Which today I cannot do. Not much, anyway. The light and ripples are one thing, the fact that I’m waist-deep is another. This deep in, my eyes are not far above the water and the angle between them and the surface upstream where I need to look, is shallow. It means that, looking more than two or three yards ahead, all I can see is the grey, reflected sky. It’s only when I look steeply down, close to my wadered legs, that I can see into the water.
The water is as clear as I’d been told. It’s so clear and bright it almost might not be there. It’s as clear as melted time.
On the bottom, between the dense growths of the waterplants, channels of flints and chalk gleam up. I can see the roughs and smooths of every stone, every chip and angle. They’re so sharp and fine-edged they might have been picked out with scalpels. Caddis cases cover every one. The weed’s alive with shrimps, nymphs, the larvae of this and that. This would be a fabulous place in a hatch, but there’s little likelihood of one this morning. This morning, it’s going to have to be the nymph.
The green canyons between the weed beds and the channels along the bottom will all have fish in them but, because of the angle I’m at, I’ll be on top of any trout before I realise it’s there. It’ll be on the open gravel patches that I’ll mostly be concentrating and there aren’t many of those. The gravels and chalk reflect the light and any fish on them should be visible from a distance.
I say should be.
I’ve got company. A water vole sniffle-snuffles towards me on some busy errand, realises that it has got company as well, and dives. A pair of buzzards kee-kees across the narrow strip of sky I can see between the sedges to my left and the sedges to my right. A flock of crows rises like black ashes above one bank and disappears behind the other, leaving its cacophonous caw-cawing behind.
I tuck the little 8ft three-weight under my arm, slide a hand into a pocket and grope and trace among the bottles and spools, seeking the fly-box. I’ll start small and change as I need. A size 16 nymph goes onto a 2lbs point.
I put a smear of flotant on the thick end of the leader so that it rides high on the surface, where I can see it. Normally, I’d put a sinking compound onto the leader near the fly as well, to get it off the surface, but the compound is opaque and will make the leader more visible in these conditions, so I’ll do without it today. I click the fly onto a rod-ring, loop the leader back around the cage of my reel and tighten up. Ready. The trout have my attention.
Of course, I won’t be looking for a trout because I know I won’t see one – not an outlined, clearly defined one, anyway. I’ll be looking for hints and winks of trout, for linear shades and brush-strokes, for sepia suggestions; for patches of gravel or chalk where, at some point, the stones seem curiously straight-edged. I’ll be looking for faint lateral movements, for suggestions of rhythmic pulses that might resolve into a tail. No, I’ll not be looking for fish. I’ll be looking for water, but in a firmer form.
If finding fish today’s going to be one thing, catching them is going to be another. These fish won’t only be difficult to see, they’ll be hair-triggered, as well. It’s not just the clarity of the water and the fact that they are fished for. What’s going to make them edgy is that everything else knows they’re here and wants them.
This valley’s full of otters and herons and cormorants. No-one has a problem with the otters because they’re a part of our heritage and here in natural numbers and it’s good to have them back after so long. But the herons around here come in vast numbers because of the fish farms on the streams nearby. The cormorants have a roost just a few miles away. The numbers of both birds are unnatural and they take an unnatural toll. A bright thread of tinsel like this, so difficult to see from the road, must glint and beckon from the air.
The fish I’m looking at is up there to the right. It’s lying on that patch of gravel at the foot of the little alder, a sepia brush-stroke in front of the stone. It’s a half-pounder, maybe a little more. A nice trout.
I can’t cast from here. It’s not just that the sedges will snatch at my back-cast, it’s that any line I throw will fall across that bed of starwort breaking the surface. The line will catch on the weed and the current on the far side will swing the leader around. The leader and the fly. Drag. Fatal, in this place.
That’s what I’ve got to do. I’ve got to get to the foot of the little alder on my own bank and cast from there. From there, I’ll have a diagonal of clear water between myself and the fish. I’ve got to get up there without disturbing it.
It takes an age. It’s not just the weight of weed I’ve got to push through, or the weight of the water clamped around my legs and middle, it’s the need for caution. Every step is so slow and laboured, coiled and taut. Bed my left foot down, take my weight on it, lift my right foot and ease it forward. Push against the weed, push against the water, touch down. Grope and trace over the bottom, reading it like Braille. Find a purchase. Set it down. Take the weight. Now my left foot, ditto.
It’s taken five minutes to move five yards, but I’m in position. Me here, the fish there. I’m wound up and locked on, joined to the fish by ancient choreography, by thousands of years, maybe millions.
Crouch lower. Move slowly. Turn my head slowly in case my Polaroids catch the light and semaphore a warning. Keep the rod down. Watch my backcast, watch the flailing sedges, watch the fish, watch everything. The new world fades and the old closes in. The forest and the glade enfold. I am alert for the grunt or the rustle, for the parting of the grasses and the glimpse of fur or hide.
A coot creaks. My eyes are burning through the water, burning into the fish, which still hasn’t moved. I drift the rod back, draw the bow tight, take aim along the arrow. I’m at home with this. I’ve been doing this since I first stood upright. I haven’t needed to do it for food for thousands of years but the tug of it, the old compulsion, is still deep inside. Don’t tell me this is a game or sport, this is the real thing. I am. The fish is. This is hunting, one on one.
Now! I let go the fly, flick the line into a low, controlled backcast and flick it forward again. It straightens – and the trout does an astonishing thing. It bolts. It bolts, just like that, leaving a little puff of silt drifting down on the current, as if to prove it had been there, once. I’m stunned. How could it? How could it have known? What had I done – or left undone?
I’m also not surprised. This is the way this fishing is. It’s the difficulty that’s the great attraction. I smile, say ‘well done, fish’ out loud and without embarrassment and move on.
The morning dissolves. Other patches of gravel, other sepia shades, other sudden boltings and compact dispersals. One fish, pricked and lost. More than two hours gone in a kind of limbo. I’ve come 250 yards, have maybe 50 more to go before the sedges and the rushes make progress impossible. Now I’m looking at another fish, the one that looks like a tear-drop because I’m right behind it, looking along its fuselage tail-edge on. He’s in the gap between the upstream edge of the first weed bed and the tail-end of the one just above. He’s a couple of feet down and just three rod-lengths away.
Time for another change. I’ve been ringing the changes all morning, constantly switching the size and weight of the nymph according to the fish and its depth and the speed of the current. I’ve been shortening and lengthening the leader according to how exposed I am to the wind and the place in the water where I have to put the fly down and yes, I can see I need another change, now. I take off the size 14 pheasant-tail, rummage through the fly-box and take out a size 12 shrimp, one of those tied with pale green silk, my colour-code for three turns of lead wire under the dressing.
The buzzards are back again. So are the crows. A squadron of swifts is on its way back to Africa. The high grasses thresh and the reed-mace waggles.
Being sheltered here, chest-deep behind this huge bed of starwort is like standing in an aquarium. The surface is as still as glass and the leader’s drooped across it. I can see the surface tension curving in along the nylon, exaggerating