FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH – John Bailey's weekly word

 

It had to be, didn’t it? A bizarre day in many respects. July just wouldn’t have seemed the same without it.

I’d arranged to meet with Stephen Marsh-Smith, Director of the Wye and Usk Foundation. The idea was to complete a film with him for my new series on Sky. The theme was going to be built around a success story. How the work of the Foundation is bringing salmon back to the Wye.

And it rained. And it rained mightily. It rained so hugely it was almost impossible to film. But not quite. Fran and Laurence soldiered on. So did Stephen and I. Of course, a fly-caught salmon would have been exactly what the cameras needed and Stephen strove manfully to fulfil the ask. What a nice caster he is. Mind you, he should be! Literally outside his sitting room is one of the finest pools on the whole upper Wye. There’s another one just downstream. And an even better one fifty yards upriver. No wonder Stephen’s so damn nice. Who wouldn’t be, owner of a little paradise like this?!

In the end, we didn’t catch a salmon – it was Friday the thirteenth anyway. I did manage a nice chub on a fly and that in itself is a point of interest. But not, of course, as interesting as everything else that went on around the day.

Everything had a tinge of menace to it. Fran, the director, fell into the river. Not dangerously but enough to send her packing for a change of clothes. Laurence’s main camera became waterlogged and he had to set off in search of a back-up. The rocks were treacherous. The river began to rise. It became a real ‘kick bollock scramble’ sort of day. Worse was to come. But more of that later.

Interesting points emerged. For example, Stephen virtually always fishes with double-hooked flies. Why? Well, singles, he reckons, tend to slip and slide around a fish’s mouth causing untold damage. They don’t actually come out but they tear and produce a fair amount of scarring. Trebles, on the other hand, are the very devil to get out and frequently become lodged in the most difficult of places to unhook. Doubles, however, don’t slip and are easily removed.

This is important. Obviously, the Foundation encourages every salmon to be released. This means you DON’T take a fish from the water. You unhook it in the net and let it swim free. If you need to wrestle with the hooks, you’re looking at a traumatised salmon.

We knew the river was rising because of the famous Wye and Usk Foundation gauge. Yes, the one on the webcam. It seems that before the gauge was made famous in this way, the Foundation probably had forty or so hits a day to its website. Now. On an average day, TWENTY THOUSAND will log on to check that gauge. I’m not being rude…but that’s what you do once you stop train spotting!

We spent a lot of time talking about the work of the Foundation. Liming the uplands to decrease the impact of acid rain. Clearing the barriers in the side streams so salmon can get to their traditional redds. All in all, making the Wye and Usk catchment areas far more receptive places for a salmon to live in.

Stephen was worried about the colour of the water beginning to flood into the river. There’s a huge pipeline being laid across Wales, creating a vast scar of brown earth where the contractors are working. This, he pointed out, is, in large part, responsible for the diabolical colour of the river. He suggested that Fran film a short sequence of the pipeline on her return home. This she did. Or began to do. She was immediately surrounded by security personnel. Cars hemmed her in. She was verbally threatened. They were on the point of seizing her camera. Who are these people? What on earth right did they have for such behaviour? The thought that somebody can be so treated when filming on a public road a scene that is open to public eyes is intolerable.

It seems Stephen is consulting his lawyers about this. All part of the fun of Friday the thirteenth.