third whinge

The high floods have receded, and the Brooks carried many of the problems in the high brown waters away, downstream to the slower flows of the main wider river swelling it slightly, marrying in and accepting its identity. Here it will have settled into its slower pools for now, occasionally getting flushed forward downstream with a fresh deluge from each new storm that beats and drums these lands. Until eventually either meeting the wide mud flats and giant flocks of wading birds in the wide huge estuary flats called the Wash. Glimpse down on the twisting line of England’s coasts. The Wash is a large square morsel bitten out of the bulge of the eastern shoreline.

The soil and silts not making it to the flats, will be mechanically dredged out of the canalised channels miles short of that destination as the Nene cuts its muddy passage across the flat ancient fenland. Excavated then flopped down atop of the bank as a Bund; a Levee; a Berm; a stop bank; a flood wall; or an embankment; depending which neighbourhood you hail, but the same in essence.. A flood barrier.

A silty bank cap of choking sludge, once precious topsoil. Once a complex medium, a mixture of long eroded  rock, crushed fine to sand and silt and wafers of tiny, water holding clays, mixed with rich decayed plant humus.

Once it held moisture and air in balance for the roots and fungi. It was rich in the precious nutrients for plant growth. Taken millennia to form. Built up deep beneath the forest and pastures and now just a century of farming strips it away gradually with each harvest and un-timely deluge.

Precious, priceless, Soil that, with the  sunshine, is the basis for all the life living upon this Earth.

Carelessly lost now from the once deep fertile pastures by the very profiteers whose life’s rely upon it.

(As a Gardener at heart, nothing in this wide world offends and depresses me quite so much as people dismissing this as ‘dirt’…such disrespect and ignorance.

It’s like calling fly casting just wafting a rod.!

Everyone, but everyone great and small, should spend some time working with it.. not from a tractor or a digger, but down at weed and worm level, sowing and planting, tilling and tending, getting it under the finger nails at the very start of the food chain that nurtures all of life above the waters).

These soils in this valley had formed under the ancient broadleaved hunting forests of Rockingham, the favoured grounds of the conquering William after his excursions and exertions of 1066 and all that Those few hundred, thickly wooded, square miles that he stumbled into were incredibly ancient even then and somewhere within its bounds flowed the Willowbrook, long before the willows marked its banks and it took the name..

Just east beyond the Brook ancient tribes cleared the trees and farmed in relative peace with each other, they gathered food and planted basic crops. They learnt to melt tin and copper together and cast axe heads, swords, jewellery out of this bronze.  They hunted animals and birds, kept flocks of ancient hardy sheep. Which in Winter they drove from the summer meadows up onto the low hills that stood dry above the winter floods, and of course they fished in these waters too.

 
British Soay Bronze Age sheep

The waters that once were full of Ammonites and squid like belemnites preyed upon by long necked Plesiosaurs who in turn were victims of the razor jawed Ichthyosaurs.

Their story laid down in the silts and stones below the bronze age below the fens.

Before the last ice age these waters were trundled with Hippos, Woolly Mammoth and Beavers.

In my last I mentioned the red damsel flies, flying in the love ring that landed at my feet, I was wrong, and I did them a disservice. I apologise now to those creatures who have a stronger inheritance to this land than I.

They were actually ‘Migrant Hawker Dragon flies’. Many thousands of their generations earlier they had landed at the feet of those Bronze age farmers too, yet earlier generations flew around the Hippos 125,000 years previously. They even, in a slightly larger frame, fluttered over the Ammonite rich waters over the heads of Jurassic beasts 160,000,000 years ago in this same spot….generation after generation along the time line to today, when some upstart will gaze upon them and fail to grasp the significance of their link to this place.

One body of water however flowed with waters from the Nene and (tenuously) I’ll assume carrying some waters from the ancient Willow Brook too.

(included here for the sake of a good yarn).

It caused the Bronze age settlers a problem. Full of reed beds and bullrushes it was hard to navigate in small boats.

The drove ways for the sheep, ditched on either side with layed hedges were fine on the dry land , but these early Bronze age farmers had a problem with the wide shallow water, they could not drive the sheep nor move the crops over and two desirable fertile areas were divided by a Mere a kilometre wide.

A bronze aged round house

While Tutankhamen ruled in Egypt and long before the ancient Greece civilisation had been established, these Fenland communities were divided by wide swollen waters moving east to the sea over the fen basin and curtailing the progression of mankind out of the Stoneage and on to the Iron and beyond.

While the Egyptians were somehow building huge stone pyramids, that still astound and amaze. These quiet ancient Britian’s 3,500 years ago with small bronze and flint axes were felling 60,000 trees, moving them onto site on this Mere and then driving them deep into the boggy marsh in 5 long rows, each a kilometre in length.

They then planked 2 million pieces of timber to form the causeway, which swelled out to a platform of 2,5 acres of felled wood. The size of Wembley stadium. It took them 400 years to build. In its waters they then gently and carefully offered snapped swords, jewellery, pottery, and tools out of respect or religion who knows, but the two areas where now linked.

Years later the Romans inherited those old drove ways as roads for the legions and the chariots to return from the western marches and drive southeast to attempt to supress Boudica’s rebellious , violent uprising.

But in the Bronze age the remains of any humans found from that era and community found no signs of violent death, from the sword or axe, arrowhead, or spear. It seems, on all evidence that this was a settled community gradually weaning off nomadic hunting and gathering to peaceful settlement and learning to farm around the dramatic changes of the growing seasons and vagaries of the landscape. Concentrating on living with space to spread.

The watery remains of the ancient causeway

What remains now is the evidence of the posts from the causeway and the surrounding round houses, buried in the swampy fen soils, occasionally unearthed by dredgers or diggers and then poured over by archaeologist. Unlike the magnificent Pyramids this massive endeavour of sheer will and determination against the odds is largely unheralded and unknown to the British public.

A few miles to the west and south of the Brook where the soils are now wasted and washed away. The farmers gradually plough deeper into the thin  remainingblack soils, and they of occasion hit the ancient trees lying where they stumbled and fell into the damp boggy leaf mould and mosses of the primordial wet forest up to 7000 years ago. The timber preserved in the forming peat over these ages is now jet black and hard.

I’m having a reel seat turned from jet black Bog oak found a few valleys away for a new fly rod, I use the Bog Oak for fly tying tools and for small furniture fittings, Others use the Bog Yew for chopping boards…many however just burn it wastefully in the winter grate, a long glowing ferocious heat with a stinking peaty smoke returning the old carbon trapped by the photosynthesis of the ancient leaf’s back into the atmosphere.

But enough depressing thoughts, back in the valley of the Willowbrook, on the stream bed it is transformed afresh from the flood waters .

The pads of choking carpet algae have been scoured and flushed away and the gravel beds look pristine now.

The old, ragged tips of water buttercup, the Ranunculus weed, its split ends, have been trimmed neat by the floods and the old debris tangled in its long tresses rinsed free, and they are now brushed straight and laid out on the stream bed, orderly and neat, the  rich bottle green strands, waiting, ready to speed into growth next spring as the light returns.

Thankfully no Swans nested last year in this area of the brook, they normally graze down and decimate the Ranunculus beds. Happily, I’ve never seen them look so full at this time of the year. It’s an optimistic scene indeed.

The bankside vegetation recently so overgrown and unruly, is now neatly folded back or draw along the water course exposing the full width of the Brook. All the surface waters now open to the cold clear crisp sky above...

One moment the heavens above, spotless in endless blue, the next dotted with hundreds of birds, fluttering and dipping high above, determined in flight on some mission, Winged crusaders of an autumnal sky.

. The size of Blackbirds, with clear pale grey rumps showing up through the clear air, even from way down here in the stream.

These first Fieldfares of Autumn have arrived from Scandinavia.  Flying in on the cold eastern winds for a few months respite from the coming northern Freezer, to strip the hedge rows and gardens of England of its glut of berries, small fruits and haws.

Crusaders no!

These are the Feathered marauding Vikings on the plunder.

They are however, a welcome sight in the vacuum recently created by the vanishing Swallows, screeching Swifts and Martins.

Our summer fruits, their winter larder

I’m instream today, wading, on the start of my annual assessment of the state of the Brook and of the priority tasks for the coming winter, starting in what’s probably my favoured stretch, my home beat, my own little heaven.

Where, while others were catching stocked Trout much further upstream, I was enjoying the solitude of the overgrown and neglected stretches down here, delighting in gently stalking and overcoming the obstacles of a small overgrown forgotten stream and the very occasional meeting with a Trout.

Often something large and dark and skinny, a stocked fish that had lost condition, unable to sustain its gorged upon, stock-pond pellet, chubby state. Often fin worn and ragged tailed, now weakening, dropping gradually downstream.

And yet sometimes a smaller fish, seeming too small to have been stocked was caught.

Mostly though a big Chub or a few little silver Dace would be the piscine reward for a good cast or drift.

When the delight would be discovering a new picture-perfect bed of gravel hidden away under a tangle of bramble and looking every inch the ‘proper’ trout stream., The discovery and  scrutiny of an unfamiliar Unwinged fly, an olive. Or on  the banksides an encounter with a badger pup, the glimpse of a vixen, some Hare leverets, snuggled in a scoop waiting for the dusk return of their mother.

And in the stream the thrill of a close, heart stopping flash-by of the kingfisher ferrying bullheads and minnows upstream to a sandy hole in the bank.

Two herons came descending through the tight little opening in the canopy of the trees to their secluded spot to settle down next to me in the stream, and then realising in alarm at the last moment, just what this stationary figure intent on them was. The two of them stretched out they’re huge wings to break the decent and with slow contortions started grasping out for purchases of the thin air. Legs bending in involuntary pumps seeming to grasp for nothing, the stretched pinions clinging and climbing up on unseen pockets and pinches, scaling up, slowly, with determined long flaps, to lift them up the last haul to the tree line and then catch a gentle draft to glide away, to  gather composure and with a ruffle of the feathers put the whole sorry experience behind them.

Those shapes of them in the air just above me frozen in a memory, like dancing cranes around a little fisherman in a tiny stream under the twisted branches of weathered boughs, a freeze of a Japanese painting.

Often though the triumph would be the glimpse of movement then seeing a fish rising in some tricky run beside and overgrown bank, Patience, wait, then a second rise “Surely a Trout”!

If not caught….  and often it wasn’t. That was then marked in my memory as a challenge to be overcome on future visits.  Away from the waters I could daydream about how I’d overcome those obstacles that challenged me and how I’d execute a perfect delivery and drift the next visit, or the next.

By the mid-season and have half a dozen or more of these ‘marks’ stored up to anticipate on a visit as I’d again set off upstream. Exploring waters, observing the world of the stream and its inhabitants, vainly attempting to become one, learning its currents  and flows, between slowly wading up to  my next anticipated mark and challenge with the fly rod and line.

In many trips I’d catch maybe a dozen Trout in a whole season. All precious and carefully returned. They were worked for, carefully considered and nettle stung, bramble scratched and hard won.  When I could have just been catching dozens and dozens further upstream in the stocked waters.

But I was enthralled, and life was calmer with these waters despite the battles with the undergrowth and many lost feathered flies eaten by the trees.

 One memorable big old Trout looked more like a Congar eel when I manged to get my net around its length, a massive head and half a yard of skinny wasted dark flanks that ended in a huge tail.

This had been a magnificent creature, no doubt, with some history.  Now old and feeble, found surviving  itslast days in the gentle back waters under a worn bank.

Id never caught a fish that long nor imagined one existed in those waters. It had avoided the Anglers and the Otters, grown huge on minnows and fish fry no doubt. Here it was caught at last, sagging reluctant in my hands, finally undone, pathetic, resigned it seemed. 

I briefly considered the priest, not for the pot or a trophy but just out of some sympathy, my perception, ridding a poor creature of its misery and suffering.

But kindness steered my hand.

Who was I to judge, when, the final day of its long life? Or question its right or its will to live on?

Once this creature would have broken free of me, tested my abilities and found them lacking, no doubt about it.

I gently held it down in the flowing waters of its brook, feeling the clear currents cold on my wrists, patiently watching the gills gently flap as its mouth gulped in water, and eventually feeling a stiffening in its flanks that drove small quivers then a feeble sweep of its tail as it recovered.

I loosened my hold to the barest support and then lowered it down into the gentler current of the stream bed. Spreading pectoral fins now steadied it, the dorsal came up and tilted it straight up the current, the tail holding it in the flow, and then a gently sweep or two of that big tail carried it slowly up stream clear of my hands. It rested a moment from the exertion maybe, to take its bearings?

(Maybe to say goodbye and thankyou…I wish.)

Gathered itself and gracefully set off upstream for a meter or two, at home now,  familiar territory again, then made a determined left turn out of the main flow and slowly swam in, disappearing from my world as its tail slipped into a deep hollow under the bank. Gone.

For the rest of the season, I avoided fishing that stretch and left it in peace.

For a few seasons, of fishing here,  I would mention catching smaller fish that I was sure were not stocked, but this was dismissed by older members as the wishful thinking from the upstart.

It was sagely considered and decreed that these must have been stocked fish that had lost condition and had dropped a mile or two downstream as now shorter trout by some strange “common sensed” logic!

“Out of Condition? Shrunken… My arse!!” was a thought, that I kept to myself.

They were flighty, wary, little buggers that tenaciously fought like Jack Russel’s.

I knew the out of condition ex-‘stockies’, I had met plenty.

These were not hewn from the same stock. There was a vigour and a strength  to them. They were fin perfect, bright, determined little creatures that glistened with spirit in your hand.

But I wasn’t going to protest my point too loud, “Let ‘emthink that, suits me fine!”

 There was no real proof either way and as for now I seemed to be the only person fishing this neglected area. Let them all wander in the meadows miles upstream catching and killing foul tasting stocked fish, in the slower deeper channels, they were welcome to the experience!

Then one evening not to far from the area I had released the huge old Trout I caught a small fish that changed everything for both me and the fortunes of the Willowbrook.

70 years earlier a weekly fishing paper called the Angling Times had taken on a project of a nearby water they called the “Maybrook”, possibly to disguise its identity.

They enlisted local ‘public school boys’  of the prestigious Oundle school and then had these  junior “Hooray Henries” to extensively survey the insect and plant life as a science projects. Those records are still thorough and a fascinating glimpse back for those of us that monitor the waters.

The Angling Times also organised electrofishing to survey the many species, and then launched a plan. Published in a series of stories in the paper, they were to net out all the course fish and send them to nearby waters.  To then stock the Brook with small Trout, at first hoping they would breed. But as this failed, they continued stocking yearly.

The club formed by the Angling Times became the Willowbrook Flyfisher’s.

50 years or so later I joined the club.

That project for the Angling times was obviously significant change in the usage, and care for the Brook.

The small Trout in my hand that evening heralded a much more significant change, that’s for another discussion and chapter.

For now, it’s the dusk of a late summer evening around 2008, I’m looking down at a small brown Trout barely covering the palm of my hand, its surprised eyes and its stubby little nose. The brown Maxima tippet I was using twisted about my fingers, while I stumbled with a lens cap and settings.

Never had I held one so small.

Years of catching stocked fish, and along the flanks of this fish however, something only ever seen by me in books. Parr marks. Beneath the haloed black and crimson spots along its golden-brown flanks the distinct splot’s, like finger gripped bruises, And at the edge of its perfect fin, unlike any of our stocked fish, a clear clean white line. A Trout in its first year out of the Redds.

They were breeding!

Thankfully I carried a camera for photographing olives and caddis, so the irrefutable evidence was triumphantly captured and preserved and as the parr safely returned to the currents I prayed to grow on and eventually return to the mysterious redds.

The journey begin there and then to transform the Brook into a Wild Trout water, to repair the ravages of the farming practices over time and renew those meanders, the pools the riffles, the gravel beds, and with clearer flows, grow the Ranunculus beds and increase the insects .. so much to do.

No longer to stock the pellet gorged Trout in its slow muddy waters, but instead to clean and revitalise the waters and return the rich diversity of life back to the brook and make it a haven for the small population of Trout we had, which hopefully with time and help would flourish in its waters. I had no idea what I was taking on with that daydream.

Little wonder I have a soft spot for this stretch!