The Sparkling Stream
The upper Itchen was in fine fettle yesterday.
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Laser-sharp sunlight illuminated the crystalline water. Every crease and current glinted and gleamed atop a tapestry of chalk and verdant weed. Expectant trout hung in the midwater as if suspended by unseen strings. Their shadows swayed rhythmically on the riverbed. Their fins and tails dimpled the surface where they fed.
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Hidden by a bank of teeming sedge, Bjorn cast a dry fly to a rising trout. The trout was easily fooled, a wonderful way to start the day's fishing.
Cold water reaching his knees as he released the trout, I pointed Bjorn to another trout a few metres upriver, this one twice the size of his first. It was less easily fooled but was eventually persuaded to take a sunken emerger. From my elevated perch on the bank I saw the trout move and take the fly, and called to Bjorn to set the hook.
I swapped places with Bjorn, my turn to cast to a third fish which fed freely beside a floating cumulus of weeds against the far bank. The current angled awkwardly past the flotsam, making the cast tricky. It took several goes, but eventually I placed an emerger in just the right place. A second or two passed, my fly unseen, and then I saw the trout's mouth open and close. Bingo.
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We paused for lunch, a sumptuous feast enjoyed at an outdoor table in the shade of a tall lime tree. Bjorn picked ripe blackberries for dessert.
As if some unseen switch had been flicked during the lunch interval, the trout now hugged the riverbed. Their tails were consumed by a rapid nervous energy, ready to flee in an instant. With the high sun magnifying our every move, our finest tippets cast shadows as thick as a baguette loaf. We toiled away gamely, but had no price. As Bjorn said, the Itchen had lifted her skirts early.
Other things caught my interest - the russet-breasted kestrel perched on a telegraph pole, no larger than a pigeon, hawthorns ablaze in red, a plump kingfisher seen at regular intervals in the day, horse riders in the hedgerows, golden-brown hills of freshly harvested wheat, a Jenga-stack of haybales at least three storeys high, Georgian era homes in symmetrical proportion, a white cat absurdly stalking pigeons in the church graveyard, aircraft clawing for height at full throttle from nearby Southampton.
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