THANKS to the Tartan Curtain, it was not until after the summer solstice that I could head south in search of my annual chalkstream fix, so by the time I arrived in Stockbridge I was fish-hungry and ready to ‘kick some fin’. I started loading up with yet more flies from the irrepressible Alistair Robjent’s excellent emporium and awaited my host, Michael, who had kindly invited me to an exclusive Test beat for the day.
There had been a severe heatwave (34ËšC in Hampshire) and any sensible fish would have been lounging in the shade with a sombrero and a nice margarita; as we began my belated trout season with a tumbler of Champagne, the mid-morning glare was already almost audible and the prospects of a hatch looked slim. To compound matters, the nymph was forbidden, so it would be a case of trying to coax up a brownie that was on the fin. I plumped for a size 12 Rat-Faced McDougal (originally called the Beaverkill Bastard) and we set off merrily downstream.
I have previously in these pages expressed my preference for nymphing when permitted: it’s not that I am blind to the spectacle of a fish slurping at my surface representation, but there’s something that more deeply pleases me about the three-dimensional aspect of the sunken bug, the need for lipreading, that slight milky-white gape of the trout’s acceptance, the thrill of coming tight to him successfully. Perhaps it’s because my home water as a boy was an unkeepered and dishevelled Hertfordshire chalkstream where classic floating fly tactics were impossible, but my instinct is to go subsurface if the fish are feeding in the basement, as we know they tend to do for much of the time.
Denne historien er fra August 26, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra August 26, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
