Spate: Part Two

The moorland beck trickled lightly over and between rocks and stones. The water was so clear that it was invisible to the eye, except that the pale stones that it touched turned dark brown when wet. Beneath the bright August sun, the rocks grew warm and they heated the shallows.

I waded in bare feet, feeling the current between my toes. I would turn over likely stones to look for signs of life such as crawling stone flies and sedentary caddis larvae. Sometimes I would disturb a small fish such as a black bullhead or a sinuous brown stone loach but I saw no trout. Straying knee deep into the the Bridge Pool, I felt the chill and the goosebump thrill of the wild river on my white calves.

Returning to the shrunken river-bed at dusk was a a different experience. The transparent surface of the pool had become a mirror reflecting the evening sky, the dark hoop of the bridge and the black silhouettes of the alder trees on either bank. The water was dimpled with the tell-tale signs of feeding trout, perhaps 20 of them, stationed in the current and sipping nymphs from just below the surface. Once in a while, a fish would launch itself skywards after a caddis fly and then fall back into the water in an undignified belly flop that was heard above the the sound of running water and the calls of birds.

Swallows hawked low and they sang as they flew. Brown sand martins nested in the exposed river bank and made their scratchy calls as they taught their youngsters how to feed themselves. Common sandpipers trilled to each other and a pair of pied oystercatchers flew over, calling "Peter, Peter," as they mourned for their lost chick. Flycatchers, dippers and wagtails were there too, but I didn't hear them. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

It rained all night and the beck rose by almost a foot. The water was now the colour of black coffee, peat-stained from the moors at the head of the dale. Trout dispersed from the pool into good feeding stations, mostly under the banks where they could escape the main force of the current. As always, they faced upstream to intercept the insects and worms that the rising water dislodged and to benefit from the oxygen that bubbled over their gills. They were invigorated by the cool rush of fresh water and the change of pace. A few mayflies hatched in the glide under the bridge and were eagerly pursued.

The BBC weather forecast predicted heavy rain in the Pennines for the rest of the week. Fishing with a fly would be impossible.

By afternoon, the beck had over-run its banks and was running into the meadows. The water was now the colour of a decaf late; brown, frothy and impenetrable. There were no discernible pools or rapids, just a river woven of boiling and seething undercurrents and upwellings that broke the surface into gurgling waves.

But the trout were still there.

The surge of dirt and muck that was washed from the fields and roads sickened the fish and the lack of visibility disturbed them. They turned pallid grey, the colour of a dead fish. The spotty shimmer and shine and the glorious golds, yellows and violets of their flanks were all gone.

They huddled into backwaters and eddies where cattle had been watered or where a hole had been left by a fallen tree and they fed on worms and slugs that were washed from the bank. They stayed there for for several days until the beck dropped back into its course and the water cleared.