Those answers at last

The trees around us laden with this year successful alumnae of the nests, those that had survived the marauding, murderous Magpies and sweeping Sparrow hawks. Finally at last graduated to dawns choir, perched attentively learning and rehearsing their allocated Arias amidst the swelling fruits. The flow of the waters slicing the greenery, surrounded by late season’s dark pink and white blooms. Willow herb,Clowns Woundwort blending down into the surface,confusing the bankside and waters. Those two worlds merging and blending, the tumbling strangle of large, starched white,trumpeted Convolvulus, and purple stars of Woody nightshade binding it all together down beside the waters.While higher up on the bankside above the pandemonium, the early summers faded blooms and grasses now crinkling and browning into seed heads, gently nodding and rattling with the occasional sigh of hazy, scented, summer breeze. Put simply it was blissful.

I slipped down into the stream in my sturdy wading boots with my garden fork and a measure in hand to test the flow rate of the waters. An olive green wadered ungainly little lump of a man slipping into an extravagant clear gin, laced with sparkling, zingy, tonic waters.

There’s a few memories of that lovely day that will stick firmly in my mind for a long time. Foremost of the exquisite clarity and life of those sparkling water, even for this soul,who had experienced the stream many thousands of times.

Being a creature of habit and a fisherman of summer nights, I’m rarely in the Brook in day time, unless it’s to cool off with a swim usually in some deeper shaded pool. But never witness these shallower runs in daytime, the stream bed bathed in strong sunlight, in these late summer levels of these clear waters. Trailing my hand casually in the clear cool current, the surface seeming to magnify the bed with clarity and in sharp detail, the amount of life this abode inhabits and teems with.What could possibly be wrong with it?

Bill, the club treasurer was up on the bank, rolling the measuring wheel along the little track that remained amongst the shoulder high encroaching seed heads, and took the notes and measurements  and scores, as we visited each potential site and graded its potential in a fashion

That entire stretch of new gravel at the Nassington road Bridge,  had haunted me since my return and there was reticence to shuffle into it and discover the awful truth, that it was in fact useless, most of the water was too shallow which desperate fish may try to inhabit. But the flow rates were wrong and finally when I wiggled my boot down into it, it was mostly a thin layer, a crust of newly settled stones covering over historically, deep silt. It was all useless as spawning grounds, and seemed destined to be waiting to get flushed further downstream away from us as the seasonal winter floods chipped away at it over the years and decades.

Here had been one of the few places in the Brook with large stones that rose out of the current and broke the surface, but now had somehow flattened and gone. These diminutive monoliths, had a special function beyond Trout habitat and a respite from the flow. On dark evenings I had come down here torch in hand, and watched the surface rocks teeming in a shifting mass, a moving moss like covering, Caddis fly females, edging down towards the water surface. Those distinctive wing shapes evolved not for flight but for this very moment, to resist the sweeping currents as they scurried down the rock to the river bed, resisted the flows, and found a place to lay their eggs.

But in a stream bereft of these features, these stones and the bed had been replaced with a seemingly useless wilderness,the Caddis ladies now needed to find a neighborhood elsewhere for raising the sproggs, or be provided for.

In a few places where I had remembered gravel patches before in this region, and set silt traps in the margins, I found under the surface layer a harder compacted mass, this potentially could be a deeper gravel bed that could be flushed through,and was noted by Bill for attention when we finally got a work party down, but we were desperately clutching at straws, and hoped this wasn’t the best I was going to find.  

I spent hours that morning and into the noon, thoroughly prodding and poking and wiggling my boot in an attempt to find some places to work on, I found nothing convincing.  As well as the initial places I had looked nearer the bridge itself,there were two other sites I had remembered where the flow deflectors had scoured out the base of thin gravels and mounded them midstream  before the bed fell away into a pool; that elusive Brown Trout prime Real Estate.

Felled tree silt traps adjacent in the margins had created shallow bankside, keeping the waters clean and providing habitat and refuge for hatchlings from any nearby Redd. These were two real success stories of the habitat works in the lower Brook and Trout regularly, year on year, bred on these gravels. Both now however, were gone! This was becoming much worse than even my reticence had suspected.

Those remaining few beds of gravel in the areas sat now, thin on a silty base. One had the silt traps on the far bank mysteriously ripped away and just some of the old rebar fixing remained. What the hell had done that and why? What had the force to snap the steel fixings, surely not the current? Had the farmer and his tractor lost the plot and gone AWOL?This was beyond neglect. Another mystery to solve.  

But by early afternoon the main question of the day was answered, despite the Brook looking great and full of life and optimism, we had the gathering clouds of very little viable potential spawning ground available.  You didn’t need to be a worry wort and an occasional drama queen to realise, without help, our Trout would be struggling.

What poor excuses for spawning grounds did seem available,would not play the odds of survival, that numbers game very well, for even the most fecund and finely conditioned Trout. It was likely to be high mortality and wastage, of what precious, potential new life was seeded back into the Brook.

Eventually answers emerged regarding the now increasingly needed and seemingly essential 4 stroke motorized pump and tubes. After being given the run around of various places this large piece of kit could have been stored, it had, it seemed, been handed back to the Wild Trout Trust. I was stunned no one had remembered this detail.

“Great” I declared to the club. “we can get it back then and get on with it”.

Nothing was done.  I tried hard to drum up support and emphasise how urgent we needed to get back onto this before the coming autumn. We were now looking at weeks not months ahead.

So I decided as in the old days to simply bypass process and to go direct to the Wild Trout Trust, and  was told we were no longer covered by Tim Jacklin , but a new representative in the area. I left messages and eventually made contact and organized a coming phone chat to discuss this, but with no solid commitment from him.

I was then told by the old secretary that no one wanted to use the pump, they found it too hard to move about along the bank and hence had decided to hand it on. Information only offered now that I had moved on the next level of my quest and located it…

I was, it seemed, back in the political silliness of the fishing club again and being kept in the dark.

This then appeared to jog a few memories, and others opened up and admitted they had found it too much to manage.. So this opening of communication and now memories finally engaged begged the question. “What did you do instead in the intervening years?”

I got shrugged shoulders or no reply. Had they just neglected it?

New younger members of the club who seemed to want to be environmentally active and offer some input to the habitat were offering to help but were clueless as to what had gone onin the intervening years.

Why had it taken so long to give me this answer? I still don’t know.

My old backpack petrol blower was long gone, so had they done it by hand or just not bothered? Again I got a wall of silence and lack of commitment. Like with selective deafness,old men who were using “fading memory” excuses to they’re full convenient advantage it seemed, and we were only talking a few autumns back for goodness sake. Something was being avoided.

I continued to chase the Wild Trout Trust and eventually got our chat and was told yes I could borrow it back, later in the year it with caveats , but there were other projects around the region that needed it first now.  

I explained that we needed to get on with this urgently simply because our Trout are usually on the Redds in early Novemberand the gravels were in such a poor state.

This did not go down well with our WTT expert and I think it was interpreted as hustling on my part. The man felt he was obviously dealing with ‘a-know-it-all-amateur’ and dismissed me and my ill-judged opinions.

“Your Trout will not be breeding in November! You may see them moving around and preparing to spawn, but that’s not spawning”.

Then the classic patronizing… “I know the Willow brook, I’ve visited it and surveyed it. I’ve never come across you, Chris, but I can tell you this, from all the other waters in ‘my’ region. You’re Trout will be breeding from December through to January and maybe even into February. There’s no rush, I’ll bring you the pump later in the year when we have used it on other projects. And giving it to you is not that simple anyway, I can’t just let you lose with it. Firstly I need to demonstrate how you can use it and make sure you know what your doing, and then I’ll have to select for you a few sites where you can then try and clear the gravel this year. I don’t have the time at present and you’re not getting it without supervision!”

And here folks is what life’s like without qualifications. It’s not what you know, … it’s just what other people assume you don’t know.

It’s like working in a snakes and ladders game, you gradually climb up, by proving yourself and getting acceptance and things start to work and fall into place, and suddenly your down at the start again, being talked to and treated like a basic brainless pleb, the walls go up, the doors close and if your not careful or artful, you need to go through the whole tedious process of climbing those ladders again!

I didn’t blame him for this, it’s like any new people at the Environment agency coming across me, they have no idea who I am and what knowledge or background. I’m just a gobshite member of a fishing club and I don’t have their qualifications or daily experience. I get talked down too and patronized so often.

It doesn’t help me that out Trout are weird, they breed super early, they grow super quick and their natural life expectancy is super short and that it’s all documented and researched. As it doesn’t fit their model, its easier for them to think the fishing club guy has it wrong. Our fish are not unique in these things,but they are not typical text book cases learnt in University lectures and written up in a graduates thesis if they intend earning a decent degree at the end of it.

…there I have to leave it for now. I’ve been at the game fair for the British Fly casting Club with James and Tracy, Time usually spent writing this was stolen, sampling wines and whiskies, or in the fug of a hangover in a tent, or avoiding all human contact before  I encountered the first coffee of the day.

Lexy sloops was far from my addled and barely functioning grey cells im afraid.

Have a great week…hey, it’s half way through already!

Chris Avery