Hundreds of years ago the Itchen was divided into multiple branches to create large water meadows for pastureland and to provide water power for multiple mills. The Itchen teems with brown and rainbow trout and is considered one of the best trout streams in England. Unfortunately, the trout, sometimes weighing over 20 pounds, are inaccessible to most fishermen unless they are willing to fork-over large sums of money.
Dayton anglers can slide into their waders or climb into their boats and meander along the Stillwater, Miami or Mad Rivers fishing wherever they want. They even have the legal right to cast their flies upon the water while standing on privately owned riverbanks. If a British fisherman tried that on the Itchen River in Winchester, he could be hung for poaching. Well, a couple of hundred years ago he could have been hung. Today he would only be slapped with a several thousand dollar fine.
The British, especially the land-owning class, consider poaching a very serious offense. In 1215 AD fishing rights were actually mentioned in the Magna Carta. King John, who was allegedly infringing on baronial rights, was forced by knights holding sharp weapons to reconfirm the traditional privileges of the land-holding barons, including their exclusive right to the fish swimming in their streams.
According to a Winchester fisherman I met, nothing much has changed in 800 years. The modern land barons still control 97 percent of the fresh water fishing grounds. George Monbiot, a blogger for the Manchester Guardian (April 4, 2013), asserts that the exclusion exists because “landowners and their tenants do not recognize this right (of public access), anywhere but on the 3 percent of rivers where it has been formally conceded. Canoeists, kayakers, swimmers and the rest of the public are barred by threatening signs, barbed wire and intimidating men insisting that they are trespassing.”
This almost total control of the rivers explains why only a few avid fishermen risk the heavy fines and still go “guesting,” as they call it, in private fishing preserves. My fisherman source, who shall remain anonymous, confessed to “guesting” as a kid when the risk of “a slap up the side of the head was worth it.” A “guesting” teenager today, however, would “risk court time, a hefty fine and a criminal record.”
Walking along the rare public part of the Itchen provided another sight that Dayton’s rivers do not often offer. Two middle-age mermaids were swimming up-stream and one was towing a rubber ducky on a string. I had to ask. As it turned out, the duo were not mermaids but two Winchester women who swim the Itchen River every day, all year round. Inside the rubber ducky was a thermometer to measure water temperature. It registered 55 degrees Fahrenheit, which coincidentally matched the air temperature that day.
What is wrong with this picture? We Daytonians were standing on a river bank in sweaters and wind breakers shivering and chatting with two ladies in swimsuits who were up to their necks in water that was over 40 degrees colder than their body temperature. Actually, nothing was wrong. When it comes to enduring cold, the British are just a whole lot tougher than us Americans. Whether they are poaching fish, swimming in freezing water or braving German bombs, British people exhibit an aura of unflappability. After all one of their favorite mantras is, “Keep calm and carry on.”
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