13 May 2000

Blagdon

Some people just never grow up. I tried it once, and it was like eating your way through a sumptuous banquet, but finding you couldn't taste anything. Which is why I found myself walking along the cliffs on Friday evening for 5.63km (3.5 miles) with Walter from Portishead to Clevedon in North Somerset.

Sunset over the Severn

Once there we sampled some cider in a local pub, and then ate a decent meal in the Walton Park Hotel. The hotel bar has an interesting crowd of people and we stayed chatting until dusk. Walter fatally promised to drop off a trout, (invoking the curse of death!) for ‘Peter’, a local antiques dealer who frequents the bar.

The journey from Portishead, took us 1 hour and 10 minutes but the trip back along the cliffs in the dark took us just 1 hour.

It was a still, steamy night and we were sweating like a pair of chasers after a cavalry charge with a brace of Her Majesty's Hot and Heavy Brigade on our backs.

Walter has been posted to N. Somerset for a few months, so we arranged to meet up to exploit some of the excellent fishing in the area. On Saturday we rose at 4.15am and drove to Blagdon Reservoir.

The air was heavy and completely still. If you have ever seen one of those soft focus early morning shots of a river with the mist hanging over the water, you will have some idea of the idyllic scene.

After paying for our £14.00 ticket, we wandered along the banks by the lodge, trying to raise a trout.

It wasn't possible to get a boat as the World Fly Fishing Championships were being fished here over a week. Who in their right mind would fish alongside the cream of the world, especially when their casting technique could do with a few days (weeks) with Michael Evans to get respectable?

We fished for a couple of hours getting nowhere except a long way from the lodge. On our way, we came across a Canada goose sitting on her nest with four eggs. She let us pass on the narrow path, but she didn't like the look of either of us. We seem to have that effect on most females.

The banks on that side seemed quite shallow, so we opted to return, get the car and drive to the opposite shoreline.

Rather conveniently a van turned up and disgorged some of the Slovakian team. We asked them for a lift back to the lodge, which they kindly agreed to, in return for a look at our trout flies. The ones drying on my waistcoat were reasonable and they recognised them (apparently Montanya and Boobya in Slovak).

I must have been befuddled by the early start, because I then opened my fly box. I looked at the flies and realised that any impression we had given that we were top class British anglers went out of the window then. Most were tied by me and it showed. Still, they were very polite and didn't laugh. They even waved as they passed us in the van later in the day.

We got to the north shore via the villages of Blagdon and Ubley. A few other anglers were already set up there. Again we found much of the shore was shallow at the margins, but we got to a section with a good depth and stayed there. No one else moved around either. Cuckoos began to call from around the lake and the meadows were covered in Early Purple, Pyramidal and Heath Spotted orchids. Some fading cowslips grew alongside.

Throughout the day, huge hatches of midge and alder fly were coming off the water. Decent hatches of hawthorn fly appeared from time to time, but no sign of mayfly.

By 12.30 we got hungry and also needed diesel, so headed back up to the A368. After getting fuel, we drove back to Rickford for a meal at the "Plume of Feathers." The beer was good, but I wasn't too impressed with the cider. The meal was good wholesome stuff, Rump steak with plainly cooked vegetables and chips. Prices are good too.

There was a local man sitting by the bar who asked us if we were fishing the championships. Walter didn't give him the impression we were doing anything else and it wasn't long before we got his considered advice. "Yowed best bide yere, they trout won't be cummin up 'til tea-time." We should have listened to him.

Back at the reservoir, almost everyone was having difficulty connecting with fish. The few topping and tailing rises we saw were in the middle of the lake, beyond casting distance. It was soon evident we were badly equipped. All the shore based anglers wore waders and mainly used shooting heads to get the line right out. The flies everyone swore by were buzzers, allowed to drift on a floating line, but some also advocated stripping lures.

We were getting despondent and thinking evil thoughts about trout pellets when a very red-faced chap who was even older than us turned up, eyeing the bank just beyond us. He was a relative newcomer to fly-fishing and mistook us for seasoned veterans. Seasoned beginners would be more like it.

To make things worse, he asked us for casting tips. Taxi!

He soon got the gist of it… read the manual, and practice where no one can see you.

We stuck to this bank waiting for the evening rise, but the only thing that rose was the wind, and it was directly in our faces. As we passed him, the tyro flycaster was really in trouble now. He tried facing away from the wind and back casting, but just wrapped the line around his throat. A lesser man would have thrown himself into the water, but he struggled on, convinced he would get that line out one day.

We gave up and drove back to the south shoreline, making a few casts near the nature reserve. The water is shallow, but after 5 minutes Walter connected with a very lively trout on a Shipman's buzzer. It leaped clear of the water four or five times before he got it close to the net. It took off again when it saw the net. This time it rolled several times and the hook came out. How b****y aggravating (worse than that Peter’s trout was not to be….)!

The sun was setting and though we could have fished for an hour after, we had had enough. We'd been on the water for nearly 15 hours, for so little result. It was a beautiful day and I'd do it again. You can measure a day's fishing in different ways. I want to catch fish, but if there are other experiences in the day and I can unwind from work stress, it is a result.

We finished the day with a takeaway curry and a few ciders, watching the Eurovision song contest on TV. It was so surreal, I could only imagine it's Walter's way of punishing himself for failing to land that trout. I'd rather punish myself by forcing myself to go fishing again.

The next morning we went on a recce tour of the various local waters.

First stop was a river, the ‘Blind YEO’, which looked as if it might hold pike. A couple riding by on bikes stopped and the husband told us it used to hold big shoals of bream, but they had disappeared. Soon after, we spoke to the chap in the local tackle shop who reckoned it was infested with pike. The annual licence is about £16.00.

Then onto ‘Bullocks Farm,’ via the lanes and met the owner, Phil Simmonds. He is stocking with 5000 new fish, all carp. It's an interesting place, designed so that every swim is an individual pond, where it is difficult to intrude into someone else's territory.

Next stop was a reservoir at Cheddar. This was a concrete basin about 1.61km (1 mile) across. We walked around it and spotted over twenty large carp feeding close to the edge. The best spot looked to be directly opposite the yacht club.

After a quick trip through the Cheddar Gorge, with it's garish tourist trade, we headed over the Mendip Hills. The view at the top overlooking Chew reservoir is worth the trip.

The championships were going on here too, mainly, if not exclusively in boats.

Before stopping off at the lodge, we pulled into the Stoke Inn, at Bishop Sutton.

There is a garden, but only five tables. The seating indoors was adequate and comfortable. We got a table with a couple of fine carver chairs.

The cider is excellent here, the local Thatcher's dry. They also do the local Butcombe bitter, but I've yet to try that. The food promised to be adventurous, but you have to remember, this is the West Country.

We got the same plain cooking, but this time with a splash of brandy in the sauce.

The service was deadly slow. There were only a handful of people eating, but it took over an hour to get our steaks. With the cider being that good, I can only imagine that they had to find and drag the chef out of the ditch he had staggered into the night before.

The new lodge at Chew is a bit over the top for your average angler, boasting a restaurant, which draws Joe Public and his relatives from miles around. There is a good tackle shop though, manned by people who can fish and have good local knowledge. Hundreds of people had parked nearby and were enjoying the water's edge. The water covers 1200 acres, so it isn't hard to leave them well behind.

That left us with just enough time for a quick look at the Barrow Gurneys reservoirs before I headed for home. They aren't pretty and are situated at three points of an intersection of the A38, but have a good reputation for trout.

Incidentally, France won the championships, Wales came second and Australia third. England? 12th.