2009 Season Report

It’s been an eventful Season, and in so many ways this has been the year that Carol and I have been waiting for. I have not felt so confident about the lake conditions since 2002 when we restored the Top Lake.

Our neighbour’s cattle have been out of the stream now for the past three summers. The key indicator that I have been banging on about for the past seven years is not just clear water – it is the presence of the Stonewort (here I go again). Stonewort will only grow when the Phosphorus concentration of the water is below about 200 micrograms per litre, so it is an unambiguous indicator of water quality; a bit like public opinion for a political party (oops sorry Gord!). The fact is that the Bottom Lake is not just crystal clear – it is covered with Stonewort. On the face of it, this is a very sudden recovery, so will it last? We have been lucky this year; although it has been a wet summer, we have had no heavy rain of any significance at all, and so have had very little flow down the valley. Little flow means little Nutrient supply. There is, of course, far more to the dramatic improvement than just reduced water flow, but it might be a contributory factor. The main thing is that the ecology has shifted from high-Nutrient–loving flora to low-Nutrient-loving flora, and – while that change is of course reversible – it is a bit like public opinion; it will not change without some significant event. Can you see Gordon winning the next Election? My best guess is that the Bottom Lake will remain crystal clear for most of next Season, and I think there is a better-than-even chance that the Top Lake will be too. It’s been a long haul, but this is only how it should be.

Fly fishing is not a sport in which we engage in isolation – it has evolved as one element of a natural circle of events and conditions. The concept that the hatching insect needs to be imitated in minute detail developed because often your imitation was but one among numerous natural insects. There is an undeniable trend on some other waters away from that concept today, to the point where many fly fishers – both stream and still-water – could not even identify a fly, let alone imitate it.

I suspect a possible reason for this divergence away from the sport’s founding principles is the absence of those very insects that we used to take for granted. It is a cause for concern in our Southern chalk streams, and a more or less accepted fact in most of our still-waters. The reasons may be many and varied, but I would bet that the two most important reasons are sheep dip and Eutrophication. Modern pyrethrum sheep dip is totally devastating to invertebrate life; if just one sheep stands in a stream soon after dipping, hundreds of metres of stream is wiped out. Eutrophication shows its hand with an increase in algae and undesirable weed growth, and you will be hard-pressed to find a stream or still-water that is not affected. None of this can be good for insects which have evolved to live in water free from human influence. Still-waters simply amplify the effect of Eutrophication, because they act as a sink for those fertilising Nutrients, particularly Phosphorus.

The first requirement is alkaline water with a value of at least Ph.7.5 to 8. That discounts large parts of the country for a start. The second requirement is water with a low concentration of Nitrogen and Phosphorus, sufficient to fall into the Mesotrophic Classification of lakes – that really discounts the majority of lakes. Then there are other considerations such as lake depth and average temperature which also affect insect life. I am sure there are some, but I have not personally seen such a lake – which is a sad indictment of our environment. It brings it home to you at times such as when I have tried to source Stonewort to put into our lakes; it is really rare.

We are as isolated at Brook Farm as you are likely to get in Southern England; if we cannot achieve those ideal conditions of pure alkaline water and abundant fly life, then – frankly – I don’t think anyone else will. The great thing for us is that, while insect hatches have been poor in the past – I am not aware that we have actually lost any species. The Mayfly hatch was reasonable this year, and I have seen various Olives as well as the usual Damsels and Sedges. So, in this regard, the future is more black and white. If we keep the pure water, the insects will naturally fill the space. When these insects become more prolific, perhaps next year, then our fly fishing enters a new dimension; we close the circle. Pure alkaline water - hatching insects – rising trout – fly fishermen! What we have here should be the norm, but it isn’t; it is pretty special.

I can report, just as we finish this, that the Top Lake does indeed have some Stonewort. I drained it down a bit just to see what if anything was there, and lo and behold, there are numerous little shoots of Stonewort. Interestingly, there is no sign of Fennel Pond Weed at all, so there is every reason to think that the Stonewort will take off quickly next Spring.

The Season got off to a dramatic start when Mervyn Chappell caught an over-wintered fish of over twenty pounds, and by all accounts it was a real cracker! All of the early weeks were very good, with some great days, especially to various Dry Flies. Then quite suddenly, and without any reason that I could account for, the clear water gave way to an algal and plankton bloom quite early in June. It was not terribly bad, but any plankton bloom that fish can eat is bad for the fishing. June progressed into July with a heat wave of 30oC, and prospects looked to be somewhere between dire and horrendous!

Then, about mid-July, to my complete surprise and delight, the water started to clear, which is unheard of for that time of the Summer. There were several really good days for Members who probably ventured out more in hope than expectation. Roger Bellamy’s Group Day towards the end of the month really confirmed that, despite high water temperatures, the fishing was top class. They had a brilliant day – way beyond what you would expect for such a hot July. Pete Sealey has provided me with a graph that he has compiled of the Season’s water temperatures compared with last year, and it is really interesting. Apart from the heat wave in June, it has been a lousy Summer – right? The facts indicate that water temperatures this year have been an average of a couple of Degrees higher than last year, despite it not seeming to be summery weather! This perhaps accounts for why some local Fisheries have had to close this summer; it sounds as if warm water and weed have been a big problem for many.

We had a minor weed problem, thanks totally to the reduced Nutrient level and the spreading Stonewort – oh and not to mention many days’ of back-breaking maintenance. The result, however, was that – from the middle of July onwards – we enjoyed wonderful clear water, despite the temperatures.

The fly fishing has been good, occasionally brilliant, but never easy; in fact, there have been some ideal-looking days with crystal clear water when it has been positively tough! I think the absence of really good insect numbers has been a factor, as well as the continued presence of too much daphnia.

The water looks crystal clear, but I have still found plenty of daphnia with a fine net, and of course the Trout eat it. I have read from research that the “overshoot” of plankton from a Eutrophic into Mesotrophic condition is normal, and is a big part of the reluctance of a water body to flip from one state to another. It is often referred to as “the persistence of relic populations”. (I can sympathise with them – recent years have required a lot of persistence from these two old relics!)

I don’t think the presence of educated fish as a result of Catch-&-Release has been any greater this year than any other; the turnover has been the same. I feel sure that what some call “difficult fishing” and others call “challenging fishing” is a combination of events. Too little insect life, too much daphnia, and educated Trout would certainly be high on my list. Thankfully, the first two of these conditions are transient, and the latter can be overcome with greater skills of imitation and presentation, but then again – that is easy to say for those of us who attended the end-of-Season tuition course!

The quality of the Trout this year is a mixed story. You remember that last year I foolishly said our Rainbows would be as perfect as perfect can get – what an idiot ! – I did not account for Murphy’s Law ! We have had a feed issue, and I am afraid to say that I have been a bit like the fool who pays to redeem his Spanish Lottery winning Ticket, despite not buying one ! Our usual supplier was taken over and refused to sell us non-pigmented feed. Changing supplier is not easy, because they all like to supply in loads of 40 tons, and our one-ton loads are not worth their trouble. However, we found a supplier who was happy to deal in small loads. I looked at the Nutrient content and it sounded fine, and when I found out that it was £600 per ton instead of £1000 a ton, I almost tore his arm off ! We were just into the second delivery when I suddenly realised that the fish appeared to be dark in colour, and not of the usual Sea Trout appearance. Not only that, they were definitely smaller for their age. Research quickly threw up the fact that the classic indicator of dietary deficiency for Trout is a darkening of colour. A bit more research and all is clear – the cheap feed does contain all the Protein and Vitamins that the fish require (at least, on the label) – the trouble is clearly that the Trout cannot fully digest this particular type of Protein, and so they just pass it straight out the back end, which is why the Hatchery has been full of filamentous algae all Summer, giving me endless hours of work. It has been a bit of a disaster and, not content with running the Fishery at a loss, we have managed to compound the problem by paying for feed which we then burnt simply to add to global warming !

I am not sure if many Members have picked up on the problem, or perhaps you are being too polite to mention it, but it has been a cock-up. We have immediately put the fish back onto the very top-of-the-range and dearest feed that we could find, and paid an extra £50 per ton for a small delivery, and the recovery is almost immediate. All the larger fish have, within a month to six weeks, gone back to being white-bellied Sea Trout. My only concern is the little guys who will be our next Season’s yearlings. They are well behind, but they are catching up; we can only hope there are no long-term consequences.

We had other highs and lows in the Hatchery. We had the four giant Cock Fish that we did not realise we had at the start of the Season. One of them was at least 25 pounds in December, and looked more like a crocodile ! Another one was an ugly bugger with only one eye so we did what you should never do, and we gave him a name; we just picked any old name out of the blue, say, Gordon, but sadly despite informing Members that these fish might gain condition and become worthy adversaries, they all died !

The big success in the Hatchery was the fish that I did not give a name to, and was simply the best fish I have ever produced. I should not have taken the photograph, I know, but I did freeze my hands in 10oC water first, and we just took two very quick shots. The photograph in the Lodge and on the website does not do the fish justice, because she was fighting me and bent away from the camera, so one does not appreciate the length of the fish. That Rainbow is simply perfect – it is really big, but forget the weight – that’s not important – it is just the perfect bar of silver, and it only took me 26 years to produce it! The fish went out as soon as the lake temperature dropped below 17oC, and I hoped perhaps we might contact it once or even better twice, but I had no idea what was about to happen. John Pickles is sure he was the first to shake hands with the fish. John hooked it on the bottom dam; it ran straight off, stripped off all the backing and shed the hook – gone ! That was news enough but then John spotted the fish again in the afternoon, and cast a buzzer to it – which it obligingly took ! The result was the same as before – one mad dash, and freedom.

We cannot be sure, of course, if we are talking about the same fish on each occasion, because there are a few similar fish around. But the stories of having your backing run off to the knot became almost commonplace. Mervyn has hooked it twice and failed to land it; it sounds like Graeme Whiting has lost it once – he said he had never experienced anything like it – and there are at least another three or four cases of complete emptying of reels. The only person who is confident that he has actually landed the fish is Pete Sealey, who says that, after an amazing scrap, he had the biggest and best fish in his net that he has ever seen; sounds like her! The fish was carefully released, and swam straight off. (Not content with the biggest Rainbow, Pete also caught the biggest Brownie of the Season, something over four pounds!) Pelham Aldrich-Blake had a similar fish – possibly the same one – but he thinks it was probably not the big one; however, after another titanic struggle, Pelham netted the beast, and because he has one of these new-fangled weighing nets – he quickly weighed it at 21 pounds, which is the largest actually confirmed weight this Season.

This has been an exceptional fish – it is normal for some big fish not to be caught at all, perhaps once if you are lucky, and maybe even twice, but I have never known a fish like this one. To hook a fish that rips every yard of backing off your reel in one go is just an amazing if not scary experience. Mervyn summed it up well:- he said, “that fish has attitude”, and let’s hope it is still around next Spring and is even more cantankerous !

We all know how much nonsense is spoken about Hatchery versus Wild Trout. Putting aside the reality that most Trout that people consider to be wild are actually Hatchery, the fact remains that such a designation is no more than an accident of birth. When you consider how difficult it is to fool some of our Trout - and then if you manage to fool one, to experience a fish emptying the whole reel-full of line - it really puts that silly argument into perspective.

Our End-of-Season get-together was brilliant. Instructor Martyn Armstrong was first class. We started the day with a table-top talk and demonstration about tackle, but mostly concentrating on lines, knots and leaders. The attention to detail was a real eye-opener; such things as the leader-to-fly-line connection, and the taper of the leader was paramount. I was delighted to see that Martyn has the same view as I do, regarding fluorocarbon and braded leaders – leave these in the bin! I was OK with the stepped leader; mine did not have the perfect diameter relationship, but I was not far off having a good leader. However, my Dacron loop connector to the fly line was greeted like a Labrador that had rolled in fox poo ! Not only that, my Michael Evans’ weight-forward line, which I admit is a little old and cracked – was apparently a joke! I think we all suffered a degree of ritual humiliation, as our tackle was demonstrated to be fairly pointless!

Then we moved on to casting, and it quickly became apparent that my beloved old Scott rod was actually far better suited to training peas upwards. I discovered that I have a hook in my cast – that my left hand haul is in the wrong plane – and that basically my casting is a bit like a hippopotamus climbing a tree! Looking around the lake, I suspect we were all climbing the same tree. The great thing was that, although my equipment remained better suited to the allotment, within a couple of hours I was doing things with it that I could not manage before. Tracking – that’s a word we learned; it means casting in a straight line, and within next to no time, I went from casting a figure ‘S’ shape to a straight line. But then, just as we had learned to cast in a straight line, we then learned to cast in a figure ‘S’ – but intentionally. We learned a lot about roll casting as well, which is particularly useful on our steep banks. Michael Jones telephoned me the following day, and we found ourselves discussing the minutiae of leaders and rod tapers, like a couple of ‘anoraks’. I think Martyn Armstrong has succeeded; according to Martyn, the “student” who advanced the most on the day was Roger Burns, but I thought all of us learned a lot – perhaps Roger just started from a particularly low level !

What I would like to try next is a range of rods, and Mike Jones agreed. I will approach various manufacturers and see if I can have a loan of their rods. There is no harm in asking, and if we can get hold of a few, we can have a day trying them out during the Winter – but I am not promising anything. I know Roger would be interested; if my old rod is only fit for training peas up, then that old thing of his must surely have some agricultural use !

It was a very good end to the Season, rounded off with a good barbecued lunch. The weather was fine, and we could sit outside and throw our meat bones over our shoulders - I’m sure I heard Mike Jones shout “more wine wench” !!

The Trout for next year will be back to normal. The bigger fish have recovered from the poor feed very quickly, and are fin perfect. The Yearlings will no doubt start off the Season a bit smaller than usual, but they will catch up by mid Season. Apart from being smaller, they actually look really good – fin perfect, and a lovely shape. It is likely that they will be a bit deeper in the body than usual, a result of good feed – I usually hold them back to ensure the classic Sea Trout shape - but it will all iron itself out during the Season. I think next Season’s Trout should be up there among our best; I certainly have no plans to buy any cheap feed!

Prospects for next year – for a start, several Members casting properly, with real fishing rods. Beyond that, it is likely to be a landmark year.

If the water conditions really have turned the corner and stay there, as we hope, then the prospects are brilliant. We also have to turn the corner next year, and make a profit; it does not have to be much, but a profit, nevertheless. It’s great for our Members to enjoy the best Trout fishing in the UK at less than cost price; it’s the deal of the Century; but it can not go on for ever! If, next year, we can secure the water quality, and secure a profit, then I can only see a golden sunny upland extending far into the distance – that’s with the appropriate glasses!

We would just remind Members to confirm there Membership for next Season by the end of October, and to wish everyone a pleasant Winter, a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and Tight Lines for the next Season.