Dumping.

It was due to happen a few weeks back but he found he had a dose of the galloping runs. That thought of having to spend a few hours in chest waders in such a state, wading up a stream miles from a loo, would be the epitome of misery, and an accident or three waiting to happen, only attempted by the clinically insane.

What’s interesting about this is that when your working relationship with a comparative stranger becomes that frank and forthcoming about the precise nature of the malady, unless you’re eating your sandwiches at the time, it unwraps a welcome level of honesty; gates opened; fences down; and cards spread upon the table.

He was coming to give us suggestions, but mostly to help me to deal with the gravels; advise on best practices for what we have, and to look at buying some in and the process of permits etc needed to do this and if we could get any grants from the Environment agency or similar bodies to help improve our waters . I was specifically looking at the area where the digger had done the damage. That heart of the Brook that they dug the beating pulse out of, the murderous bar stools

We wandered up the lower few hundred yards, looking at the various water weeds, always nice to have someone using the latin names, I know from experience these are soon forgotten unless in regular usage. For us in the Horticulture industry it can sometimes seem a bit elitist and pretentious, and from some people it is ( especially when they get the pronunciation wrong). But when fathoming another’s knowledge base, out in the field, it’s reassuring. And when it comes to water plants and stream side marginals, it was soon obvious, this guy was way beyond me.

Suggestions  of places to add to flow deflectors or silt traps; ideas of trees to hinge down, trees that were adding little benefit, but could be adding more at water level,.

It’s amazing seeing it through a fresh set of eyes. Like someone spotting the crack in your ceiling you had walked under for years, “Hey just work some filler into the gap, sand it back and paint it”… “Oh Jeez how did I never notice that”

“That silty pool just put a post in on that corner and attach some trees tops to it, then let them swing around with the current and it will clean up  that run, and there loads of space to fish around it”….where I hadn’t even noticed there was a problem.

The first place I wanted him to focus on for additional gravel, I was so glad he agreed that it was a good idea, this made life easier.

This is a straight channel of about 60yards, it can’t be approached from wading up as a short stretch of deep water protects the lower end.

A few years back a tree blocked the Brook here, and I left it with the water flowing under it scouring out the stream bed, making a few yards now un-wadable.  

Whoever played god with the Brook in the past and had removed a lovely meander here, then tamed this inclination to wander by constraining  the waterswith some boulders creating a steep bank maybe 8 feet above the water surface. Over time these rocks have pocketed with soil and become overgrown with those wonderful types of plants that, should you stumble and have a pratfall, kiss your face with kindness. Stinging nettles and thistles, with the odd blackberry creeper to catch your ankles and help you to meet your miserable fate.

Looking down from 12 feet above at what an angler can see of the bed, its hard to determine what the depth is, and the steepness of the bank means once your foots dipping in the flow, your then kind of committed to take the fatalistic plunge…. And it really doesn’t look that easy to get out again from above.

As it is, its barely over your knees. But then if the club members has been foolhardy and tempted down, we then have the spare small boulders used to create this bank, scattered across the stream bed, and have created a fast looking broken surface water, resembling a wild free stone mountain river in our muddy little midland drain.

For a reader used to wading a free stone, this is just so benign, you would stroll through it without a thought. But us Willowbrook members have been moulded into softer stuff. Most of our wading is on fine orderly gravels , silt beds and lush soft carpets of Ranunculus. Really all we need over our stocking foot waders are some carpet slippers.  These beastly boulders threaten to stub your toe, or make you stumble and reach out to grab support from the nearby vegetation  which will then either prick, sting,of fill your delicate hands with thorns.

I love this area when I am scale sampling; early in the season I can pretty much guarantee I am the first fishermen these fish will have seen, and with the high steep banks, there’s no horizon for you to stick up like a sore thumb and spook the fish. On a good evening I’ve had six to eight reasonable sized fish in this little stretch and marvelled at how many it holds.

However on the occasions when I’ve encouraged others down the bank to sample its delights, I’ve seen and caught nothing, and I start to doubt myself and wonder if I dreamt of, or hallucinated these past experiences.

At the end of the section, the stream bends around in a narrow channel that accelerates the flow, I’veaccentuated it in the past with some sturdy flow deflectors, not just for the current, but as useful mounting blocks to help me get out again as just above this is a best avoided, deep dark pool.

A seemingly bottomless pit swelling off the side of the Brook, its creepy black waters are covered with a low dense thick canopy , like a giant umbrella that no light can ever penetrate, the water below just lethargically swirls and eddies around this bowl. It’s a little known fact, that this is where the river Styx plunges downwards, and this is actually the entrance to Hades in East Northamptonshire, so most club members diligently avoid it.

To leave the stream before the entrance to the underworld, means a scramble back up the steep boulder bank with your face and any exposed flesh buried in the nettles or thistles, unless you use my flow deflectors!

So looking at it as potential for creating a spawning area; after Hades corner the squeeze around the bend speeds up the flow to a desirable rate for Trout spawning; the water is slightly on the deep side; and can take some additional gravel layer; the boulder bottom means that there is some anchorage and pockets to prevent the gravel from washing down stream.

The high steep rocky bank will prevent any erosion at the edges if we move the flow over with additional gravel, it will also safe guard any flood risk. And should some of the gravel move down stream it may settle in that deeper pool and make it manageable to wade through again, linking this area with the stream below.

The bankside topography and steep bank means mid-stream is easily within reach of a loader bucket with the machine still on the farm track. Dumping the gravel in by the ton, and then raked out by fishing club minions.( of which we are getting sadly short of, still at an age to be active in these pursuits).

And the final consideration, downstream of this areais some great fry habitat for anything that hatches out.

In this run we can create two gravel riffles with a pool sequence. Between the banks is about 3 yards in width that’s about 40 tonnes of gravel to dump in as calculated by Mr Mungovan.

Next is to find the material. Last time we used the local quarry which has the deposits from a melting glacier that gouged out the valley here, but the stone tends to be rounded and doesn’t bed down well. Thankfully we also have sandstone and limestone quarries slightly further afield, which is the source of our building, walling and roofing materials for the local villages, so I’ll be looking for crushed limestone graded from pea to golf ball sized pebblesto create our new Trout ‘Des Res’.

I need to survey and draw a cross section of the banks, water surface and stream bed to present for flood risk, then get a proposal through to the environment agency.

Its all very positive again for the muddy midland Brook. I might even get to fish it this afternoon in my newly leaking waders!

Hope you’re having great weekend

All best to all

Chris Avery

POD:

Rob Mungovan of the Wild trout Trust calculating our gravel needs