It had not been a good trip. It started well, I booked in early on our stretch of the river Dever and saw that most member’s had caught fish in the past few days and noted what fly they had used. Of course I had all of them, lightly dressed, heavy dressed and in lots of different sizes; I was set up for an exciting day and hopefully trout for supper.

By mid-morning I had seen plenty of fish in the crystal clear, fast flowing water. Wild trout, grayling, with the cock fish showing its distinctive red plume on the tip of its large dorsal fin, were stocked in all the usual pools. I had even seen an eel, about a foot long , making its way downstream and I wondered what adventures lay in store on its epic journey to the Sargasso Sea.

I spent over an hour covering a small shoal of trout and grayling laying in the shade of an overhanging tree. The largest trout was holding station mid-stream with others in ranks just behind or jockeying for position. I put dry flies, parachute flies, klinkhammers, nymphs, sedges, CDC, PTN, BWO’s, in fact just about every acronym and type of fly I had – nothing. The most reaction I got was when a nymph almost touched him on the nose, he moved effortlessly to the side, let it pass and returned to his station. Then, one of the smaller wild trout turned, followed the nymph, viewed it suspiciously and, with utter contempt, turned away. When I lost yet another fly in the tree I moved on and did it all again with another shoal further upstream.

"Always cast to a rising fish,” my father used to say but when there’s nothing rising what do you do?

Lunch came and went and as the sultry, muggy, overcast afternoon dragged on into evening, I was frustrated, hot, sticky, aching and a little bit grumpy. All day I had thrashed the water with everything in my many fly boxes and not one fish had shown any interest. The evening rise didn’t happen, and dejectedly I was making my way back to the bothy to sign out and thereby let everyone know that I had ‘blanked.’ Fisher by name, fisher by nature – not today.

And then I heard it – ‘plop,’ a rise and a good sized fish by the sound of it – ‘plop,’ good, it was starting to feed. My mood instantly changed, all the aches and pains evaporated as I crept up and slowly looked over the reeds expecting to see the rings of water that would mark its position. Instead, I was greeted by a Kingfisher, not two feet away, sitting on a branch with a bullhead in its mouth. He looked at me as much to say “Hello, fish again for supper; got yours yet?” he banged the fish on the branch, juggled it around and swallowed it headfirst. 

He sat there savouring his meal and then, with a nod, dived down and returned with another bullhead. I watched, enthralled as he dived again and again. He mocked me, “this fishing lark is easy peasy ain’t it.” Then, with a flash of his iridescent blue back he flew off into the sunset. And what a sunset. The sun had dropped down below the clouds and painted them a beautiful salmon pink. 

A light breeze had cooled the air, and I felt joyful and very privileged to be there, witness what was happening all around me and the wonder of nature.

 Dad's other adage came to mind

“Its not always just about the fishing.”

As I walked back to the bothy, I was pleased that at least one Fisher had caught something that day.

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A big thank you to Keith for sharing this story - if you'd also like to share your experiences of our beautiful chalk streams, please get in touch. You can read more stories on the Tales from the Riverbank project page, and explore chalk streams through the Watercress and Winterbournes scheme.