Itchen for a lady again

 

 Invited Brian to be my guest for another crack at the River Itchen before the Association beats close at the end of this month, thereafter no more river fishing until the Trout season starts again in April. As last time, there was a leaden sky overhead, little wind, and it’s been cold for about ten days now, barely climbing past 5C. This was a new stretch to me, and foolishly I neglected to print off the most up to date beat map, so we didn’t know the proper access point and yomped around the water meadows for quite a while until we made it to the hut. Just as well we were properly fortified by an excellent ‘full English’ from Bean Below in nearby Twyford.

 The Itchen is broad here and was running full flow but clear. There were deeper channels and shallower runs, a deep slack at the big bend; plenty to go at, but the low angle of light this time of year made it nigh impossible to spot fish unless they were moving.

 

We started at the bottom boundary to fish up. It was interesting and challenging for both of us, this broad, rapidly running river is not what we’re used to. Flies were diligently changed and often, mainly nymphs for me, more catholic for Brian. The only natural flies we could see were tiny midges, smaller than a size 20!  About a hundred yards below the hut, mid beat I suppose, was a broad, shallower stretch of faster water, and here several fish were rising sporadically. I could see one which was an OOS brownie, but I was fairly confident some of the risers were Grayling, our target. Indeed I managed to hook one on a Red Tag fished down and across, but it came off after a few seconds; one of the perils of fishing downstream is the increased chance of pulling the hook out of the quarry’s mouth.

 We lunched outside the hut, enjoying dearly beloved’s Leek and Potato soup, a variant on a Delia Smith pattern, afterwards fishing up the top half of the water. There were only one or two rises, very sparse, but neither of us found any interest from our finny brethren. To make matters worse there isn’t an exit point onto the road by the bridge from the true right hand bank, and endeavouring to scrabble under some barbed wire and brambles up the slope to the road verge I managed to jam my rod tip deeply into said hazard, breaking the rod in two places trying to extricate it! One of my favourites too. I’ll contact the manufacturer to see if I can get replacement sections, but they stopped making fly rods several years ago, concentrating instead on Carp, Lure, and Sea customers. Fingers crossed.