River Test

The river

The Test is a chalk stream: it rises from a spring near Overton, runs 64 km to Southampton Water, and maintains a temperature between 8 and 14°C all year. That constancy grows enormous weed beds, huge hatches of mayfly and olives, and brown trout that have been educated by 150 years of fly fishers. Almost all of it is privately owned; fishing is by day ticket on a handful of beats or by club membership, and the etiquette is formal.

On this river

Approaching a chalk stream

You can see the fish, which means they can see you. Kneel, keep behind the weed, and never let your shadow cross the water. On the Test the accepted approach is to wait for a specific fish to resume rising, then make one cast from a kneeling position ten metres below it.

The upstream nymph

When nothing is hatching, chalk-stream fish still feed on nymphs in the weed lanes. Fish a single small Pheasant Tail upstream on a 5-metre leader with a slack-line cast, and watch the point where the tippet enters the water rather than the fly. Takes are a small hesitation, often no more than the leader stopping for a beat.

Mayfly fortnight

Ephemera danica hatches for about two weeks from the middle of May and it is the one time when the Test's trout lose their caution. Fish a #10 dun during the afternoon and return for the spinner fall at dusk. Because the fish are feeding hard, a slightly imperfect cast is forgiven during this fortnight in a way it never is in July.