River Dun, Berkshire

I had the pleasure of fishing this intimate chalkstream for the first time with Bjorn. This Dun is the tributary of the River Kennet and shouldn't be confused with the chalkstream of the same name which flows into the River Test near Mottisfont Abbey. We met on a weekday in mid September and fished the Hungerford Marsh beat, a little way upstream of the Dun's confluence with the Kennet at the town of Hungerford. 

The fishing rights here are well known for being the preserve of the town's commoners thanks to the 14th century gift of John of Gaunt, the local duke and fourth son of King Edward III. Our beat was accessed from the churchyard of St Lawrence's church on the outskirts of the good sized town, crossing the Kennet and Avon canal and then on to our private, secluded slice of fishing heaven which ran to a little shy of 1 km in length.

From a wooden footbridge at the downstream boundary of the beat, we spied a good sized trout lying in a gravel gap in the weeds. This fish held near the true left bank whilst a school of smaller and more active coarse fish jostled in the main body of water. I wished to avoid them and whilst standing on the bridge sent my back cast high in steeple fashion to avoid a willow bush behind me, and then flicked a small nymph forward. It was a tricky cast which I got right at the third attempt. At the sound of the plop the trout came out to meet my fly and I struck when it opened its mouth. Meeting the pressure the trout threw open its jaws and rolled to its left and my fly went free. Round one went to the trout.

In the next pool upriver was a far more substantial trout. Bjorn crept into a casting position among the reeds of the right bank and, using my rod and nymph, elicited a take from the trout. The fish seemed well hooked but when it broached the surface with a large splash the tippet disappointingly gave way and the trout escaped. Another round went to the trout!

It wasn't long before we had each caught smaller trout and then we settled into our usual relay routine, taking turns to cast to the best of the sighted fish but also to drift a fly through attractive water where fish were not immediately evident. We accepted that the latter was not perhaps in the strictest traditional spirit of chalkstream fishing, which the beat's literature was very keen to promote, but it was something we were prepared to do when there was no evidence of rising fish, an outcome which has blighted much of this season in particular. These traditions also stem from a different time when anglers spoke of dense clouds of hatching insects, when car windscreens became covered by the evidence. I can't recall ever needing to wash my windscreen clear of insects after a visit to the river or anywhere else in Britain in fact. Oliver Kite wrote of catching around 90% of his season's haul with a dry fly, and almost all of them were taken with his Kite's Imperial. This wouldn't be an especially successful approach today. For starters, the Iron Blue dun which his fly imitated now hardly ever hatches from Britain's southern rivers. Something has killed off the hatching insects and that something will be what we are carelessly putting into our rivers.

A majority of the trout which I caught unusually lacked any density of spots. Something Oliver Kite had long ago written about in his visits to Hungerford played on my mind and when I returned home I looked it up. There it was in his diary from 12th August 1967, when this great angler fished the Dun and caught his 100th trout of that season, which he described as "deep with few spots". An unusual genetic condition or environmental response which persists in the Dun's trout to this day. Kite celebrated his "trout century" with his friend Jerry Golding by popping open a bottle of champagne beside the river, the cork top almost landing on the head of a rising trout.

My best fish of the day came from a deep run beside the beat's hut, where a lusty grayling of perhaps 2 lb displayed no hesitation in seeking out my nymph as it drifted by the roots of an alder. This was my best grayling of the season to date.

It was now lunch time and Bjorn put on a fine picnic spread, but not before the onset of some mild panic when I couldn't locate the baguettes which had been brought along in my backpack, the ends sticking out like rabbit ears. I retraced my steps and found them lying on the ground where I had earlier jumped across a marsh, thankfully not sodden.

The fishing proved to be far easier in the morning when the trout and grayling seemed to be bolder and more adventurous. After our lunch matters changed noticeably. Trout became spookier and less prone to hang about in the open water when we came near or made errant casts. 

It was a great place to spot unusual aircraft, as first a Lancaster bomber took off from somewhere nearby, then one of only a handful of the UK's airworthy Fairey Swordfish purred past, and lastly a Chinook helicopter, heard long before it was seen.

When we had reached the end of the beat I had caught six trout and the single grayling, all with a nymph. Of the trout perhaps one could have been described as a takeable size, a relevant yardstick because the beat's rules suggested a voluntary catch and release limit of six takeable sized trout. Bjorn had caught three trout but his finest moment lay in store.

We returned to the wooden footbridge to see if there was any sign of the large trout which Bjorn had hooked at the start of the day. There wasn't, but I spotted a large trout in the broad, sweeping pool downstream of the bridge. We hadn't fished this pool in the morning because we had assumed it was out of bounds, but we hastily checked our beat map because this fish warranted map reading precision. We were pleased to discover that its lie was in fact available to us. We crossed over the bridge and from the opposite bank watched this specimen feeding quite confidently in shallow water midstream. The only issue was how to cast to it, a quite impossible feat from our overgrown bank. It was then that Bjorn spotted a wooden stile in the fence on the far bank, next to where a row of houses ended. 

We returned over the bridge and skirted around a dense stand of trees by walking through a farmer's field to the stile. We remarked at our fortune in finding this spot because from here Bjorn had a clear approach to the fish. I remained in the field whilst Bjorn hopped over the stile, readied himself, and using my rod sent a little nymph to the trout. His first cast was a little short but his second was placed perfectly, about a metre upstream of the fish. The trout moved to its left and took the fly and I yelled 'yep' and thought I should've been clearer by yelling 'strike'. Bjorn had received the message nonetheless and was by now tussling nervously with the trout. He was over the moon when he was finally able to coax it into the net and he let out a loud cheer! This was his best trout of the season. It was quite possible that it was the same fish he'd hooked earlier in the day too.

The September evening came on quickly. I managed to catch two more trout with a nymph. I had hoped to see a rise as the light faded but none materialised much in keeping with the way things have played out this season as a whole. We left through the churchyard with the bells pealing loudly, the sound ringing in my ears long after the bells were silenced.

I really enjoyed fishing the Dun. The experience struck a similar chord with my visits to the Meon, Wiltshire Bourne and Ebble, all intimate chalkstreams far from the angler's spotlight.