Strictly Upstream

Friday, April 24th the second incarnation of Simon Cooper’s River Test One Fly competition ... The Field magazine enters a team: Jonathan Young uber-editor, me fishing editor and Nick Zoll as trouty bandit, or “ringer” as it’s known in the competition world. Not really because any of us is routinely into fishing competitions, or fishing the River Test, but because we thought we could hang a fundraising cause to our efforts.

The cause was the Wild Trout Trust’s “Trout in the Classroom” project - an idea pioneered by the Wandle Trust on the River Wandle in London. I went last year to an event in Mordern Hall Park, south London, where a hundred or so excited kids from a handful of local schools got together by the river to seed into it trout fry they had each reared from eggs in tanks in the classroom. It was great to see the kids taking pride in what they had done and taking pride in their local river. As an exercise in bonding children with a concern with the fate of the environment I doubt it could be bettered: it is educational, practical, and pro-active. Funds permitting, the Wild Trout Trust is now going to be taking that same idea into schools all round the country.

So we were hoping to help them get started through the selfless act of a day’s fishing.

Okay, there’s an irony to catching what would likely be stocked trout from the River Test to raise cash for the Wild Trout Trust who would in turn use it to raise stocked trout in the classroom. But however it happens, it is a positive thing for the Wild Trout Trust to benefit from an event on the River Test and for the owners of beats on the River Test to get to hear about the sorts of things the Wild Trout Trust does, to feel involved. One keeper expressed a real interest in getting his local school in on this project.

Anyway to the day ... a good crowd of thirty or so entrants and the same number of guides assembled at the Peat Spade pub for bacon sarnies, tea and roll call. Guides and beats had been picked by blind draw earlier in the week and this is when we discovered who we were with and where we were fishing. Our team of three was split, we each got different beats and fanned out of the car park, up (Nick) and down (me and Jonathan) the valley. In my case down, down, down until I was closer to the sea than Stockbridge. The idea of tickling wildies out on the bullet-proof yet subtle hare’s ear nymph I’d tied specially that morning became more and more preposterous with every passing mile. When I saw the water running the colour of a “special-clinic” urine sample, it was a no brainer: either the dumb-bell crayfish pattern I had somewhere in the bottom of my bag or the black woolly-bugger thing that was down in there with it. A boat would have helped. And a purse-seine net.

I’d drawn Peter Roberts as my guide - a water engineer from Ringwood, and Parsonage as my beat. “You won't be needing that,” said Peter of the fey tennis racket in my car boot. His net was designed to double as a branch snagger and we used it for that as much as for landing fish.

I settled finally on a hirsute, black number. A fly that looked as if a size 12 long-shank had been wrapped in a used waxing strip. Peter asked what it was called. I had no idea. I though “the Brazilian” might work, but remembered I was on the Test. "Let's call it the Tasmanian Devil," I said. In fact it had been tied by "Muz" Wilson, and been given to me by Michael Youl, both from Tasmania, and Michael the great grandson of the James Youl who pioneered shipping trout there in 1864. So maybe it would be a lucky fly.

I fished it - this gorilla’s back - upstream, as only the best purist would. The fact that I jigged the bejeesus out of it is best glossed over. All my fish took it under my nose, but "strictly upstream". So I hooked and landed five. A sixth came off at the net and counted as half a fish. A few others tugged the line for brief seconds and fell off to howls of anguish. So, five and half for the day - a half short of a full bag. And I kept the hirsute number on all the time - in spite of the best efforts of several of Hampshire’s trees - for an extra fish's worth of points.

But upstream at Wherwell Nick had been catching a hatful - every fish beyond the six adding a useful tally of bonus points - at first on a little shrimp pattern from Macedonia and then on another of the hare’s ears I had tied and abandoned the idea of using. And though Jonathan had been on a fishy desert, we still managed to scoop first prize (Nick winning top rod and pretty much single handedly gaining us the gong).

Better still, by kick-off we’d raised over £1500 via our www.justgiving.com website page. That in addition to cash donations on the day and tax rebates amounted to over £2000 to kick-start Trout in the Classroom. And Simon Cooper has generously suggested the competition could be used to raise funds for this project again next year. Should we return to defend the title? Or quit while we’re ahead?

Quit I say. Perhaps another trio will step forward to fly the Wild Trout Trust flag?

In the meanwhile, the justgiving.com page is still open for anyone who would like to add a sum, large or small, to this very worthwhile “Trout in the Classroom” project.

http://www.justgiving.com/wildtrouttrust