The early days, very early days

It has been a fine Easter weekend that is for sure, lovely warm weather for the most part and other than a couple of walks out I've spent much of it in the garden. Painting a lot of the time, and I've got a small vegetable patch and have planted eight different vegetables, fingers crossed I'll get something to grow. As the garden is new I'm not sure exactly what plants are growing, so I'll wait and see and decide on future flowers, bushes etc. I've seen masses of butterflies this weekend so would like to get more of them hanging around the garden.

Anyway, I was thinking after writing the last blog that I could have probably gone right back in time to when I first really thought about fishing and probably how did it come about. I was brought up on a farm in Willsbridge, just along from Londonderry Farm, and it had Siston Brook running through  which eventually flowed into the Bristol Avon at Jack Whites. As a very young boy I remember the stream had a weir, sluice gate and mill pool, and it was the weir pool that attracted anglers attention. I would sit and watch them occasionally, no idea what fish they were catching other than eels which I soon learned looked different to everything else. The weir pool must have been about 400 years old, and some of the fish that were in there (roach, chub, perch) were not to be found in the rest of the shallow stream. I was allowed to search the shallow part of the stream, where I used to see sticklebacks, millers thumb, and stone loach. I'd watch these little fish and learned to be naturally still and quiet, and of course other wildlife would show itself to me, water voles, grey wagtails and kingfisher. A few memories of the pool are once seeing the weir sill alive, it was covered with elvers. A lad's float being caught by a crayfish, and falling in over my head and being dragged out by my cousin (although that last memory is more like a dream but it did happen).

Disaster was to strike, the council informed us there were to be thousands of houses to be built along the stream and around it upstream. This would cause much more water to run into the stream and in all probability cause the farm to be regularly flooded. The council advised the weir pool, weir, and sluice gates would have to be destroyed and the brook itself be dug out, so instead of the banks being a couple of feet above the stream they would be in places 20 feet. Even though I was a very young boy the damage and destruction was very upsetting to me, but who listens to the complaints of a 8 year old. All we were left with were banks that were either steep and muddy, or piled and covered in stones. It was only a place where water flowed, there was no habitat.

It took quite some years, I do not remember how many now, for life to return to the banks of the brook, bushes, the odd reed, and saplings. Weed began to return to the brook, and eventually fish, but they were different fish. No more stone loach, now what appeared were mainly dace, the odd trout, and chublets. The weir pool was still a little deeper and wider for a few years, before eventually it became as any other part of the stream. One fish that I began to see was flat fish, think they were flounders, these obviously came up on the high tides, and in the early 1980's I often saw them in the stream, and caught a few on the river to (including one at Fry's in a Xmas match which saved a blank). The water voles returned to the stream, as did other bird life, and as I got older I was given a catalogue fiberglass rod and Intrepid Black Prince reel loaded with 6lb+ line. Didn't catch a lot on it, but you've got to start somewhere I guess. Then the black plague came to our waterways, mink, within a fairly short time all the water voles were wiped out and mallards and moorhen became less common. What we didn't realise was that the mink also had a liking for eels, and they were merrily churning through them. I hated those mink, let out of the cages of mink farms but "animal welfare" do gooders who ended up in that one act eradicating huge amounts of our native wildlife. I managed in later life to shoot a couple of mink that were in the stream, but the damage was done, no more water voles ever since. Thankfully Avon Wildlife Trust set some traps and mink were eventually wiped out or at the very least became a rarity.

When I got my first longer rod a 13 feet fiberglass job (known by others as a beach caster) and a half decent reel I began to be able to fish further out in the river. It had to double as a float rod and a ledger rod, and I still didn't catch a great deal but I got better, and luckier. Back then, a few roach or dace would be enough to keep me happy. Perch were absent on the river at this time, but eels were still plentiful. Bream and chub were just a dream. I could go out all day and just get a handful of fish and be happy, fishing on into the evening was the best though. 

These days the stream on the farm still contains mainly dace and the odd trout, but gudgeon and odd roach and perch are in there. I have seen heron, little egret, redshank, snipe, kingfisher, dipper, as well as lots more common birds there. Otters have also ventured up there too, and foxes and badgers make their homes in the steep sided banks where hedgerows now flourish, and even deer are often close by.  And, despite at least three pollution incidents over the years that I can recall, nature has returned to the farm stream and I hope it can remain. For sure living close to water gave me a great interest in wildlife and fishing, and I have a lot to thank that little stream for.