The River Beckons

The Risle seemed every bit the equal of England’s finest chalkstreams, so when our host offered to arrange a day’s fishing on an upstream beat, I leapt at the chance. My fascination with rivers only grows the further upstream I go. What I wasn’t expecting was a burned‑out crack‑den urban fishing experience. Bryce and Jacky talk fishing at a burned-out crack den. We began in steady rain beside a needle factory straight from a Charles Dickens novel. The water ran murky, which I first blamed on the downpour, but later learned is always this way— the riverbed is silty. How the same river could flow like the 'water of life', France's eau-de-vie de fruit , over lush weed beds and golden gravels just a few miles downstream remained a mystery. I was quickly into a modest grayling, and then my brother had the joy of catching his first ever brown trout. It was scarcely longer than his middle finger, but that mattered little. We toasted his maiden catch with some fine local cider at ...