We’ve ruined the Brook as a fishery

We’ve ruined the Brook as a fishery

Chris Avery | Wednesday, 10 April 2024

There seems to be two ways that our members tackle the Brook, a polarisation has set in. I’m not saying that there are  ‘only’ two ways for people to fish it, but for a club of sheep, these seemed to be the ways that it’s developed. ( that sounds cold and dismissive in retrospect , it’s just a recognition of how individuals adapt and react into groups and gatherings, a bleating status quo if you like). And now as we have been encouraging members to fish wild, making half of the stream more popular, it seems ultimately, to have led to the unintentional demise of the other half of the Brook.

Firstly when I joined and we had the stocked fish, the areas that were mostly stocked and thus favoured for fishing was mostly from the banks behind and over vegetation, reed beds and even barbed wire fences in places. The reason for this, in hind sight seems to be pretty clear.

Coming from an area of the UK, where stream and river Trout fishing is largely  a foreign concept and not widely experienced. With the nearby fishing experiences, mostly for the coarse fishermen, and it was their shops that dominated every town in the east  midlands when I first started exploring the opportunities around the area, after moving up from London. Every one of these shops carried a little fly fishing tackle, but  by the look of the selections available, chosen by someone who had never encountered a Trout, or cast a fly line. You would never be caught short of Gink, Mucilin, or line snips, the rest was a complete lottery.

For us Trout anglers in this area, the option available, apart from moving house and heading for the hills, being the huge still waters of Rutland; Grafham; Eyebrook; and Pittsford. All legends of the British still water scene, and a mouthwatering prospect I know, for still water fishermen on pilgrimage from distant parts of the UK. But when you live surrounded by them and your ambitions are not of these Stocked fish on sunken lines, or fishing teams of buzzers.

Your dreams instead, are of fishing for small wild brown Trout taking dry flies that are carried along to you on a sparkling gin clear current.  Here in your waders, surrounded by a vignette of the most beautiful elements of the English countryside, with the only option to continue along upstream, wading on up the gently babbling waters to the next rising fish, while enjoying the endless wild life encounters that mother nature sent past to enthral and delight.

Blissed out in bucolic charm-land,  rather than being stood in some endless flat featureless water, second guessing some unseen target below, while facing across to a concrete dam wall and pylons; or if in a  boat; a flotilla of similar fishermen, all casting and pulling lines and it’s always someone else’s boat that seems to be catching all the fish!  And you can feel that building  tension and competitive edge rising across the water from those not catching.

Same on the banks, you are just one of many of varying degrees of casting ability and technical prowess, which for some people is fine, personally I go to the water to get away from all the crowd or at most spend time shared with a friend, preferably a Kingfisher, Otter; hunting Barn Owl; or inquisitive Badger.

Most of us that drift through the Willowbrook club, have flirted with those reservoir banksides or on the boats at some stage or another, but it hasn’t caught us. Just a case of trying to make do with what’s around at the time. But after a while you wander away and like U2, you realise that you still haven’t found what you’re looking for.

(poor bugger that Bono, I often wonder if it’s his car keys, his lottery card, or a decent brand of nasal hair clippers, that he’s singing about?).

And eventually we’ve gravitated towards our rare moving water and somehow found away into the club.

Some do live on the bankside of the Brook, or in the next village and find it more convenient a venue to drop in  for an hour or two on a nice evening than shlepping off for an expensive reservoir experience ( and thus were happier when we stocked and they were chasing Rainbows). Some are as happy on the reservoir, or down catching Barbel or Pike or Chub, and being a member of the club adds to the variety of their fishing year. Most of us though, are just confirmed, hopeless, small stream junkies in need of a fix.

Little wonder in stocking days that the fishing tackle chosen, mostly seemed to be an adaptation from these still water forays, and resembled what it was, haphazardly gathered, and cobbled together. It did the job in a fashion.

Rods and reels half-forgotten from the garages dark dusty corner,  or passed over the garden fence from the neighbours shed, where they had long lingered, half forgotten, buried away under the dust and cobwebs in the shadows of neglect. And then together with a old spool of nylon and with a dozen or so flies bought from a tiny selection of the obligatory fly fishing tackle in a largely coarse fishing shop, preparation for the Brook was complete.

These flies bought on cards of six or ten various patterns, resembled the dry flies that a Spitfire pilot awaiting  ‘Scramble’ would have reminisced about, the Greenwell’s Glory; Grey Duster; Lunns Particular; Tupps Indispensable; Gold-Ribbed Hares Ear; Little Marryat; Flights Fancy; and the Ginger Quill. Even a survivor of the Great War would have recognised these names and had no idea what flies they were meant to imitate.

So then, wearing the Wellington boots from the allotment or veg garden, with the long handled landing Nets and armed the 9 foot or so long reservoir rods they patrolled the banks. That length would help clear over the bank side obstacles and weeds. With this, they could either reach over and drop a fly in the flow and drift it down stream, feeding out line ; or swish a couple of rod lengths upstream and across, even managing to mend the line for those slightly more artful.

Combined with any reel that felt OK on the rod, and had some line that didn’t look too cracked and floated in a fashion. They were all set for a short season on the Brook catching stocked slobs of Rainbow Trout; not so much “living the dream” , but achieving a faint hint of it, though somewhat tenuously. Henrys Fork it most definitely wasn’t!

And coming from the banks of a still water , this standing on the bankside, besides slow deep pools and runs, was an easy adaptation to make. With no need to cast too far, which considering most British people never seem to consider casting lessons, and god forbid practising, was a bonus. And zero need for the line management of a swiftly moving fly to baffle their dexterity either.

And that’s how I found myself there, a 9’ 5wt that I’d built and learnt to fly fish with on a rare London still water, and old Rim Fly reel, some Scientific Anglers mint green, floating line that had years of abusive casting practice on some terrible surfaces, and a box of likely looking flies. Dressed in my gardening wellingtons and an oversized Harris tweed jacket from a thrift shop with every pocket stuffed . A complete duffer, and yet immediately the most likely person to actually catch anything.

 

The other method, came my way by a couple of fortuitous encounters when I first started looking down at the overgrown neglected beats. Searching for something that resembled closer, the stream fishing that I had in my imagination. Not this adapted still water fishing on a slow conveyor belt of murky water, stocked with the temporary visitors that the other club members were satisfied with. No, I was hoping for fishing  somewhat resembling the experiences described in books and magazines that I’d avidly read and devoured as a kid, creating a dream that I had carried with me to adulthood. A persistent itch that desperately needed scratching and I knew the Brook had it in it!

Firstly a car boot sale in a local village turned up a pair of old nylon thigh waders for £5, “ Wow, no more water over the top of the Wellingtons!” and they opened up almost the entire length of the Nassington road bridge and Groynes beats from within the stream banks. Liberation at last.

A chance meeting on the Test with a guy who imported Redington Rods. I told him of where and what I was fishing, my frustrations, and how I thought a 7’ 3 wt would be perfect.

Through the post arrived a 7’6  4wt, not ideal at the time, but starting in the right direction and it was heavily discounted for me, so I couldn’t complain.

That rod past through a few members hands now , I was never really happy with it. I tried casting it again reluctantly last year, newly in the hands of its latest owner, eager for advice on the best line for it; and it was absolutely gorgeous. That Redington rep hadn’t sold me a lemon after all. As my tool of choice now is a 7’6” 3wt, I’ve almost looped around in a full circle back to it. 

At last I could cast under the  canopy  of the trees below the packhorse bridge, and also in the high banks below the windswept open pastures of the Groynes where I could at last, keep the line under the whipping wind and its ultimate landing zone was less random, and felt more controlled .

 

And then getting a chance to fish next to Stuart Crofts on his local small stream up in Yorkshire, was priceless. Where simple fly choices, presentation, drag free drifts, reading flow, and line management, learnt by observing a master, taking example, practical experience, no feedback and very few words. He wasn’t there to teach me, he was just sharing some fishing with a likeminded soul.

In a few very short hours I got more transformative, relevant and valuable information, than I had gained from a dozen long winters of reading every book and magazine available to me… and those lessons sank in, found permanence, and completely transformed my fishing from then on.

We waded up stream together, taking turns at Trout and swapping over rods, as we went. There was no criticism or suggestions about my technique or knowledge, I just watched in awe and found somehow when it was my turn, that I was getting it.

The only thing he did was get rid of my leader and swapped it for a silk furled leader and then balanced a length of tippet that my casting could turn over. But then using his rod… Oh my giddy aunt what a delight. Sorry Bono, here personally, I found at last what I was looking for.  

An Orvis 6’ 2 wt Trout Bum, a Phoenix 2 wt level silk line, a 4 ft furled leader and a length of good old Drennon nylon tippet. My new fly fishing heaven.

It wasn’t a case of me thinking… “If this is what the  Ex-England captain uses for his ‘go-to’ set up; then I must have it too! It was just the feeling of that set up and a delivery that I had been imagining achieving and felt just right. It clicked, and ticked all the right boxes.

Now nearly everyone that fishes the brook and new members introduced  are told (not by me) that they need to get a rod of 6-7’ long of either two to three weight, and some furled leaders.

When we stopped the stocking, this shift in method occurred as more people came down stream from those long rods/ too deep to wade zones, to experience the wilder stream fishing experience in the lower beats, and stayed. Buying chest waders and short light rods…. and then gradually started neglecting the meadows and the village section. And this was our mistake.

I can’t really complain I spent years saying, “Hey come down here, we have Wild trout and I’ve done lots to improve the habitat, and its much more like you expect stream fishing to be”. I asked for it!

For those who fish the stream occasionally now, they pick the bottom end, New members brought to the stream are introduced to this technique in the lower beats, for those who are expecting to have some quality time on the water without to much schlepping around, and with more chance of catching fish, then it’s the Nassington road bridge they choose., from the minute you leave your car within a few yards, your straight in the Brook and on to rising fish if you have your wits about you. 

As the seasons progressed, some years, I would revisit those upper areas, but without the regular passage of fishermen using them , the grasses and weeds and brambles are not kept down by regular footfall of anglers, and you have to press and hack your way constantly forward through a chest high tangle of undergrowth. It becomes mid-summer, bloody hard work for an evening’s fishing, when you seem to spend more time negotiating the bankside jungle, than spent at the decreasing amount of fishable areas.

A shame, there’s some fine fish up there, in those slower deep pools in Mayfly time you see the numbers of the bigger Willow Brook browns giving away their presence and numbers, but no one’s going for them.

I was heading up for them last year with a longer rod ready and heavier line and tippet. On a previous evening, I’d had a look and within 50 yards of the stile seen 10 or 12 fish hitting the mayfly’s, all of them over two to three pounds and a few looking more like four. I was back with more suitable equipment hoping for some scale samples when I went down the rabbit hole, unseen in the tangle of undergrowth, and that ended my season.

We do send a work party of volunteers to the Meadows before each season to clear it ready for fishing, it’s a club custom that’s remained, a statement of intent, but without that essential footfall it soon over-grows, and my focus on habitat is usually, with a limited resource of willing volunteers, the redds, fry habitat ,and maintaining the flow deflectors. And…. getting some fishing in myself!

The village section is lined with barbed wire and the stiles are mostly rotted and unstable now, the pipe protectors to save your dangly bits from the barbs, all gone, and the brambles now rampant, more typical of a ghastly giants lair in a Grimms fairy tale, than the banks of a gentle Trout stream.

Those Trout are still there though and again there some great pools of adult habitat.

I explored up there two seasons back. There was grumbling and rumblings that there are no Trout up there, and murderous murmurs of ‘re-stocking’ those areas. That word that fills me with a sinking dread and constantly needs batting back. Murderous, because if anyone dares to contact a fish farm, that, I fear, will be my instinctive reaction, and thoroughly deserved.

So that made me more determined to add some context and experience to counter this denigration, and prove that the reason there are no fish on the catch returns from those areas, is quite simply, that no-one bloody fishes them!

I found it hard to negotiate the banks and the odd bits of wading, some areas I had to work hard with secateurs to cut a way through. But the old favourite fish holding spots of years before, are still  favoured by the Trout it seemed, and I could see and hear rises, and did catch a few fish.

At one pool where every year someone seemed to catch what would be claimed was an overwintered stocky, I connected with a huge bright golden flanked Brown Trout. The water too deep to get in with waders, too many Reeds to get into range of my short scoop net and not sure where the water shelved off into the deep, and with banks of brambles preventing progress up and down stream. I was restricted in my movements to react. With a 6’ 2wt trying to control it, it was all pretty silly and futile. My desperation to prove a point made me try a bit too hard I guess.

With a 9’ 5wt and a long handled landing net I’d have netted it most probably and had the valuable evidence I was trying to gather. Twice I had it finally close to the scoop net which it surpassed in length, and the second time I inadvertently touched it on the jaw with the net,  the barbless hook came away and we said goodbye, after our all too brief encounter. The fish obviously relieved to be rid of me, and me despairing and desperate . Unrequited love is the cruellest snub, and this felt every bit as desolate and crushing!

A photograph to show the club what was up there would have been really handy and maybe get them dusting off again the old 9’ rods from where they lurk, again half-forgotten in the garages and garden sheds of the local villages. A 6’ 2 wt and risking a pair of expensive chest waders on those barb wire fences and brambles is really not the tool and dress code for a happy life.

But I have to face the limitations, with the present membership I’m unlikely to get more volunteers hours or days, per season, and I have to focus on the fishery as a whole and yet somehow I have to start getting fish from those areas back featured in the catch returns to try to get people back up there and exploring, maybe even trying new methods.

 

One gift horse appeared late last season, that at first seemed to be improbable, an offer that I could never imagine getting through to an agreement of our members, but the more I looked at it and mooted it with selected club officials and tailored it into our fit, then the more it looks like, a solution to this dilemma.

Keeping it in mind that no one wants an increase in the membership numbers, the problem is that no one is catching fish in those areas. And the reason is….because no one if fishing in those areas! It’s a fishing Catch 22 .

(if they do go there as it’s not visited enough, they face an inconvenient jungle struggle, so they don’t fish it, and it becomes even worse, simply because they don’t go there. And; in any case, they no longer carry the right gear to fish it).

The nearest other Trout stream club to us, is about a half hour drive north. It’s called the Gwash and Welland, It’s much more expensive to join and they do have river keepers, but many more miles of banks than us. They also have Grayling, which means fishing in the  Trout off  season is still available. One section, which is alleged to be one of the best beats of the Welland however  has a small syndicate of about 30 members too, it’s a nice section, the stream being quite similar in width and flow to the Brook, but mostly fished from the banks.

I got a message through, out of the blue, late last year from there chairman informing me that they had a club meeting and agreed that they would invite Willowbrook to combine clubs in a system where they can fish our water and we can fish theirs, thus opening up winter grayling option for us, and I am guessing , summer fishing for them when they get too overgrown with weeds and reeds. My first reaction was that I could just imagine that going down well at our AGM and never in a million years would that get passed by our mob!

Then I got to thinking, they have about two miles of water, roughly the same length as our neglected meadows, village beat and Conegar farm. So on a principle that we convert that to fishing for full members and guest club members, and restrict the lower beats for full members only. Hopefully we can get more visitors that are used to, and equipped for fishing off the banks, create more footfall, and add more on the catch return from these areas.

It also means if I want to get on with the essential works here to make it fishing friendly and accessible to our new friends I’ll have a bigger pool of volunteers to call upon.

I’m going to time letting the cat out of the bag a few weeks before the chairman’s summer BBQ, and invite a few of their membership over to present some faces and personalities to our members to have a chat with about the comparisons of our clubs ,and waters, and experiences, and humanize the decision a little. As an abstract concept, they won’t be accepted, but as some fellow enthusiastic, flesh and blood, fly fishing nut jobs, that can fish in the close season for Grayling and have regular fly tying nights in the local pub. it’s no longer a case of keeping them out, but more, how can we join in?!... I hope.

And then we can all discuss the options and outcomes as a group, over a burger and a beer. That’s got to be better than the stuffy old remoteness of the AGM.

I do hope they’re not vegan!

 

For a while fishing the brook I flirted with 7’10” 0wt rods taking it to an extreme, before boinging back to find the happy balance I guess. One of my flies at the time had a load of grey fluffy marabou like fibres that needed discarding, and I hate chucking anything!.

I found if I tied the fibres on a small hook wrapped in copper wire, with a good bit of copper built up behind the head, and some inch long marabou wavy bits, overhanging at the hook end. It was something that could be cast and managed with the 0 wt. I found it really useful for those dark pools and hollows that could only be reached with a down stream drift. ( not the done thing really for us dry fly guys). I had to admit it looked like a diminutive Wooly bugger. At the time I put it up on the UK Fly fishing forum and was called every name going except creative and adaptable, I seemed to have really crossed the line of common decency and corrupted my moral compass.  So I called it the Bastard Pom and got on with wheedling out Trout from difficult places and fishing it in coloured high water regardless.

If you look on that forum now it’s full of people wanting advice on the best rods for streamer fishing, and cases for their precious streamer patterns. I know the rest of the world has been doing it for years, but suddenly over here in the land of Halford, it’s now spoken of like a new artform, and socially acceptable. It’s high flipping fashion!

My cunning plan is to invite streamer fishermen to the brook and fish these neglected areas and see what we can tease out, maybe with some regular pictures posted up on the whatsapp group I can fan up some interest in these  neglected areas again from our Hoi Polloi!

One of the big still water tactics around here is the UK buzzer patterns, and why not? It’s a huge part of the diet; midge larvae. It’s also huge on the diet in the Brook, and in the slower deeper pools where  the bigger fish do lurk, I often wonder if we are missing a trick.

So I’ve tied some up and I’ll be giving those a go this year too, Rutland water style ,on the washing line maybe. In a determined effort to reprogramme the habits of our members and get them back in touch with their inner reservoir angler spirit and complete that loop, and have them again treading those banks upstream , which were once so popular.

 

Then, maybe in a year or two, I can pull up at the Nassington road bridge, slip on my waders and with a mischievous grin ask the great empty spaces, “ Hey, where the f… is everyone?” and find that like years before I have the whole place all to myself, with no chance of an encounter on the horizon and a beat, previously unfished by anyone else. Blissed out in bucolic charm-land, and all alone again, naturally.

It's all a cunning devious plan, I’m afraid. Sorry. 

Hoping your lines are tight,  your waders dry, and your dangly bits in one piece.

Have a great week