Secret small stream teems with silver threads of sea trout

COUNTRY FILE

THERE is a small stream that I know which flows into the sea off the west coast. Unremarkable in appearance, it flows through bog and over rocks, and is overgrown in parts, with fuschia and gunnera (giant rhubarb, if you like) vying for space with rhododendron and making the place inhospitable to the majority of humankind.

There are, however, a very few who are familiar with this stream who would come here hoping to have it all to themselves. And for much of the time that might be the case, for among those non-native trees are hordes of blood-hungry natives. No cannibals, these – they are horse flies, deer flies, cleggs and the like, each of them armed with razor edged jaws that would nearly take a man’s arm off at the elbow.

Add to this formidable army the rampant clouds of midges that fill every windless moment, that lie in wait around still corners waiting for the merest glimpse of bare skin, every one of them starved half to death and ready for that least bit of blood not yet leached by their larger cousins.

To get to this cursed location one must traverse miles of marsh, trek an hour through the midst of treacherous, yawning bogholes, through acres of slime mould near knee-deep, where nothing grows but an impenetrable tangle of bramble and thorn and where old, moss-green bones of long-lost livestock are a constant reminder of death.

Why, you ask, would anyone bother? The answer is found in one of those surging floods that fill the stream with dark, peat-stained water, and in the silver threads that rise in response to the deluge, that force their way into that racing torrent and take up their temporary lodge in one of the many small pools that punctuate the flow.

Those silver threads are sea trout, and this stream – one that shall remain nameless – is one of the few that have retained its run of proper sized fishes.

There is another, larger, near river-sized water nearby, where sea trout can also be found, but these are small fishes, with one of a pound the exception rather than the rule. Anglers can be found there, where few branches reach out to snag one’s cast, where the banks are not high, nor steep, nor slippy, and where the road and the car are within a few easy strides at the best and the worst of times.

Few find their way to this lesser water. Were it not for a generous tip from an old angling friend, I would never have known it myself. But I do, and being of a less charitable nature than my old buddy, I think that if others would like to find where it is, they must do as did he and explore for themselves.

I did go there, following the rain of last week. The flies were waiting, and those I failed to kill drank their fill. The flood was bank high, descending toward the estuary in a series of shallow steps, each of which held a short flat at its tail, which is where the fish would be.

I got there too late in the day – the walk back in the dark is not an easy one. I threw my fly across the flow and watched it skate through the surface much too fast. Or so I thought.

It was barely halfway across the water when it disappeared in a swirl and a salmon – it had to be a salmon, surely – took off toward the sea. A minute later the fish came off and the fly came back to me, empty. And that was it.

There will be another flood soon, and that shallow drain will once more pulse with life. Go to Spain if you want sun. I can hardly wait for the rain.