‘The details of that first visit were repeated over the next months and eventually one or two trout graced my own landing-net. These too were taken triumphantly home for my mother to grill but very soon the necessity to eat any captures waned in comparison with the mere delight that concentration on the river supplied’
In the previous Raconteurs issue we left our gormless teenager, dazed at their sudden discovery of angling and the alternative world it enclosed. It should not be supposed that this presaged a smooth path to addiction. A 1964 thirteen year-old was a wayward animal, darting from hobby to hobby, unsure that a single interest was enough to occupy their scatterbrained energy. Although I was oblivious to the process, it took angling many years to undermine the shortcomings of all these other distractions, especially those intense, head-spinning, undeclared crushes formed on the daily school bus…
For now, I possessed a crude collection of tackle but lacked the mechanical gifts or craft to improve results. Any knowledge or guidance still had to be derived from my mentor, Tony, and my only fishing places were those shared by others. All this made for a stuttering progress and many backward, frustrating steps. To compensate for this bafflement, this was a time of wild, impulsive exploration. Everywhere and anywhere that chanced along, even if it proved barren of fish, was worth an expedition. This was an exhausting tactic but provided a wonderful gateway to the wild Kentish countryside, whether on a bike, or virtually, by studying an Ordnance Survey map. The next crucial angling window was opened by another school pal.
Alan was a red-headed footballing friend and new to angling also. Hearing I was keen to fish, he had asked me to join him on a local river that held, wonder of wonders, trout! The river was the small, perfect, clear chalkstream that runs from Westerham to Dartford, the Darent. For a young angler, this was a glorious introduction to water on the move, bright and transparent, over golden and silver flint. In many places it was so shallow and intimate that one could stand up to the shins to ford it but then, wonderfully, there were also obscured holes on the meander-bends which simply ‘had’ to hold treasures. We were unaware then that the prized trout were mostly of the stocked kind. Our early hopes centred on them but the richness of the chalk water also meant that roach, dace, perch and chub could swim into view and into our nets.
So, on an overcast October day, Alan led me to Shoreham, then a quiet settlement asleep under the towering chalk downs, with its picture-postcard, hump-backed bridge gracing the village centre. Shoreham could be reached by railway or bicycle and both of these routes were a delight. The green, two-carriage Southern Railway trains left my local station at 5-35 promptly every morning and I was always the only passenger to alight. As the train exited from the tunnel above Eynsford and crossed the high viaduct there, one had the delight of lifting a carriage window and looking down on the tiny Darent winding far below. At Shoreham I was the only passenger to alight once again, shouldering an angling satchel containing a small bait-box full of huge lobworms and carrying an ugly, loose-ferruled, cheap, eight-foot cane rod bought at a local pet shop. If arrival at Shoreham was on bike, one had the equal thrill of weaving through the wild hazel and sweet chestnut woods which topped the downs. This was then followed by a long, tooth-rattling freewheel for about a mile downhill into the village with its little clusters of cottages, still and silent under thatch and tile.
My companion explained that the mill was the place to head for. He had earlier discovered that for half a crown, the lady owner would grant youngsters access to a weir in her garden, overhung with weeping willow. In early autumn this was an Eden. Wagtails, a kingfisher and clouds of late flowers were our company as we lined up our legered worms with the skirt of quietly bubbling water. In the centre of the weir stood a sculptured bird forever staring downstream at the trout. Once our casts had been lobbed into the foam, we sat in the thick, damp grass, legs dangling a yard above the jostling water.
I had asked Alan how one would detect any bite, this legering method being utterly unfamiliar. “You’ll know…” he responded. Matters remained oddly subdued for about twenty minutes until Alan’s short, glass sea-rod violently walloped over and chaos ensued. The fish was in no way played, being merely bundled hurriedly into the tiny landing net. In contrast to the undignified capture, the first sight of a chalk-stream brown trout outshone any version displayed in angling books.
Alan was going to take his prize home so it soon lay inert on his tackle-bag, wet grass placed over it to stop it drying too quickly. This drama caused me to lose all interest in my own rod-tip. Instead, my gaze kept returning to this marvel of red-spotted electricity, just to affirm that it was real by running my finger over the needle teeth in its sulking mouth, I admired its fading colours for the rest of the morning. It weighed twelve ounces.
The details of that first visit were repeated over the next months and eventually one or two trout graced my own landing-net. These too were taken triumphantly home for my mother to grill but very soon the necessity to eat any captures waned in comparison with the mere delight that concentration on the river supplied. In all the time on its banks, I only ever met another angler on two occasions. This meant that, in effect, once Alan had receded, the Darent slowly turned into my own river. The first lessons in fish and their habits are best taught beside a small stream; how to keep below the skyline, how to put distance between yourself and a likely fish by trotting the stream, always with a worm, from well upstream, how to use a rush-bed as a screen. Most important of all, the little stream gave the vital lesson of how to accept failure in gratitude for the natural distractions flying over and crawling through all these surroundings.
With time, a tariff of success emerged; a trout of over a pound was very rare and any chub at first stubbornly refused to weigh more than pound but later, small cubes of luncheon meat doubled the going rate to two pounds and blissfully once, to in excess of three. The roach rarely climbed over eight ounces but were flawlessly scaled, the bright perch reached barely four ounces. This petty arithmetic became all-consuming but I shared these ambitions with no-one; the river remained the only judge. Other beats on the Darent were later discovered, including a neglected run behind the Shoreham mill-house where a trout was first hooked, lost, then hooked again. Another swim was found upstream of the crumbling arch of a bridge that centuries ago had served an ancient farm trackway. Here a pair of trout was holding station midstream in less than eight inches of water and despite my clumsy cast the worm was successfully lined up with the bigger of them. The excitement at seeing the worm disappear into the fish’s mouth was followed by an abrupt strike. Astonishingly, the trout catapulted itself skywards on impact but was eventually banked, enabling me to display it proudly to two elderly ladies who were walking their dogs on the nearby path.
Pocket money being in short supply, cycling to the Darent was cost-free and this transport offered a private universe, absorbing nature in the raw early daylight before the world was fully awake. Sometimes I could be home by ten o’clock and sitting in the bedroom documenting the details or, otherwise, urgently off to the local chemist to deposit a film for development. Days later the crude black and white prints were a delicious extension of the dawn’s adventure. Each expedition was also burning an alternative, more momentous, album in the boyhood’s memory.“It was a more beautiful world and it has gone forever.” B.B.
Writing & Images – Sussexman Summer 2023
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