‘It’s no secret that I’m in thrall to the tench at this time of the year; along with swallows and strawberries, tench are the evocation of summer but in piscine form and the cool hours of first light on a midsummer morning are a treat reserved for the early rising angler’
By the time you read this the calendar will be saying autumn and maybe, just maybe, the weather will be a little more, well, British(!); specifically, one that is cooler and kinder to man and beast. As I write, another heatwave is revving up, the fourth, fifth maybe? I’ve lost track to be honest with you. All I know is there’s not a green blade of grass to be seen locally and many trees are stress shedding copious numbers of leaves. A stand of tall black poplars close to home has lost half its foliage to a crisp russet hued carpet at its base.
“Sometime too hot the Eye of Heaven shines” wrote William Shakespeare in his Sonnet 18. However, he qualifies this elsewhere, describing the English summer as two fine days and a thunderstorm! This quote, also variously attributed to several royal personages, is much nearer the mark generally, particularly for the western regions of our fair isles.
The cool, damp and dreary summers we endured in Wales through the ‘noughties’ are still painfully vivid in the memory. No “loving filter” will erase the abject disappointment of those miserable non-events. The malaise continued into the next decade too, prompting me to write a piece for Waterlog magazine entitled “False Dawn”. The gist of this was my disenchantment with the paucity of true ‘tench fishing’ dawns, opportunities that had become rarer than the proverbial ‘hens’ teeth’!
It’s no secret that I’m in thrall to the tench at this time of the year; along with swallows and strawberries, tench are the evocation of summer but in piscine form and the cool hours of first light on a midsummer morning are a treat reserved for the early rising angler. The perfect dawn session has several key components notwithstanding the presence of the actual fish! The absence of any of these diminishes the perfection of the experience; for me the world has to be holding its breath, with not the merest zephyr of a breeze, just complete and utter tranquillity. Road noise too is a no-no, although at the optimum period of the season the dawn chorus will drown out the drone of distant traffic. Dark reflections on the water, lily pads, a scarlet-tipped float and a fizz of tiny bubbles all contribute towards this seasonal idyll, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.
Sometimes I hardly even need a tench to complete the picture; indeed a bruising battle with a better than average four-pounder can leave me, and the lily pads, rather shaken up and the ambience shattered! In the same vein I try to keep technology at bay during these special trips. Ideally, if I could walk or cycle to the waterside it would be the cherry on the cake. This year, however, I have been seduced by a piece of modern gadgetry that has enhanced my enjoyment of the great outdoors. Last summer, meeting up with Eric, I was greatly impressed by the Merlin birdsong app on his phone. So earlier this year when I finally gave in and acquired a decent phone I soon installed Merlin and began using it on dog walks and fishing trips. Earlier this summer, the dawn chorus at Pelsall was a revelation, an assault on the senses! Probably, like many anglers, I can recognise most of the usual suspects and all these came up immediately I switched it on; these were then supported by a whole choir of backing singers including various warblers, tits, finches and the not so melodious corvids. The klaxon call of the pheasant is common here too, along with the soft cooing of wood pigeons and then, one morning, the device confirmed my suspicions on the identity of a pair of birds that had flown over the canal several times previously, rosy winged parakeet! Apparently there is a thriving colony at Sutton Park further south but the ninety acres of nature reserve at Pelsall should be even more to their liking.
It occurred to me whilst mulling over this piece that the advent of true summers once again may give rise to a generation, young now, which may look back as I do with fondness at the long, sunny summer holidays untroubled by clouds and thoughts of rain. It may be that “loving filter” at work again but if so then I am happy to maintain the delusion, content to accept the vagaries inherent with distant recall.
It’s often said that your schooldays are the best days of your life. There’s probably a kernel of truth in this but unquestionably the summer holidays win emphatically; doubly so for this ardent ‘fisher boy’ accompanied by a horde of lads similarly afflicted with the shared passion, lining the neatly manicured banks of the Park Lake, the resulting hubbub raising much consternation in the few grown-ups quietly plying their craft! With outdoor life at its busy zenith and peace and quiet very much at a premium, I suspect that the unfortunate adults wished themselves far away in some haven of tranquillity.
For us lads though, these days were magical ones filled with banter and laughter and our little keepnets filled with the accommodating small roach and perch that thronged the lake. A few pennies secured a jam jar full of maggots at the Hide & Skin Company attached to the slaughter house, itself immediately adjacent to the town centre (!), unbelievable in this day and age. Eked out with care this bounty, the jam-jar’s worth would give a whole week’s sport, even with the family fridge being strictly out of bounds!
Twenty years on and summers took on a new and exciting complexion. It began with a move to a house just minutes walk from a modest little spate river that was recovering from decades of industrial abuse. Sea trout were running in good numbers, encouraged by the copious Welsh rainfall. For a few years I was content to sit by the pools on balmy, midge-haunted evenings watching, as dusk gathered, the hawking sand martins giving way to the ‘night shift’ bats. The fish would begin to leap as the last vestiges of light left the landscape and I began to thrill at the thought of contact with these enigmatic creatures.
I must admit that I indulged in a couple of short clandestine forays in their pursuit but in truth I was only tinkering at the edges. Then I borrowed, for the second time, Hugh Falkus’ seminal book Sea Trout Fishing and immediately it became apparent I would be a night fly fisher for the sewin as they were called locally. The author’s passion for his sport shone through his words, capturing the essence of a midsummer night with a fly rod and I, in turn, was captivated by this new departure. Hugh maintained that there was nothing quite as delightful as a sea trout pool at dusk. Even at that time, in my growing rapture, I felt that a secluded woodland tench pool at dawn just edged it. Now that the sea trout days are but a distant memory the comparison is superfluous.
The thrill of the new discipline and my reasonably youthful enthusiasm carried me through quite a few fishless weeks,mirroring somewhat my boyhood experiences. Of course I realised later that in my impatience I had started fishing too early in the year, the main runs of fish not really getting underway until June in most years. However, early spring sometimes saw a small run of very large sewin akin to the once famed ‘springers’beloved of that hardy breed of Scottish salmon fishers. Indeed, an acquaintance who had the very last coracle licence on the Towy used to capture one or two double-figure fish most seasons.
Of course in its day the Towy was a magnificent river. I came to it halfway through its protracted decline when it was still a reasonably prolific fishery and I was fortunate to catch some special fish including three double figure specimens, all late summer fish, or ‘harvest fish’ as Hugh termed them. The local river proved prolific too, with the added bonus of grilse which would take as avidly as the sewin at night; these ran into double figures too. Despite it being association water, the little river was lightly fished at night, there being a hard core of maybe a dozen anglers committed to haunting the banks during the wee hours. I often fished right through the short midsummer nights and at dawn, with my bed beckoning, and would stop midstream as homeward bound, wading the run above and taking a long last look down the pool, frequently spotting a fish or three leaping. This would raise a wry smile if the bag was empty, as it often was…
Seventeen seasons I spent indulging in this particular passion, by day scanning the skies for changes in the weather, poring over the tide tables and by extension the moon phases; evenings spent praying the wind would drop and maybe some cloud roll in, tying some spare flies, black-and-silver always. I was always hoping that heavy rain over Brecon would not filter through too quickly! I could not have envisaged a better way of spending the middle years of my life, when fitness and stamina were still at a healthy level. The only downside, one of timing, was that the last few years of this season of my fishing life coincided with the steep decline in the fish runs on both rivers.
So, reluctantly, I had to hang up my fly rods and finally discard my much repaired waders as I could not countenance making a bad situation worse by continuing to pursue a much beleaguered resource already on the brink. That was eighteen years ago and happily there were hopeful signs of a tentative recovery just before I moved to Staffordshire. I’m loathe to monitor progress for fear of having my hopes dashed; I prefer to keep faith in the resilience of nature to fill the rivers once again, enabling some future like-minded soul to make his, or her, wonderful memories just as I did.
Writing & Images Paul Huxtable, Late Summer 2026
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