Fishing used to be so simple. I went to the river and caught
fish, or didn’t. These days I often find I’m
seeking something extra, as if style has become just as
important as substance.
Take a trip just a week ago to the Lambourn near Newbury.
The forecast was warm and muggy, the kind of weather that
pushes all the buttons if you happen to be a mayfly waiting
to hatch. Well some buttons had been pushed on this occasion,
but not many.
It must be a bit grieving for the lonely mayfly that hatches
early without a mate; such a short life with nothing to
do but get eaten. They were getting eaten too but not in
the voracious way that trout gorge themselves on a big hatch.
Few fish were rising.
Walking beside a narrow feeder stream on the way to the
river I spotted a big trout simply quivering at the promise
of food. Stalking a fish that’s holding station in
crystal clear water under some overhanging bushes is no
easy challenge.
Even if you can keep yourself concealed, the likelihood
is that you will have one chance to place the fly in the
right place. Lying prone, I elbowed closer and cast a fly
over its nose. A big splash; missed it.
Ah, the promise, though. That large empty space in an angler’s
brain labelled “optimism” was already bulging
with the fattest trout, every one a record breaker. Three
hours later it was still empty. There had been barely a
rise. Then, as if someone had flicked a switch marked “life”,
fish began to feed and I caught one, then another and another
and another.
It seemed appropriate at this stage to risk one of the
creations I had spent hours trying to perfect in the past
few weeks. This Irish “straddle bug” wouldn’t
have fooled the most sexually desperate of mayflies. It’s
the sort of thing you think you have missed with the vacuum
cleaner. But it fooled a fish and it fooled another. So
there was an opportunity for some self-preening: a fish
caught on my own hand-tied fly.
Was it more satisfying than a fish taking a shop-bought
fly? Not really, to tell the truth. Nor did it herald an
even greater feast. The switch was flicked off just as suddenly
and the rise ended.
I know some anglers who scoff about “duffers’
week” when the mayfly are around but there are few
more breathtaking sights on a chalk stream than a big mayfly
hatch.
Watch them hove, glowing, almost translucent, in rich afternoon
sunshine while smaller insects and midges buzz around just
above the surface, and you begin to understand why so many
anglers develop an interest in entomology and everything
else in the food chain. Before you know it, you’re
a conservationist.
It seems fitting, therefore, that the banks of a chalk
stream have been singled out as a possible site for a conservation-focused
National Angling Museum for the UK.
The museum proposal has been put together by Neil Freeman,
the fishing auctioneer. Plans have yet to be finalised but
the organisers have been researching a site not far from
the Mottisfont Abbey beat of the River Test in Hampshire
where Frederic Halford fished regularly as he laid down
the etiquette and approaches of upstream dry fly fishing
in the 1900s.
“I was given a large collection of tackle from a
client who died and this would form the basis of the collection,”
says Mr Freeman who adds that the project also includes
a research, education and conservation section aimed at
familiarising visitors with fish and their environment.
“The idea is that we would also create a mobile exhibition
from time to time so that we could take some of the displays
to Scotland during the salmon season, for example. If the
water happens to be running over six feet one day and the
fishing’s washed out, people could go along and look
at it,” he says.
The museum will cover fly, coarse and sea fishing. The
cut off point, historically, will be the 1970s. During research
for the museum Mr Freeman has made contact with a number
of other angling collections including the American Museum
of Fly Fishing in Manchester, Vermont, and a new museum
in Tokyo.
The US museum, established in 1968, has the world’s
largest collection of angling exhibits that document the
development of fly fishing since the 16th century. It too
has a travelling exhibit called Anglers All that has been
taken to a number of US states.
The former Staffordshire home of Izaak Walton, author of
the Compleat Angler (original spelling), has been turned
in to a small museum but, as yet, the UK has nothing that
can match the Vermont collection. A national angling museum
in a country that has contributed so much to angling history
internationally is long overdue.
