Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Country Diary
Night fishing — without even an espresso martini — for sea trout near a city centre proves a surreal experience, even if the fish won’t play ball
The tidal and non-tidal sections of the river Itchen meet at the Woodmill pool at Swaythling in Southampton. This pool pre-dates the Magna Carta and there is a long history of salmon being caught here, with annual catches from the 13th to early 16th century reported in the pipe rolls of the Bishopric of Winchester. So prolific was the Itchen’s salmon run that local people were recorded as neglecting their jobs to steal the bishop’s fish.
The Woodmill Fishery is managed by Southampton City Council. The decline in Atlantic salmon numbers is worrying but the pool remains one of the best places on the south coast to land a sea trout, and a big one at that. I was lucky to be invited to fish during the big tides of early September, and as we strung-up in the car park, waiting for nightfall, my host’s brother regaled us with tales of his first visit to Woodmill, when every couple of casts he got into a proper sea trout, including a brutish 14-pounder that took an age to tame.
Urban vibe
Night fishing at Woodmill is a weird experience. For starters, you are slap-bang in the city of Southampton, casting flies into darkness broken by the orange glow of street lamps and the occasional flashing blue lights of speeding police cars. A city never sleeps and, beneath the gushing of the fresh whitewater that spills into the pool, there is the persistent drum of near and distant traffic, of sirens and of people shouting on the streets. I don’t enjoy urban places but spending a night at Woodmill is different. It is an enticingly surreal experience; an angler’s oasis in a busy city, though sea trout being sea trout, they aren’t always in taking mood.
The tide was low, the pool near empty, and gillie host Richard — a veritable encyclopaedia on all things salmonid — recommended starting with something small and pale. I’d fish a floating line with a Yellow Peril tied on. Decent-sized sea trout were slopping about on the surface of the deepest water and two comrades with rods went to tackle them. Down the slipway and across slippery cobbles, I picked my way to the outflow and made a short cast along the back wall, letting the fly run with the current. On the third cast my line went taught and a fish splashed on the surface. This hand-length trout was no match for an 8wt rod and 20lb line and, after removing my fly, I slipped him away.
Working around the pool, I swam the Yellow Peril then a squat fluffy thing called a buck bug that apparently comes from Quebec. Short jolty strips and figure-ofeight retrieves didn’t do it. I was fishing flies where I wanted them to be and sizeable sea trout were showing all around them, but they weren’t taking or showing much interest in my friend’s offerings either.
Around 10.30pm salty water surged in. Over the next few hours the water level rapidly rose and fresh fish breached here, there and everywhere. I wondered how many would journey up the main river, or the little Monks brook, or if they simply came in for a mooch before heading back out into Southampton Water. I swapped to heavier lines and bigger, darker flies but fish showed no interest in colourful Snakes, black Zonkers or Stoat’s Tails.
At slack water I resorted to the dark side and went for a spin. A hungry school bass latched on to a Flying Condom on my second cast. Two o’clock came and I craved an espresso martini to wake me up. Instead I succumbed to a quick kip. Carp anglers go night fishing laden with warm sleeping bags and portable beds. We take wolf-naps in our cars, or in my case, on a bean bag beside the pool, where a beanie and chest waders kept the chill out.
A little after 3am I was wide awake and casting flies again, and soon the pool began to empty. Bats flitted above me and a couple of teal dropped in before rushing off after spotting my upturned face. I fished hard until dawn but the sea trout remained frustratingly nonchalant. They are fickle fish, an enigma, and that’s their appeal.
“The pool is one of the best places on the south coast to land a sea trout — and a big one”
Mike Short is an ecologist at the GWCT. He is a keen angler, deer stalker and forager and helps to run a wild bird rough shoot in Wiltshire.