between the gate and the water is tussocked and flower-strewn, baked by the drought, pitted with the impressions of remembered hooves. Across it, deep within it, the stream hides. It is full of wild trout and it has never been stocked. Never. The great attraction.
Even when I was almost on top of it the water was difficult to see, the only clue it’s here at all the line of sedges and rushes, the bright heads of purple loosestrife and the lollipops of reed mace that nod and sway.
The stream’s a tiny thing, a rod’s length wide here, a rod and a half there and it is extraordinarily deep. At some point, I guess, it must have been dug with a view to draining the land but nature has used the years well. As the reeds and sedges have softened the banks, so starwort and ranunculus have softened the bed. They orchestrate the water and the light.
I’d been told about the depth and the way the rushes and high sedges make bank fishing impossible. It’s why, for all the stream’s size, I’m waist-deep in chest waders, now.
It’s not going to be easy. There’s a strong, upstream wind. From down here, deep in the water with my head at meadow height, the sedges and tussocks are rearing high overhead, flailing and thrashing, ready for every back-cast. A procession of ripples is being pushed upstream, as though by an incoming tide. The sky is leaden; the low, grey clouds as long and uniform as plumped feather bolsters, flattening the light. No, it’s not going to be easy.
Actually, it’s not just the wind and the sedges and the lack of light that are the problem, it’s the angle I’m at. This isn’t a water for speculative casts. Here, you don’t cast until you see a fish, a convention that has a practical edge because by casting blind you’d frighten unseen trout and reduce your already-slender chances still further. But to cast to sighted fish naturally means being able to see them which, if they’re not rising, means being able to see into the water.
Which today I cannot do. Not much, anyway. The light and ripples are one thing, the fact that I’m waist-deep is another. This deep in, my eyes are not far above the water and the angle between them and the surface upstream where I need to look, is shallow. It means that, looking more than two or three yards ahead, all I can see is the grey, reflected sky. It’s only when I look steeply down, close to my wadered legs, that I can see into the water.
The water is as clear as I’d been told. It’s so clear and bright it almost might not be there. It’s as clear as melted time.
On the bottom, between the dense growths of the waterplants, channels of flints and chalk gleam up. I can see the roughs and smooths of every stone, every chip and angle. They’re so sharp and fine-edged they might have been picked out with scalpels. Caddis cases cover every one. The weed’s alive with shrimps, nymphs, the larvae of this and that. This would be a fabulous place in a hatch, but there’s little likelihood of one this morning. This morning, it’s going to have to be the nymph.
The green canyons between the weed beds and the channels along the bottom will all have fish in them but, because of the angle I’m at, I’ll be on top of any trout before I realise it’s there. It’ll be on the open gravel patches that I’ll mostly be concentrating and there aren’t many of those. The gravels and chalk reflect the light and any fish on them should be visible from a distance.
I say should be.
I’ve got company. A water vole sniffle-snuffles towards me on some busy errand, realises that it has got company as well, and dives. A pair of buzzards kee-kees across the narrow strip of sky I can see between the sedges to my left and the sedges to my right. A flock of crows rises like black ashes above one bank and disappears behind the other, leaving its cacophonous caw-cawing behind.
I tuck the little 8ft three-weight under my arm, slide a hand into a pocket and grope and trace among the bottles and spools, seeking the fly-box. I’ll start small and change as I need. A size 16 nymph goes onto a 2lbs point.
I put a smear of flotant on the thick end of the leader so that it rides high on the surface, where I can see it. Normally, I’d put a sinking compound onto the leader near the fly as well, to get it off the surface, but the compound is opaque and will make the leader more visible in these conditions, so I’ll do without it today. I click the fly onto a rod-ring, loop the leader back around the cage of my reel and tighten up. Ready. The trout have my attention.
Of course, I won’t be looking for a trout because I know I won’t see one – not an outlined, clearly defined one, anyway. I’ll be looking for hints and winks of trout, for linear shades and brush-strokes, for sepia suggestions; for patches of gravel or chalk where, at some point, the stones seem curiously straight-edged. I’ll be looking for faint lateral movements, for suggestions of rhythmic pulses that might resolve into a tail. No, I’ll not be looking for fish. I’ll be looking for water, but in a firmer form.
If finding fish today’s going to be one thing, catching them is going to be another. These fish won’t only be difficult to see, they’ll be hair-triggered, as well. It’s not just the clarity of the water and the fact that they are fished for. What’s going to make them edgy is that everything else knows they’re here and wants them.
This valley’s full of otters and herons and cormorants. No-one has a problem with the otters because they’re a part of our heritage and here in natural numbers and it’s good to have them back after so long. But the herons around here come in vast numbers because of the fish farms on the streams nearby. The cormorants have a roost just a few miles away. The numbers of both birds are unnatural and they take an unnatural toll. A bright thread of tinsel like this, so difficult to see from the road, must glint and beckon from the air.
The fish I’m looking at is up there to the right. It’s lying on that patch of gravel at the foot of the little alder, a sepia brush-stroke in front of the stone. It’s a half-pounder, maybe a little more. A nice trout.
I can’t cast from here. It’s not just that the sedges will snatch at my back-cast, it’s that any line I throw will fall across that bed of starwort breaking the surface. The line will catch on the weed and the current on the far side will swing the leader around. The leader and the fly. Drag. Fatal, in this place.
That’s what I’ve got to do. I’ve got to get to the foot of the little alder on my own bank and cast from there. From there, I’ll have a diagonal of clear water between myself and the fish. I’ve got to get up there without disturbing it.
It takes an age. It’s not just the weight of weed I’ve got to push through, or the weight of the water clamped around my legs and middle, it’s the need for caution. Every step is so slow and laboured, coiled and taut. Bed my left foot down, take my weight on it, lift my right foot and ease it forward. Push against the weed, push against the water, touch down. Grope and trace over the bottom, reading it like Braille. Find a purchase. Set it down. Take the weight. Now my left foot, ditto.
It’s taken five minutes to move five yards, but I’m in position. Me here, the fish there. I’m wound up and locked on, joined to the fish by ancient choreography, by thousands of years, maybe millions.
Crouch lower. Move slowly. Turn my head slowly in case my Polaroids catch the light and semaphore a warning. Keep the rod down. Watch my backcast, watch the flailing sedges, watch the fish, watch everything. The new world fades and the old closes in. The forest and the glade enfold. I am alert for the grunt or the rustle, for the parting of the grasses and the glimpse of fur or hide.
A coot creaks. My eyes are burning through the water, burning into the fish, which still hasn’t moved. I drift the rod back, draw the bow tight, take aim along the arrow. I’m at home with this. I’ve been doing this since I first stood upright. I haven’t needed to do it for food for thousands of years but the tug of it, the
