic splashing a few ounces of true beauty with red spots and white rimmed fins sits in my palm and then is gone.
I wade up, under a branch canopy and find another fish just short of a shallow cattle ford. From here I can look upstream for about 75 yards and three clearly defined pools which later in the summer will hold sea trout and the occasional salmon. I prospect the tail of the first pool having shortened the tippet to the PTN as it's slower and has early straggly weed. I've had fish here before so cast with confidence but not today. The pool neck is fast and swings around an oak tree root. I put on a slightly heavier PTN and cast up and across each one a foot longer than the one before, after three the Klink disappears and another, slightly larger fish comes to hand.
As I dry the Klink I notice it is tangled. On my duo rig I prefer to tie my dropper direct into the eye of the dry fly which I think makes the dry fly sit up better rather than being pulled down and standing on its tail by the hook shank knot method. However with the dry fly swinging free you do get more tangles but worth it, I think.
New dry Klink and into the next pool. Nothing. This pool is narrow and deeper and I really should be re rigging with two heavier nymphs and getting deeper but frankly I can't be bothered as for the last ten casts I have been watching two fish rise in the pool above. I wade up, through waist deep water and step out onto another gravel island. From here I'm a cast away from the lower of the two fish. I wait five minutes but no show. Ten, fifteen and still no more rises when the fish in the upper part of the pool has risen three or four times. I would have put a single dry over this closer fish if he had shown me exactly where he was but I decide I have to search for him. The tail has a lovely draw but is slow and therefore a lighter nymph goes back on, still #16 but a Gold Ribbed Hares Ear. I'm not sure why I changed. I search up the pool a foot at at a time casting into the central stream. Fifth cast, the Klink stops and I lift into a better fish. I'd like to think it was the riser. It's about 10 inches long and soon it is lying at my knees in an inch of water. A quick photo of another exquisite trout and as I twist out the hook I glance up to see if the other is still rising and when I look back, it's gone.
I managed to get a snap of the other fish rising in the slowest part of the pool. Tried the Klink, a smaller Griffith's Gnat and then the duo but no response. I didn't see it rise again. An old lesson, learnt again. Concentrate on the faster water. Feeders find it more productive, have to make quick decisions and those slow mirror like glides hold fish but are less forgiving for clumsy presentation.
As I reach a tunnel of trees which cover a lovely extended run of popply water, more olives appear and for the second year running a single mayfly flaps floppily downstream. It was April 14th! Over the next couple of hours I see midges, small dark sedges, an alder, a stonefly and a few olives but nothing which would persuade the fish to be committed, selective feeders. Luckily they are hungry and over the next hour as I creep slowly up the river another half a dozen beautiful little fish come and go.
Half way up this stretch I have a very curious encounter. A few hundred yards above me is a single arch stone bridge and the day before I stopped on my way down to lean over and look. As I did so, a good size fish, mottled with pale patches of disease drifted downstream. Mainly facing upstream it drifted backwards, occasionally summoning enough strength to lazily circle and find a resting place. A late kelt trying to get back to the salt.
Today I found it again. Resting alongside a fallen branch I got a better look but disturbed its rest. It was so diseased I couldn't tell which it was (sea trout or salmon) but as I struggled to get my camera out, it turned downstream and soon disappeared. I wonder if it made it to the cleansing rejuvenating sea. Next cast I caught a salmon parr. Nature's cycle.
In the mottled dappled sunlit water I caught a few more. I lost one too. I lifted and felt the hook touch flesh but then slack. The fish with great drama then left its world through a ring of sparkling droplets, pirouetted and re entered perfectly straight and vertical through the same hole. A rather unnecessary victory roll I thought but worthy of four tens nonetheless.
By tea time the sun was still high but the warmth was gone. As I walked and waded back downstream, nothing stirred, fish or fly. I'd had the best of it. Later I put my boots out to dry with a lingering smell of wild garlic.
These exquisite streams and their stunning valleys are a joy to visit and fish at any time but I do relish these early season visits.
Graham Waterton is a fly fishing instructor and guide based in Dorset