Wiltshire Avon
I made the lucky winning bid for Malcolm's very kind offer of a guided day's fishing on the SADAC waters which was in last year's Monnow Fisheries Association auction that was online on this forum.
Of rain fed welsh border streams and rivers, I know a little. Of chalkstreams I know nothing apart form a couple of days on the Test at or near Timsbury some years ago, when I we had morning tea in the hotel in Stockbridge (name escapes me) which is home to the Houghton Club and admired the trout (bread fed leviathons) that were at home by the bridge in the high street. I was over awed by the experience and, in hindsight, not a little disconcerted by the it. As a result I fished badly and could hardly catch a stocky, of which the river was full!
So it was with not a little trepidation that I met Malcolm for the first time at Amesbury in the Friar Tuck, "greasey spoon"! The Test/Houghton Club and the Friar Tuck and SADAC waters may not be far from each other but as I was soon to discover they are, thankfully, very, very different.
We tackled up with a number of other rods (news of my arrival had spread!) in the car park by the Rec' to fish the beat on the edge of town. My first sight was of a medium to large river running not quite crystal but to me a perfect colour. Fishing rising well, in the main, just sub surface, to nothing obvious. I tied on a parachute greenwells and under Malcolm's guidance caught my first chalksteam grayling. Nerves settled a little and we watched the water a few peaces upstream and I missed a better fish. On another few paces and another rising fish close to our bank was making fair rings. I would like to say he took first cast but there was at least one witness present, so after several and a visit to the tree behind me the trout finally decided to give himself up. A beautiful 15" trout took himself accros the river and on his return buried himself in the luxurient ranunculus and only came out after much effort and mumbled cussing but the fight had changed and when he finally came closer it was obvious that he was now fowl hooked. I was disapointed but Malcolm pointed out that it is not uncommon for weeded fish to loose the hook and in this instance it had reimbedded itelf near to the dorsal. I did not feel quite so bad. But it was a fantastic wild fish and I had fooled it so I got over it!
The morning past so quickly, I was never out of casting range of at least one rising fish and after a few more to hand Malcolm dragged me away to another beat a few miles downstream. On our way back down the beat we passed several fishermen who bemoaned the lack of fish and how few they had caught! We also stood in the box seats as a very patient man cast not 5 yards to a 3lb+ fish that was rising continually to something indiscernable. He had pricked him once! If I was that gentleman I would still be there now.
Parking at SADAC HQ the layout of 16+ beats in that section was explained to me and Malcolm suggested I fish beat 13. It was not lost on me that it was also the 13th of the month. 13 is a carrier off the mainstem with reeds, sedges and grasses growing, untouched and so luxuriently along a wide margin of the banks that Elmer the patchwork elephant could have remained happily undiscovered until the next ice age. All of this fringe vegetation was growing out of very boggy banks and when the narrow channel of swiftly flowing water was visible it was full of ranunculus and watercress. Just amazing habitat!
By this time the wind had picked up and was gusting hard but even between the gusts the more open sections were almost continuously corrugated. In the more sheltered spots the odd fish rose under the intense sun. I could not rise them, due to drag, as I cast over the swift current into the protected, slower lie so I marked them for my return down the other bank. My first fish came between gusts at the cattle drink. It was a feisty 6" brown, the type of fish I would expect this stretch to be full of along with their older and considerably larger brethren.
Despite the difficulties, which would normally have had me in a right tiss I just seemed to get mellower as the day went on. Happy to lie back and study the water and think of plans to even land a cast on the water, should a fish dain to rise.
I slowly retraced my steps to the bottom of the beat, where I had marked the fish earlier and, to my delight hooked him, first cast, honest! The wind settled a little and fish began to react to a small hatch and a few more came to hand and others were missed or hooked and lost amidst my efforts to rearrange the fecund greenery.
Malcolm had returned from his lunch time meeting by this time and we made a plan to fish the "Stonehenge Beat", which he felt would be more sheltered from the Easterly wind. So back to the mainstem, upstream of Amesbury where the afternoon drifted into the evening with each of us taking it in turns to cast to rising fish and generally doing what two fishermen, who have the common bonds of a love of wild fish, beautiful rivers and all that lives in or near them, do.
Thank you very much Malcolm, it was a joy.
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"The sun was so delightfully warm, and the stone, which had been sitting in it for a long time, was so warm, too, that Pooh had almost decided to go on being Pooh in the middle of the stream for the rest of the morning."
www.monnow.org
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did you fish the top of the Amesbury stretch that the WTT advised on many moons ago?
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