Wallop Brook, Hampshire

The Wallop Brook is a small chalkstream tributary of the River Test. There are five tributaries of the Test which are generally considered fishable, and in terms of stature the Wallop Brook is probably the smallest and shortest. It's a close run contest with the Bourne Rivulet. There's also the Dun, Dever and Anton. I'm excited for the season ahead because I have plans to fish at least three of them.

I fished the Wallop Brook at Bossington Estate this past Saturday. The beat is almost two miles long and isn't stocked. Its downstream limit is near the charming village of Houghton, where the brook joins the River Test. I made a note to return in future to the village pub, the Boot Inn, because it has outdoor seating on the banks of the River Test. Watching trout rising in such hallowed waters would make anyone's bangers and mash more gratifying.

I arrived at the beat at 09.30 and set up my rod under the watchful gaze of a flock of helmeted guineafowl. What they are doing in Hampshire is anybody's guess, but their cackling call reminded me of my home in South Africa. The guineafowl seemed pretty comfortable in the company of a pheasant cock.

The April morning air was still crisp as I slipped into my waders. After a last cup of coffee I walked down to the river through a stand of trees and watched the crystalline water for a while. The river was dappled in sunlight from the shade of the trees on my bank. I willed on any sign of a rising fish but nothing stirred to disturb the water's surface. 

Immediately in front of me was a prime looking pool with a run of fast flowing water. The churning current obscured tantalisingly deep water. Nymphs are allowed on this beat throughout the season (but not on the Estate's beats on the river Test) so I tied on my go-to chalkstream shrimp pattern, which is a blend of pink and olive dubbing. The pattern's ability to catch fish impressed me last season and I had tied half a dozen the evening before. 

I was pleasantly surprised when my second cast elicited a take. It was a little trout of around 10 inches, and when I came to net it I thought nothing of stepping into the river to reach it with my scoop net. Big mistake! I suddenly found myself chest deep in muddy ooze and very stuck. I couldn't move my left leg at all. I temporarily put aside my predicament and reached over the reeds, scooped the trout into my net, removed the hook, and released it by tossing it back into the water. It darted back into the depths. Then a sense of panic took over as I realised the extent of  my plight. I pushed and pulled my leg for what seemed an age to no avail and became horrified at the thought of phoning the riverkeeper to ask for assistance. I ran through the call in my head: "Could you bring along a tractor and harness to drag me out the mud, please? On second thoughts, a tractor might not fit through the trees, do you possess a strong mule?" I'd be the butt of jokes in nearby Stockbridge for years! 

By now I was breathing hard from the physical toil and my leg was painfully cramping. I tried to position the rest of my body as vertically as possible, my hands gripping fistfuls of stinging nettles on the bank for extra leverage, and slowly but surely I worked my left leg free. When I dragged myself on to the bank, I was covered in mud and exhausted, but  hugely relieved,. I watched my step for the rest of the day!

Once I'd washed the mud from my waders and shirt I caught a second trout from the same pool, but this time I prudently played it downstream to a place where I could easily net it from the grassy bank. 

As I moved slowly up the right bank on the lookout for trout, I startled a small herd of roe deer in the open meadow on the opposite bank. They bounded away through the long grass effortlessly. I made several speculative casts into the shaded water as I went, and the shrimp pattern caught the interest of three more trout in fairly short order. Other than the muddy mishap, the day had started very well.

I spotted a rise upriver, at last. I replaced the shrimp with a size 17 Quill Plume Tip. In a heart stopping moment I watched a trout drift downstream beneath the fly, the trout's snout almost touching the fly, but ultimately reject it. I changed the fly to an olive paradun and this time the trout nonchalantly took it, seemingly without a care. It was my first trout on a dry fly this season, and it felt special.

The river had very healthy numbers of small trout in the 5 to 6 inch range. I moved past these fish and focused on any fish larger than 10 inches. Every now and again, I would spy an outstanding fish around 15 to 16 inches long. I briefly hooked two of these more substantial trout, but lost both, and also spent a while unsuccessfully trying to tempt the largest trout I observed all day. It occupied a back eddy beside the margin of the far bank, next to a deep pool. It faced downstream, suspended high in the water, with a tree branch a foot in front of its snout. It was hoovering up subaquatic items contentedly. I managed to sneak into casting range by crossing the river upstream of it and standing on the lip of the pool (technically casting upstream as the back eddy brought the current back to me - so I broke no "upstream only" rule). Conscious of the tree branch lying in wait to snag my fly, my casts were far too short and the trout melted away into the depths of the main pool. Oh, what could have been! Later, I also spotted a grayling much larger than any trout, but I left it alone because grayling are presently in a closed season. I generally saw very few grayling.

I paused briefly to eat a sandwich for lunch at the beat's slightly ramshackle fishing hut, but I didn't delay too much. I felt that if there was to be a hatch, it would probably occur around lunchtime when the sun was at its zenith. After returning to the water I did indeed spot a lone, pioneering upright olive drifting down the river, and there were a smattering of rises here and there. Amongst it all I managed to tempt a brace of trout with a CDC olive emerger pattern. One of the trout followed the pattern more than two feet, scrutinising my fly interminably, before very gently taking it. Chalkstreams really do provide wonderful opportunities to observe trout behaviour and moments such as this truly set my heart racing. 

The Bossington beat is divided into two distinct sections. The lower part flows through a wood and the upstream part through open water meadows. I reached a footbridge at the end of the wooded section at 4pm. By then I had caught and released 13 trout. It seemed that the trout had generally increased in size as I went up the beat, but I may have imagined this. I did observe two large fish in the open upstream section but failed to entice them with my fly before both spooked. Wary of the bankside ooze I largely walked the banks to satisfy my curiosity more than anything else, without trying to enter the narrow channel of water. I spooked pheasant and roe deer from the grass and in the water I spotted a pike of around 20 inches, which I watched with morbid fascination (pike have that effect on me). When I finally came upon a rise in a position where I could cast and deploy my net from the bank, I caught my final trout of the day.  This one was taken with a Paul Proctor V Wing Olive.

The sheer sense of escape, and opportunity to recharge, was truly welcome. The chalk valleys of Hampshire are an oasis of undisturbed calm in an otherwise congested South East region. On the long drive home I relived the day contentedly. It felt good to get my chalkstream innings off to such a good start in 2021. Recent lockdowns have made me prize days such as this even more. I never would have dreamed there would still be Covid restrictions in place so long after the pandemic ensued. Perhaps my feeling is magnified by having had my first vaccine jab this week, but I feel optimistic that we are through the worst in the UK.  

Post edit: looking back through the photos I took, I think there is a very good chance one of the trout I caught was a smolt - a trout preparing to go to sea and become a sea trout. They go very silver in the process. If correct it is the first time I have knowingly captured a sea trout!