Piddle Finale

If I won the lottery, it would be a coin toss between upping sticks to a village in Hampshire or Dorset. The only condition I would set is that a chalkstream would flow through or at the perimeter of this fanciful property. 

It wouldn't need to be a grand chalkstream or a very long stretch. All I'd really want is a place to sit long into the evening, soaking in the pleasant sounds of the waterway whilst watching the river's wild trout busying themselves between the sweeping tendrils of ranunculus, their shadows giving them away above the golden-white gravels of the stream bed. In the pink glow of dusk there might even be a rise to a spinner fall. 

Fishing rights wouldn't be strictly necessary either, as I'd probably treat these trout as pets of a sort.

Rivers are life-giving in many senses, including for the soul, and this is the stuff of my dreams.

River Cottage

I came pretty close to the property of my dreams in the aptly named 'River Cottage' which sits in a secluded corner of the grounds of  Athelhampton House, near Puddletown. The River Piddle separated the cottage from the stately house and gardens and also the coach buses of people who visited from passing cruise ships. I spent hours on the bridge, usually early in the morning before the punters arrived, sipping from a steaming coffee mug, watching the water flow by, lost in thought. 

The view from 'my' bridge

I learned the river's moods as broadcast by its trout. When it rained and the river was swollen, there was no sign of trout, but by the end of our four night stay when the sky was blue and the river had dropped to a more gentle flow, a little trout of six inches lay suspended above the bright gravels in a knee deep channel twelve feet upstream from my vantage. Its tail swayed in the current like the tentacles of a sea anemone. 

15 May

I enjoyed a final moment to fish this amusingly named river (legend has it that Piddletown was renamed Puddletown to spare the blushes of a visiting Queen Victoria). First, I crashed through the trees and marshy water hemlock in the overgrown section above the bridge, eventually stepping into the river proper. A channel of clear water flowed down the true right bank, calling for pinpoint precision to land the fly in water. The fly landed in the right place and drifted for what seemed an eternity but, just as I was about to lift the fly from the water, it disappeared in a boil of water. I passed the reflex test and set the hook, landing a handsomely plump specimen.  

I then returned to the lovely pool I had discovered a few days before, further upstream where I had tempted two of its residents to take a fly. Perhaps that shock still rankled because there was no sign of them this time.

I was now in for a special treat. The manager of the estate had said that I was free to fish the river where it flowed through the stately gardens. I had arranged access to the gardens after hours and now enjoyed my own private visit.

When I had visited the gardens on the day of our arrival, I had noted three pools which were bound to harbour trout. The rest of the stream had been left untended which meant ranunculus choked up the majority of the channel. I headed to the furthest downstream and witnessed a trout rise beside some reeds where the pool expired. A klinkhamer flicked upstream was accepted by the little trout.

I moved up to the second pool, the largest of them. My dry fly was ignored so I switched to a nymph and began to probe the various currents, needing to enter the water to be able to cover them. A good-sized trout took my fly near the true right bank, and another trout came from the opposite bank.

I had another trout with the nymph from the final hatch pool.

What a privilege to fish the sparkling upper Piddle in the stillness of this manicured place, overlooked by the haunting beauty of an historic Tudor House.