Chris Avery | Sunday, 29 September 2024
One of the issues I have mentioned before on here , is our upper beats, particularly the Meadows and the Village, we have this catch 22 situation going on. No one visits because allegedly it’s just too hard to negotiate the over grown jungle encroaching over the paths. And the stream is hard to wade for long lengths, so much of the fishing has to be done, and the fish landed, over weedy, and overgrown banksides.
To be clear about this, its overgrown with grasses and the odd rose bay willow herb, not an impenetrable jungle of woody stems and strangler vines. If its in dire need of anything, its more likely to be a lawn mower than a machete!
Those paths are hard to navigate because they are not visited enough by anglers pushing this ‘jungle’ back, the grasses pressed down or worn away by their frequent foot fall. How it used to be years ago playing hunt the stockfish. With no one regularly entering and leaving the banks to wade, it means no one knows where this can be achieved. And by summer, it’s a long arduous push to move forward through the gentle tangle, the water surface obscured and hidden from view and so, less evidence of rising fish to be seen..
In the past we have tried gently beseeching our members with messages at the AGM or in letters sent out with Membership cards before the season starts , pleading that they spread out their water side adventures and especially early in the seasonto include fishing these beats to help keep the weeds trodden down, and also take the angling pressure off the bottom end of the Brook. Adding that’s there’s good fishing to be had.
But the gentle creatures of habit that are our members, when faced with the decision to go fishing for an evening, choose which will be the best option for them on that day. And it’s usually where there is parking right by the Brook, really easy access, long easy wading in areas they know quite well and know where they are likely to find fish. Fish that are mostly willing juveniles happily feeding on whatever drifts past at most times of the day.
I could see some logic of the suggestion of stocking it and bring the focus back on that area, and make the fishing easier for a while… but the population has recovered from stocking. The area is not short of trout, it’s short of anglers.
I have tried to counter this in the past by actively fishing the upper areas to make sure there’s fish on the catch returns from the Meadows and the Village, not just blank squares saying nothing caught there and people jumping to the wrong conclusion. Taking pictures of larger specimens being caught up there, to pique the interest of those occasional piscatorial pursuers whose rare forays are habitual, like visiting the same corner shop. These make up the majority of our membership.But such entreaties made no difference to the footfall or willingness to change comfortable habits, they had their favorite armchair and wouldn’t be budged.
Badgers have a habit of attacking Rabbit warrens by digging straight down into them, leaving a vertical shaft the width of a chunky badger head and shoulders. Last season I decided after I had my scale sample numbers secured, that I would concentrate on fishing the meadows and concentrate on showing people what could be caught up there. My first evening attempting this, I had just clambered over a barb wire fence via a precarious stile and was moving into position for a rise, when I missed spotting a Badgers shaft in the over grown path and my foot went down it, damaging my Achilles tendon,finishing my fishing for the year. The neglect of the area has made it a little more treacherous I am afraid….that’s another catch 22!
I don’t blame the Badgers for being Badgers, I blame the comfy armchair brigade for lacking adventure.
The daft thing is, I can’t seem to convince people, that on those days when there is a stinker of a wind coming straight down stream into your face in the lower reaches and people instead decide not to bother to fish at all. If they ventured upstream however, especially the Meadows, the water course still has much of its wildly meandering natural path, and the wind is less of an issue.. you can always find a favorable stretch to salvage an evening.
A rather radical solution presented itself last closed season when another club approached me, informing me that at an AGM they had decided it would be a good idea to have a merger with our club. Which the way it was presented to me seemed a little presumptuous. That we would be grateful, delighted by this offer that we simply couldn’t refuse.
It was an offer to pool our resources. I know of their water it’s a half hour drive away and similar in size, though shorter in length, it gets quite choked with weeds later in the season. So I guess the advantage for them is another water that’s still fishable later in the summer. At first I just thought that can’t work and our guys would never go for it. What they had to offer, was that they had Grayling, which meant our fishing options would be extended into the close season. And maybe when the wind was wrong for us, it may be right for them?
I had no idea how far their members travelled to fish that stretch, and how much convenience and locality was factored in to the choice, whether our Brook might be easier for many of them. I knew though, how many of our members would react to this, and it would be a battle to convince them, even with that carrot of winter Grayling fishing.
Then I got to thinking; their club has work parties and volunteers, that meet up in a pub in winter once a month and do fly tying nights, there’s a social and community feel about the club… and the grass started looking greener on that other side, I started to like the idea. But knowing our mob, I could see some arguments ahead; some blind prejudice I guess would be how I’d describe it.
I thought if what I could put on the table was a merger which would allow them to fish only the areas above the sewage works, which in all is about the same length as they are offering us and is the closer stretch to their stream. Then we would have more people fishing the neglected banks and who knows, maybe more volunteers for habitat work up there.
I sounded out with a few of the committee members and it seemed agreeable, I thought I’d plan on letting the cat out of the bag just before the chairman’s summer BBQ so we could then meet up and casually discuss it there. Meanwhile I’d invite a few of their members to the BBQ to meet our mob over a few beers. It’s hard to be prejudiced against people sat there having a beer with you and suddenly your finding so much common ground.
Well that was the plan, but it niggled away in my thoughts and wouldn’t snuggle comfortably into place. There was a feeling, and instinct, that it would be opening a gate that could not easily be closed if the view turned out to be a stinker.
The offer is sat with the ball in my court, but I don’t feel comfortable playing that game, or endorsing it to the club as a good solution … it’s too oblique, and that problem needs facing straight on.
I’ve focused on ‘selling ‘ the worth of these beats this year and even taking my guests up there. Trying to get an even range of scale samples from either side of the Culvert bridge in a range of sizes, I was focused on getting the most out of it,and then plaguing our club ‘What’s app’ group with pictures of fish and fishing from up there.
My aim was to get scales from 50 fish from up there and 50 below the Culvert early in the season, and look at the two populations.
The fishing in those two neglected beats is fine, in fact it’s now a bit more wild and adventurous compared to the lower beats, how the tables have turned here.
It was always an area of deeper slower water more suited in many places for bank fishing, and was the preferred destination for dumping in the vast majority of the stocked fish in those bad old years ( up until about 20 years ago). So it’s no surprise there seems to be many of our older and bigger fish available up there. It’s mostly more home for grown up Trouts than teenagers which should be a draw in itself, and as a bonus, I discovered there’s more wading available than I remembered.
So had you come fishing with me this year no doubt that’s where you would have ended up. Using my guests as guinea pigs and sending them in, off the banks, into dark waters that I hadn’t previously explored. Inviting them to “try fishing this bit there always used to be plenty of fish in this pool…. You go first!”. These human depth gauges found lots of new wading for me. No one drowned and no waders were breached… though it got deliciously close a few times.
(as a rule I don’t get many Christmas cards, strange that!)
I and my guests certainly caught the bigger fish of the year up there, but also a good number of juveniles, so it’s certainly not a lack of fish that’s causing the neglect.
The meadows is mostly good to go, it needs a few small tweaks, but it just in dire need of feet, wading booted feet, trampling down the paths and the access to the water.
The village really needs some volunteers to help reclaim the paths and fences from rampant blackberries, it needs several stiles replacing and the barb wire made safe for waders, as well as the habitat work in the stream to open up access. But it’s hard enough to get volunteers for the areas we regularly fish, asking them up here where they have no intention of venturing gets zero response when I have tried in the past.
This season I perforated a few pairs of waders battling through Blackberry, Blackthorn, hawthorn thickets and barbed wire to get in and find a way out of the water here.
I saw so many fish on the feed, one memorable evening catching four fish in the two and a half to three pound mark on consecutive drifts from one undercut bank I discovered. For some lucky fishermen on other waters , these are average fare I know. But we’re a little midland drain. On our water, these are the size of fish that make a season memorable for most anglers. Some, in fact many of our members, never encounter them; our elusive four year olds.
And on that night I caught a further half dozen between half a pound and a pound. As always happens, I lost by far the biggest of the night, a fish I clearly saw and got close to the net. I was really happy to have made its acquaintance, but wish it had left me with a scale sample and a measurement… and my lucky fly of the evening.
I left that stream that night ripped to shreds and blooded, wet through from leaking waders stinging with nettles and thorns, and absolutely elated. And I realized, I don’t want to share this with another club, I want our members to experience this.
It was like discovering the mythical Shangri-la.
(I then dropped my new mobile phone in some long grasses and ended up, panicked, driving off to borrow and take a crash course in learning a high tec metal detector, in an attempt to salvage my brilliant evening from the ashes of disaster.
The first sweep as the dusk light faded, made the right bleep and my evening was salvaged, with just a fist full of thorns and some badly punctured waders to attempt to repair.)
Our members are mostly old. When I joined those guys were around that, approaching-retirement-age. Where a man’s still pretty fit to do some labour for a day and has now got the leisure time to indulge in the odd weekend working down on the bankside. There was enough in this demographic that getting half a dozen helpers for a work party was no problem.
Keeping them from nattering was another matter! Some people just can’t seem to work and talk.. Talking for theminvolves suddenly standing still, putting everything on hold, to talk about vegetables or politics, which is pretty much the same subject, meanwhile, nothing gets done. It frustrates the hell out if me!
Some of those chaps still turn up and show willing, but you can’t realistically expect much from a man approaching his 75th year or more. Our pool of approaching retirement age is much smaller and now come from further afield, though still enthusiastic. So my biggest problem now is getting volunteers in. We have the ideas and the resources, but lack the workforce.
So I have now hatched a cunning plan.. we have 15 mostly younger applicants on the waiting list( for our 30 member club). Generally we lose a member a year.. So, many of them have a long wait. It’s got to the stage where we are not keen to put many more on the list.
My plan is to allow me to issue either day or evening ticketsfor fishing the Meadows and the Village section, these will be issued to people on the waiting list as rewards for helping out on habitat work parties and weed cuts. Each time they do a three or four hour voluntary session they get a ticket to fish. That way they become actively engaged in the club while they are waiting for full membership, and become acquainted to the other members and invested in the water.
Then we finally get people fishing those areas, and more fish from those beats showing up on the catch return. Catch 22 is by-passed and no merger with another club required!
And should we not like this view when we have viewed it for a few seasons, it’s easier to close the gate shut and put the catch over. Or maybe, we can open it further in future by rewarding also for active monitoring duties for the monthly kick samples or the water purity tests, all of which need regular volunteers. Maybe even rewarding quicker membership to the people who are most active in contributing to the club and driving towards more committed and active members.
Oh well it will cause a stink at the AGM and should distract them from the latest Gravel plans. The old buggers can wear themselves out having a bun fight about my cunning plan, and then I can slip through the latest proposed works with the WTT later on in the agenda when the bar is calling them for the last pint of the evening.
Have great week Y’all. Be happy.
Chris Avery.
Pic of Day:
Using a human depth gauge in a previously un-waded run!