A Time Of Plenty

For grayling addicts, such as Howard Colmer, winter’s short days can provide long and wonderful memories.

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AUTUMN CAN BE the season of changing colours, warm evening sun and the last fly hatches, whereas midwinter is the reverse. The shortening days, unforgiving nature of a hard frost and bracing weather conditions can make sitting in front of the fire a more appealing prospect than going fishing. For some of us, at least. Although the dropping water temperature and receding photoperiod [the response of organisms to the length of day or night] stimulates our native brown trout to breed rather than feed during the lean winter months, there is one species that positively thrives in these conditions – grayling.

Although once considered to be a nuisance on the southern chalkstreams of England, the grayling’s sporting qualities, charm and eagerness to take a fly in the depths of winter make it worth targeting. 

I am biased in this assertion because I am fanatical about them, preferring the challenge of catching a 3lb specimen grayling over any brown trout or salmon. On a daily basis from mid-autumn onwards, my mind wanders to winter fishing adventures. This may seem to you an odd confession, but winter means my frenetic work schedule is behind me and I can finally switch off and look forward to catching this truly wild fish.

Having grown up in Hampshire within a stone’s throw of several chalkstreams, as a boy I regularly frequented the free stretches of the rivers Test and Itchen. Perhaps due to my January birth, I have a strange affiliation with winter grayling fishing and whenever a trip is organised, the weather is a huge part of my enjoyment.

A hard frost heightens my senses, I recall past adventures and I become eager to go fishing. One trip last winter to a Test tributary is cemented in my memory.