A chalkstream Lilliput world

Its gin-clear waters are a slice of heaven and its trout know where to hide, but the stream can’t keep its secrets from Richard Hardy

- Richard Hardy

We all have favorites. We may strive diligently for fairness with dogs, children, pubs, and guns but it’s a losing battle. Your hand slips the first biscuit to the most loyal hound, and it’s the same with my little trout stream.

I’m generally a contented riparian, working to nurture my miniature sliver of gin-clear heaven with the even hand of a paternal presence. I plan mowing, planting and tree work to allow nature its scruffy head, to guide somewhat remotely and certainly never gardening an over manicured beat of glorious chalk stream.

I do, of course, have a favorite pool. It’s not the prettiest nor the most productive; it doesn’t hold the largest trout nor provide the most consistent sport. What it does is encapsulate the magic and mystery of brown trout in their southern heartlands, a vibrant population of the wildest Trutta still thriving in the jewel of most precarious habitat meandering gracefully through the midst of our overpopulated southern counties.

Though I’ve established a very wild series of beats, there is a little ongoing maintenance. The major task is mowing paths. Set at least 1m back from the water’s edge they are 1m or so wide, allowing easy access but also providing cover for the casting angler and maintaining habitat for our burgeoning water vole population.

After five hours of plodding the mower around, carefully reinstating the paths for the first time this year, I decided to treat myself to an hour putting a fly on to water.