God’s Tipex

Wednesday, 3rd March. Opening day up on the Welsh rivers and a rare trip out of my chalkstream comfort zone for me.

An early start and we were up passing Abergavenny by the time people were heading off to work. I have to admit feeling a certain smug satisfaction as we passed along the M4, watching the people in suits queuing up for the M32, Bristol and neck-tie office hell.

Anyway, the weather forecast had been for 6-7 degrees or so, and sunny so I was secretly hoping for a nice warm-ish early spring day. A good hatch of large dark olives and some relaxing outdoorsyness.

Turns out, the hills around Abergavenny had been highlighted by god’s tipex. Seems she had been out and drawn white lines around most of the hillsides, not a decent covering of snow, just the remains of an earlier heavier fall. If it was me in charge of the tipex, I’d have at least had the decency to draw a 40ft penis or something to cheer people up as they drove down the valley, the Dorset gods know how to abuse paint and hillsides. Wiltshire couldn’t manage anything quite that exciting and had to resort to badly drawn horses. Wales? Well, there we had to make do with lines.

The weather stayed cold all day, a mean easterly wind keeping spirits along with fish, firmly down. Around the magic 12:30 mark I spent a while sitting on a mossy boulder, eating lunch and trying to wring frostbite out of my toes when I started to notice the odd olive hatching and drifting downstream.

No fish had the decency to become interested in the food that was drifting above their noses but I patiently waited, knowing that things could change in an instant. I was wrong…

1:30 – A few more olives but I now couldn’t feel my fingers or nose as well as feet. I decided to start walking upstream, figuring if nothing else it’ll warm me up and I may find some good slackwater to fling my nymphs into.

2:00 – I’ve no idea where I am, or if I’ve gone past an end of beat sign, but I’ve come up above a couple of small falls and found a more sheltered patch of smooth calm water. The sun pokes it’s head out and I feel warm for the first time since leaving the car. I sit, back to a tree and let the sun warm my face and then, eyes closed I hear the unmistakeable subtle noise of a fish breaking the surface. It’s not a splash, it’s not a sip – There’s an almost indescribable connection between noise, sight and feeling – I’ve seen anglers who’s heads will whip up to the slightest feeling of having hear a rise (more often than not it’s a coot or some kids throwing bricks in downstream however).

Thirty five minutes of fish rising and olives hatching well later. I’ve had three stunningly beautiful Usk brown trout. Diminutive speckled perfection, a tinge of blue on the gill case. All on dry flies. Then it’s over.

The sun’s gone back behind a leaden grey sky, the wind has shifted slightly and my warm spot under the trees is chilly again so I walk down the banks back to company and a reacquaintance with frostbite. A hard day’s fishing, but a stunning part of the world, and to get three fish off the surface on opening day is a lovely feeling.

I’ve had to change back to a different format for the diary as the new(old) one was doing funny things. It’s starting to warm up here again and thoughts are back on the outside world so expect to see more writing as I appear, bear-like, from my winter hibernation.

~ malcolm

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 12:18 pm. It is filed under The Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.