We don’t make stuff any more – the Chinese do it for us. What’s the upshot? Clean rivers in Britain’s cities. Overlooked and unloved, they are cheap and offer some of the best fishing in the land. Fill your boots!

Suggest an urban river you know. It must be cheap and in the British Isles.

“Ere, mister, why don’t you do normal fishing?”
I turn around. A shell-suited kid is trotting maggots for trout. He looks curious, and a bit dejected.
“I’m catching fish. Why should I fish like you?”
“Make us feel better, urnit?” He laughs.
It’s a big question, though, why don’t I do normal fishing?
For years I didn’t fish the southern chalkstreams though I live in London. I thought they were for… How can I put this? People who wear tweed, people who like either Halford or Skues, but obviously, dear boy, not both; who think books are rather boring, that the stuff in the Tate Modern isn’t art, and dim sum is a martial art. If I wanted to meet them I could do it at Farlows, or start hunting foxes, or attend the boat race or something. It’d be great fun to push them in, but it’s probably illegal.

The prices put me off more than anything else: £100 - £1000 per day. I wanted to go, but there were these two big barriers, that were insurmountable. I didn’t want to pay that much to go and have a bad experience (the more you pay the more critical of a water you become) so I kept putting it off.

Then everything changed. On a boat in the middle of the north sea, a salty sea dog told me The Itchen was free in the centre of Winchester, and mostly fished by kids, any method allowed. The Winchester tourist office confirmed this information.

I was soon on the train. You could practically wear your waders down on the train from Waterloo. Walk straight out of the station and down City Road, in ten minutes Durngate is a left fork. You are at The Itchen, and it is free, gratis and no costa nada.

Arriving at The Itchen, every angler will think the same thing: That is a fast river. It looks a bit dodgy to wade. The other thing that’s striking is that there are lots of rough kids hanging around fighting, ripping up bits of civic horticulture to slap each other with in inventive, if crude, ways. And these are the fishermen! I couldn’t have been more at home. In between bouts they trot maggots and bread down the stream, complain if you get a fish, and ask strange questions like why you’re not a normal fisherman, the little shits. This is a river packed with fish, and if you tie on three nymphs you’ll soon be trying not to play the smaller ones so they come off rather than go through the tedious process of bringing them all to hand.

One kid is a convert. He goes home and gets a fly reel. He’s back on the river in twenty minutes, with a coarse rod, a 7# floating fly line, a two-foot piece of monofilament and a large pink feather on a hook for a fly. Not exactly a standard rig. This he swings behind me for the rest of the afternoon, following me up and down the pool, hoping that my ability to catch fish will rub off on him through proximity.

In two days of fishing, a series of old-timers queue up to ask me what I’m doing, and tell me they’d never seen it before: ‘floy fishing’ they call it, in Hampshire burr. Ah, the other would nod: floy fishing. The river came to a standstill each time I caught. And the kids would break off to batter each other a bit more. This is The Itchen, Jim, but not as we know it. There are beer cans and bottles on the bottom, and pizza trays by the seats at the side, though none of the big debris you get in honest-to-god urban fly fishing, such as shopping trolleys (the classic) or rusting oil barrels. The river is pure and clear, the fish can be seen, but not easily as the flow is fast. When I see a good lie, I want to put my flies right into it, and when they are there, I say, “That’s in the money room”, which is just a part of my private vocabulary, I went into the money room at RBS once, me and 100 million pounds together. It doesn’t mean you get to take something out, but if your cast is correct, and it goes where you want it to and covers the water in the way you intended, then it is in the money room. If I’m slightly short, I say, “That’s knocking on the door of the money room”. There’s an excitement about that, thinking this is the moment that the fish will take if he is where I think he is. I was dissatisfied with my answer to the kid, ‘I’m doing better than you’, that isn’t why I fly fish. It’s about trout, and I’d rather pursue than simply catch. It’s very visual and active, and if it weren’t either of these things I wouldn’t do it. It’s about reading the water that is so small a part of coarse fishing. But most of all, it’s about putting the fly in the money room and being excited. When people say you need patience to fish, I simply nod, because I know I can’t convince them that fly fishing is a buzz, it’s up, it’s not remotely transcendental. When your fly is on the water, it’s electric.

The kids went to Kentucky (not the state) to eat. I looked back at their spot, there was a nice channel between them and the middle of the pool. They always cast over it, trying to get to the other side. I cast across it, and as I said “That’s in the money…” A trout of a pound leapt on my weighted green Sawyer pheasant tail. I brought him to hand. Hint: In water this fast, bring a landing net. Even a fish of a pound is really tough to bring to hand. A gang of old-timers were standing watching as I unhooked him. One took my picture. “I’ve never seen anyone catch a fish in this river in seventy seven years of passing here”. Don’t expect The Itchen, but do expect the fishing, and by all means, wear a shell suit.

Price: Free!
Quality: 9/10
Price/quality ratio: Unbeatable.
Chavtastic: Surprisingly chavvy for a posh town, but the kids are all right.
Debris: None of the classic bits of debris. Just litter, a few beer cans.
Water quality/smell: Totally pure.
Wildlife: Nah.

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