Upper Great Stour, Kent

It's very rare that I travel east to fish a chalkstream, but Kent has a large swathe of chalk strata where the North Downs pierces the county. Nowhere is this more evident than at the White Cliffs of Dover. The county doesn't have many chalkstreams which hold the attention of the angler, but the pre-eminent of them is the Great Stour. Thanks to a winning bid in this year's Wild Trout Trust auction, I had a date to keep on a private section in the river's upper reaches. 

I changed gears through a series of motorways, taking the exits for the M23, then M25, then M26, and finally the M20 which runs into the heart of Kent. It didn’t go amiss that the arc of my travel loosely followed the semi-circular sweep of the chalky North Downs. With Dover the final stop before the English Channel, the motorway was busy with traffic, especially on the other side of the median where a procession of trucks inched along like a line of ants. This is one of Britain’s main arteries of trade and travel.   

I pulled off at Ashford and made my way to the Godinton Estate, quickly transitioning from the speed and immutability of the motorway to the unpredictable charm of potholed country lanes. I met my host Nick Fysh, and his wife, at their pleasant cottage within the grounds of the Estate. The day was already hot and Nick’s wife kindly gave me some bottles of ice cold drinks. We chatted about our respective fishing travels whilst I put together my rod and then Nick walked me down a gentle slope, through meadows of yellow buttercups, to a sinuous green belt of trees where the Upper Great Stour flowed.

Already large white mayflies were fluttering into the sky from the hairline river, but the trout which we observed in the water paid them no notice. The water here carries a little colour in large part due to local geology. The Stour begins its life in the chalk of the North Downs, flowing from their southern slopes, until it meets with clay in the vicinity of the Estate. The river then sweeps back to the north where it encounters the chalk again and flows through a gap in the Downs towards Canterbury. In Nick’s opinion the Stour downstream is a more pristine example of a chalkstream than even the Test, high praise indeed, and I resolved to fish it there some day. As we spoke, a trout rose within earshot and took something, a mayfly by the sounds of the splashy enthusiasm. It was time to fish and I waved goodbye to my courteous host.

I stepped into the cool water through a sea of reeds at the bottom end of my allotted beat. The vegetation on the banks created an imposing tunnel of green. In places there were fetching yellow irises, but the banks were mostly occupied by white flowering umbels which I suspected were of the carrot family. The umbels were particularly attracted to my fly and on several occasions I had to break them apart with my hands to retrieve an errant cast. It was only when at home, after putting some images of the plants into an identification website, that I realised they were most likely Hemlock Water Dropwort, a plant with fatal toxicity to humans. The discovery put a slightly morbid slant on the day when I considered the times I used my teeth to bite through tippet or my hands to eat lunch.

Within a few moments of entering the stream a grass snake slithered into the water about three rod lengths upstream (18 feet) and hurriedly swam to the other side. It is the nearest I have encountered one in the wild and provided a great pleasure to witness. 

At Nick’s suggestion I started with a klinkhamer, roll casting, flicking and bow-and-arrow casting the fly into the little spaces between the reeds. I moved like a heron, watching, waiting, keeping my movements limited, but nothing responded to the fly. All the while the odd mayfly would ride past me on the current or lift into the air where they’d immediately be attacked by colourful damselflies (seemingly always unsuccessfully). I eventually tied a Grey Wulff pattern onto my tippet to imitate a mayfly, to see if I could bring a fish up, but that didn’t work, and after about an hour I resorted to a nymph. The nymph brought a trout to my net from a deep, discoloured pool on the first cast. It was a stocked trout of a surprisingly good size which put up an excellent fight in the confined space on my 2 weight rod.

In all but the deepest places the water was just clear enough to spot trout and they seemed quite tolerant of my approach, provided I made no rash movements. One trout was spotted less than a rod length away, so I flicked my nymph forward somewhat awkwardly and struck just as the trout took it, meeting resistance initially, but the hook-up was weak and when the trout shook its head the fly went free. In another pool I saw three trout of equal size jostling for place, nipping at each other's tails. One of them took my nymph and that silenced the pool.

By lunch time it was 25° C, the hottest day of the year yet. I was pleased with my midway tally of two trout and two little chub. I enjoyed a sandwich in the shade of a tall tree, willing on the trout to start rising to the still prominent hatch of mayflies. The distinctive, purring sound of an aeroplane engine caused me to look upwards and I spotted a Spitfire. I'd seen one on my only previous visit to Kent to fish a chalkstream, a nostalgic symbol of the county where they did so much to defend British skies.

I managed to bring another three fat trout to my net after lunch, all caught with a nymph, and several more little chub no more than 6 inches apiece. Along the way I spotted the most enormously rotund chub I have ever seen. It must've weighed around 6 lbs and at first I wondered if it was an escaped carp. I noticed it only after it was spooked by my hasty footfall and by then it wouldn't take my nymph, despite me trying.

The rise I hoped for never came, perhaps an effect of the hot weather, but in keeping with my prior fishing experiences in 2023. Something is a little off this year.

It was a lovely afternoon. What struck me most - when I paused long enough from fishing to think - was the peace and solitude offered by the vast estate. From the time I waved goodbye to Nick, I hadn't seen another soul. I felt rather guilty for enjoying a day to myself, often thinking about my partner at home with our new born baby, and an eldest child still learning to share his mother's attention. I decided to call it quits when the sun was still high in the sky so that I could make it home in time to help with the children's bedtime.   

Nick was eager to hear about my day and I enjoyed my debrief. He's the sort of man I could spend hours talking to, with fishing, trout and river restoration running through much of his life following a career as a science teacher. He's done a great job looking after this little stream at the edge of the chalk for almost two decades. My heartiest thanks to Nick for hosting me, and to his syndicate and the Wild Trout Trust for making my visit possible.