Dawn Patrol

My perfect south coast sea-trout stream has a tide pool at its mouth. Long shore drift has piled a pebble bank eastwards along the beach-crest, almost cutting the river off from the sea and hemming it in against the cliff that brings the beach to an end. The pool is always deep and mysterious and the current swirls around in an intriguing eddy. It's like a huge bathtub full of water with only a small plughole, so the waiting water ambles around until it can escape.

The summer holidays on a Devon beach are not going to give you much peace and isolation except, possibly, at night. This corner of Paradise is a sun-trap, sheltered from the wind. The pool is a swimming hole for dogs and people and the lovely, round stones which are all different, come to the hand so readily. Boys and their dads find them ideal for throwing into the water. You can forget fishing for the time being.

I tried an evening session, coming down to the pool at dusk from upstream, dragging a small salmon fly down and across the stream. It looked perfect to me. No dogs, no-one at all in sight. I was sure there was a fish nosing the far bank under the cliff. I carried on working down to it as calmly quietly as possible. When I was almost opposite it, it was still there, but ignored every cast. I changed flies: Still nothing. That was because it was a mullet.

Entering the main pool, the shingle bank gets too steep for safe wading. The whole structure can start to roll downwards into the depths, no doubt because all the stones are the same size and perfectly oval. You have to fish from a stable spot above the water, which can put you on the sky-line.

As I climbed up on to the bank I was joined by a large local family composed of women and girls and one rather quiet and contented man. One of the girls was their fishing expert and so I watched her for a while as I chatted to the grown-ups. She was really competent at working a luminous rubber tailed lure across the pool using a light spinning rod. The rig looked ideal to me and she told me of a recent magical evening when they had caught bass after bass in this way, but not sea-trout.

I returned at dawn to repeat my run but after two casts the first two dogs were already in the pool and a queue of cuboid looking women in sensible shoes was making its way from the beach to give each Fido his bit of fun. I took off upstream, beyond the salt marsh to the first bridge. Mine was the second car there. The other one had a strange rack on the roof and I had to think what it might be for. Canoes, of course! And they were out there on this little river before 6am.

I jumped a wall and landed up to my neck in nettles, so it was obvious that no one had been that way for months. It was also obvious why that was the case. Walking was bad enough but fishing from that steep, overgrown bank was going to be tricky or impossible, except with a worm. I fought my way upstream looking for a gap where I could get into the water. I found one and slid down the bank onto a hard, gravelly bed. This looked like a real trout stream, only a few hundred yards from the sea. The long, slow pool above me even showed a lazy, dimpled rise or two. I crossed to the far side where I discovered not just a public footpath, but a canine motorway, and dammit, along came the canoeists.

I absolutely agree that all these doggy and boaty people have their rights. This river is in a public space, criss-crosssed with rights of way and the fishing on this last mile is free. Its no good getting cross or indignant: You have to have a plan.

Mine is this: I will return on a very rainy day around high tide, hopefully early or late in the day and fish down from the top of the beat on the public footpath. Of course, it mustn't rain hard enough or long enough to cause a muddy spate; just enough to deter everyone else. To increase my chances I will put up signs in advance. These will say "DANGER! LAND MINES" and "BEWARE; RABIES".

Plan B is to simply fish through the night.