The first year of no stocking

New characters gravitated to the club and became part of the expanding cast of this ongoing saga. Including a new pantomime villain.

An ex-scientist from the Freshwater Biological Association, who’d worked through Africa as well as the UK studying stillwaters, particularly algae problems and water chemistry, definitely was not the new villain of the piece.

In the past year he’d been hitching onto my guest tickets to fish the Brook as often as possible. Had come to every habitat day,  helped me with my own personal projects down there, and contributed as much if not more than anyone. He also seemed to be known by all the Environment agency, his contacts, and backdoor access into research papers, opened up so many more facts and answers. He potentially was a real bonus to have in the club, but unfortunately was sat at the back end of a long waiting list, waiting it seemed, for increasingly older members to stick the final fly in their hat and hang up their waders. 

We’d yet to shed any of the “Grumps and the Disgruntled” from the membership, upset at the change of policy. But I had expected they’d hold on. I guessed, they’d gamble that without the stocked fish that the catch returns would collapse, and were hoping the club would come to its senses and revert to their customary habits and pleasures.

It was a misplaced optimism, I can see that, years later, with the club records of that time, available to me now in my “official post”. I imagine this confusion I had to trawl through, is what a forensic accountant is confronted with, You can uncover the smoking guns, and discover who pulled the trigger, (let’s face it, in our club the list of “Usual Suspects”was pretty limited).  but its disingenuous in hindsight to second guess their motives and intentions. None of us were born into this or made it our lives’ works and study, we’re a bunch of enthusiastic hobbyists, scraping through the best we can, and learning from mistakes,

When we started the egg box hatchery, the secretary had added on the catch returns for members to submit; ‘how many fish under 6 inches’; and ‘how many over 6 inches but too small to have been stocked’. It seems in a misplaced idea that we could see how many hatchery fry were contributing to the number.

It wasn’t hard to tell the difference of the over 6 inch fish, they were perfect shaped, deeply colourful and fought like wild cats, they really liked to jump! I believe though this shadow population of wild fish that had been in the background for years, were now starting to show in numbers as the stockfish influence declined and the extent of its area of chaos diminished, I never believed that the hatchery, considering the way it was managed and the areas the fry were distributed, realistically contributed anything to the numbers.

For years the secretary had been secreting the increasing number of small fish, too small to have been stocked, into the list that he labelled as “stocked fish”, before dropping the practice and then ignoring these smaller fish in the final figure. Why?

Well for one, the eggs were brought in and he was actively supporting that project so he considered the fry from the box as stocked fish, which genetically they were, but it became messy and confused.

It seemed to start one year with a disastrous return, when I, and a few others, had caught 36 juveniles from the lower beats. He added these to the measly 89 stocked fish that had been caught and a total number of “115 stocked fish” was presented at the AGM. It looked like a disastrous return anyway, but his accounting hid the true extent.

One recent year when he had written up “270 stocked fish caught”. This should, and would, have got alarm bells ringing for me had I known. As we had dropped the stocking from over a thousand to 800, that translated as over 30% caught , up from the usual 10-15% that it had been for decades of past records regardless of the varying amounts of fish put in . What wasn’t shown, was that it was actually only 154 stocked fish caught and a larger 175 under the stocking size had also been captured that season. 116 of these had added together to make it look a very respectable return, but the fish that were over 6 inches long, but too small to have been stocked, this year, were ignored.

In the previous season to “No stocking”, when I had stated at the AGM “of the 149 caught, a vast majority of those were juveniles”. I had based that upon my own personal catch return, knowing I’d caught over a 100 smaller fish lower down the brook last year, but unaware of how many juveniles had been caught by the other members. For some reason the secretary didn’t clarify this discrepancy at the time, he must have known, but maybe that mood in the room at the end of the AGM stayed his hand, and held him back from speaking.

In fact according to the records, 377 juveniles had been caught, but now not noted in the final analysis.

I thought it had been a disaster year, but more fish were landed than any previous catch return in the entire 50 year history of the club despite the appalling weather and short season we suffered. Though the catch was 526 fish in total, what was presented to the AGM was that only “149 stocked fish” were caught that year, and, I thought wrongly I’d caught over a 60% of them.

So, for some reason there was some fudging going on while the fishery was transforming and the extent was getting worse each year. I guess he was working out how to represent them realistically in the old system of accounting for catches and fishery management. He was onboard with the changes so I’m sure there was no intention to shove a spanner in the works. This was going on for a few isolated moments of decision making, annually, over a 5 year period as these figures got put together before an AGM. Now, from the perspective of reading it all back compressed into 20 mins on a wet Sunday morning, it takes on a whole new light and narrative, I appreciate that. 

By a peculiar twist of fate for our scientist chum, his son-in-law, a young tree surgeon had come to the top of the waiting list but decided, with a young family, he wouldn’t have time to fish. So he asked if he could go back to the bottom of the waiting list and swap his place with his father-in-law Barry at the butt end of the queue. It wasn’t exactly Queensbury rules, but enough members had worked alongside Barry to realise he was a real asset to the club and we found a way of voting him in.

Now with a free reign to go and fish on his own membership. And fish he did in that first season when, for the sake of a wild fishery, we just needed to catch fish, lots of fish.

I’d often turn up at a beat full of expectation and find Barry was already fishing it. He became a welcome curse and frustration. “Oh Bugger it. That barstool Barry has got there first!” became my almost nightly mantra as I drove up to that evening’s chosen parking space.

As well as Barry, the old Doc who had helped me achieve this year of “No stocking”, had a son, also a member, back from Uni who was an obsessive fly fishing junkie, and especially for wild fish and on a dry fly. So just at the right time, we had another recruit to fish the Brook rather more regularly than normal, and get these catch returns up.

I learnt a lot about fishing and the Brook that year, it was a year of change in many ways.

Stuart Crofts came down for his talk and demonstration, and stayed with us the night before, so I obviously took him fishing.

Before I’d organised the bug sampling day a few years back, I’d stewed and worried that the Brook wasn’t worthy of my enthusiasm for it … unfounded worries on my part, it was fine and comparable to other waters. It had good species diversity with good numbers of individual bugs and creepy crawlies. We were as good, if not better, than many other waters; except those southern chalk streams. (they were the Millionaires’ Shortbread to our packet of Hobnobs!)

But now, we had a guy used to fishing and guiding on the great Derbyshire and Yorkshire waters coming to our Midland drain. He’d led the England Squad around waters in Europe, how would he find it by comparison? Would it look like a small, slow and rather like a neglected backwater full of Chub, from this perspective?

I decided to go to the Packhorse and put him into the Groynes stretch, knowing  the first bend by the Ash tree was always good for a Trout, and then round the bend into the series of Groynes there were Trout around each opening and in the banksides. Depending on the degree of skill available it would give a fisherman a good variety of sizes of Trout to cover and always a few rising ahead to move up to.

The first unexpected lesson came on the bridge itself, looking down on a pod of huge chub with the odd large Trout that sat midstream oblivious or ignoring the wandering dog walkers or kids above, for whom it was a custom to always stop here and look at the fish. Some used to bring bread to drop in for them.

Stuart told me of an experiment he had done and often demonstrated at a similar place, which summed up for me, his way of always questioning perceived wisdom. He’d had clients, as a guide, obsessing about their leaders, and blaming any failings on the tippet by the fly, not being under the surface and being visible to the Trout and putting them off, he’d also, when he’d captained the international team, tried to get the squad to waste as little time as possible between fish caught, doing what he saw as the unnecessary ‘none’ fishing niceties that wasted precious competition time.

What he’d done was caught House flies under his entymology net and then transferred them to the fridge to kill them. He would string a few of them loosely together with white cotton thread, and with his clients watching, toss them over a similar bridge to feeding fish, and, whether they had the cotton or not, they were devoured readily.

If however he lowered a fly down gently on a long piece of white cotton and then drifted it down stream over the fish, they were rarely taken.

The Trout didn’t care if there was extra flotsam on the water surface by the fly, they did turn their noses up though at any unnatural movement and drag. So for his clients it showed that drag is the enemy, not any visible leader; and for his squad members, he told them not to bother wasting time after changing flies trimming the leader neat, and just to get back fishing ASAP.

The next lesson was when I put him in the Brook by the old ash tree. He immediately spotted the Trout under the far bank in the fast run along the undercut. Myself, I’d have got downstream of it to try and catch it, and stand or kneel in mid-stream with the easiest snag free back cast to cover it, allowing gentle delicate presentation, and with the longest drag free drift with those currents. It seemed obvious.

Stuart however, positioned himself just across and downstream from the Trout. Snuggled into the herbage of the high bank opposite, which looked like a bugger of a back cast and a bit ‘steepled’ which was a risky delivery. Concentrating, it seemed, on his cover rather than ease of fishing.  

He then when ready, bent forward slightly from the waist which immediately cleared those back cast problems and then cast to the fish keeping his rod tip high and most of the line off the water, and immediately got his take. He straightened his body up, slipping back into the cover of the bank to land and release the fish. It was like a boxer dipping forward to deliver a jab, then straightening back out of range of the provoked answering wild hook.

I expected him to move up stream, but he’d seemed to spot another in the run, he again dipped forward from the bankside, cast, caught, straightened up and blended back into the bank, landed it and released it. He repeated this for another 6 fish without any wading upstream or even entering the Groynes, he just adapted his casts and drifts for each target. And each of these targets had been spotted and selected , there was nothing random or hopeful in his approach.

It was a humbling moment of taking stock, one of those occasions separating “men from boys”. Sheer stream-craft, experience, knowledge and instinct, over the elaborate technical prowess approach. The latter approach usually, lazily backed up with a wealth of knowledge gleaned from  books and magazines in the comfort of home, rather than the countless hours of practice, and experimentation on the banksides, that saw and landed those eight fish in quick succession for the master.

I wouldn’t have believed before in our Brook, that so many non-shoaling, territorial fish could inhabit such a tight spot.

I often went back there and tried to replicate the result , the best I managed was three.

And that was it, he declared “that had been fun” and got out of the Brook to go and walk the banks and look for insects, especially his beloved caddis flies, and to have a look at the work we had done.

“Oh well, that’s another 8 for the catch return” I thought. “Imagine If I’d had him fishing another couple of hours, at that rate half the battle this year would be over in one evening of Stuart Crofts.”

The reason I am able to scale sample the numbers affectively that I do, is due to what I learnt about stream craft and technique, and the holding capacity of areas of the Brook, from watching Stuart that evening in less than half an hour’s demonstration.

Politics in the club became complex at this period, which considering what went before, is quite a statement.

It had been decided to set up a habitat group to continue with the works, only instead of me free-styling it, we would have monthly meetings at the old Doc’s house and decide and discuss how we went forward, half a dozen of us attended these meetings. Barry, the old Doc; the secretary; a young guy from the Environment agency; and a few others. Despite it transparently being conceived and driven through by the secretary as a means of shackling my habits, I soon found the advantages of such a set up.

As the winter Hedge layers started to get to work in the fields around the area, I discovered one lot doing some really straight boughed mature trees along a length of main road 10 miles away. This was faggoting gold dust!.

Normally, on my own, I’d inefficiently manage two faggots on the roof or shoved out of the back of the hatchback. Now, I could phone in and have a work party of half a dozen willing volunteers, plus a Land Rover and trailer and realise in the same time and gas, a dozen or more faggots.

We had access to a locked up paddock to store the stuff, we could order split sweet chestnut stakes in bulk for driving into the bed and banks to secure the habitat works. Sweet chestnut isn’t local to our soils, they need to be bought and shipped in bulk. But it is quite the best wood for doing this, it resists rotting even after many years of being submerged in the stream, and takes a good hammering in without splintering away, so having a good stock at hand keeps me busy and ever prepared.

The habitat group didn’t resist or hamper my plans, I still did things on the hoof and just reported it back when completed, I did however tell the old Doc my intentions before each one. I could trust he wouldn’t put objections in my way just out of a need to be contrary or controlling, and on the odd occasion if he would question some detail, I knew it was a valid concern that I needed to address. The Habitat Group meant that anything I had planned that was larger, I now had a small group of volunteers which swelled beyond the numbers of our group to usually 9 or 10 in a work party. Which was really useful.

Winter floods and the weakness and poor materials of the first sets of Groynes put in by the Environment agency were now in a terrible state or missing, so we needed to replace and add to these. Previous winter storms had caused much damage that needed adapting and securing into the natural habitat, there was plenty to do.

The secretary had been saying he was going to retire from the post, but nobody seemed to want to fill those shoes, and the roles were being split up into various members, Treasurer; memberships (and chasing payments); Catch returns and chasing them up; AGM and taking minutes: ARMI monthly survey, encouraging attendance and logging results; stock management; procurement; which all made you realise quite how much ground he had to cover and what a terrific pain in the butt I must have been at times.

The devil though was waiting in the wings.

Hope alls good with you and your having a great week, wherever in the world you are and whatever the season. Tight lines and beautiful loops.

Chris Avery