MEMORIES OF THE RIVER TEST

Not fished the River Test in Hampshire on a regular basis but for a few years I did as my employer
at the time was one of its 25 members. Perhaps the most exclusive and oldest fishing club certainly in the UK it had 13 miles of fishing on the Test with its HQ at the Stockbridge Hotel and was founded in 1822.

I did get access to the clubroom upstairs in the Hotel full of ancient historical, books, manuscripts and letters with cased fish, flies ,wood paneling and old leather armchairs. A really historic setting.

However the most bizarre incident was not on the river but in the hotel itself.  I was waiting in the foyer waiting for my boss to finish breakfast when down the stairs came an old grey haired guy of considerable vintage.  He saw me and said  "Young man ( was then - at least to him,) can you help me"
"Yes of course if I can I replied"   He then pointed at his gnarled fingers and then at his trouser flies.  "Can't do the buggers up with these" he said" will you do them  up for me.
What could I say so I did though God knows what someone might have thought had they caught me in the act.  Didn't like to ask him how he would undo them if he wanted a pee during his days fishing or how the hell he tied a fly on.     I later learn't his was an old Admiral or something similar.

The late Mike Lunn was the keeper then and I had an embarrassing moment with him too  He was sometimes invited to fish on the Wye at the Nyth.  We were waiting for him to arrive one morning but he was very late and couldn't contact him.  I knew to a fish by the lodge and as the morning wore on my boss thought he was not coming and told me to have a go for it.  Well I did and a little later I was netting a 22lb fish only to be greeted by Mike who had just turned up.   He took it well however but I gillied for him the rest of the day but don't recall we caught another.  Have little doubt he would have caught it himself.

More tomorrow perhaps.