Article - Coarse

Digging for Victory

By Ian, added on 12/04/2007

Ever since I was a small boy, and particularly since I have been a fisherman, I have wanted my own stretch of water. Initially, that dream was to have a stretch of some prolific river (the Avon would have been nice) and nearby a secretive, secluded lake in whose depths lurked monstrous carp and tench.

The dream faded somewhat when I gave up fishing for a long spell in the 80s and 90s and applied my nose to the grindstone, working all available hours and latterly building up a business. However, the yearning was still there at the back of my mind, albeit in a dormant state.

Over time, the pressures of business told and I wanted to break the cycle of commute/travel, work, crash out, commute/travel, deal with nasty clients, commute/travel, crash out etc. [Note to self – funny how that hasn’t really happened!] So that was how I found myself, one day in 1989, on the very western edge of Norfolk, staring at the ruins of an old farmhouse. The place, as they say, had potential. They also say that moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do and if they’d also added "and it’s really, really expensive, more so than you thought when you hatched this hair-brained scheme" I might, just might, have thought twice.

The fact that the ex-farmhouse stood on the banks of a small but interesting-looking river did register at the time but was not the main reason for taking the plunge and buying the place with a view to turning it into a home from home within 2 years. Now I must confess that it actually took much longer, cost a lot more than anticipated (this was when mortgage rates hit 15% and we had re-mortgaged our house in Wiltshire to finance the building work) and generated massive amounts of stress equal to or worse than that experienced at work – everything you see on Grand Designs and programmes of that nature is true, you just never believe it until you experience it yourself. To keep costs down, we did virtually all of the building work ourselves , juggling normal work with weekends, holidays etc, but by 1997 it was habitable and we moved in properly. In retrospect we would have been better to pay for builders and get in quicker, but hey, what’s life if not a chance to make countless mistakes and hopefully learn from them so that you can then relate them to others and they, in turn, can ignore your advice and go away and do exactly the same? It’s called history, I believe, something our politicians never seem to learn from. Ten years later we still cannot say it is finished, but I guess projects of this type are never "finished".

The property had no garden to speak of, being surrounded by a 25 acre field. We managed to cobble together enough money to buy an extra acre from the farmer, and one of the first jobs was to hedge it and start the process of making it a garden. Trees and an orchard area were planted. Even then, I wondered about the time when I might be able to go back to the farmer and buy a few more acres to make a woodland and dig a smallish pond, but that thought stayed planted in the back of my mind.

Then calamity struck – our farmer sold the adjoining field to another farmer, known to be a rapacious character. Initial enquiries revealed that he wanted £ridiculous per acre and so the idea remained shelved for another few years.

During this time I studied the river outside my front door but never wet a line, despite the knowledge that it was free fishing. I often watched anglers and marvelled at what lived in such a seemingly small space – roach, rudd, tench, bream, perch, pike, even zander – but something held me back from partaking. I presume I just couldn’t get back into the frame of mind that allowed me to fish.

Then in the summer of 2002 a "For Sale" sign appeared in "our" field. Enquiries revealed that the farming dynasty involved was selling off thousands of acres in the area for divorce settlements and all sorts of reasons – all very Dallas but to us the opportunity was obvious. There was one major snag – we had wanted four or five acres to add to our bit, but this field was a whopping 25 acres and it was only for sale as one lot. Rather strangely, the selling agent was based where we used to live (Devizes) and after several cagey telephone conversations about value we put together a bid and submitted. In our favour was the certainty that the land was grade one agricultural and out of the planning area, so purchase for housing development was never an option and the price would reflect that. Finally, in October we heard our bid had been successful and we were now landed gentry.

During the waiting period we had started to plan what we might do with all this land – renting it out to the farmer we bought it from was one option that was mooted to us before we even put the bid in. Planting trees – lots of them – was, for us, the biggest attraction and so after many phone calls, internet searching and head scratching we finally negotiated the maze of the Environment Agency, DEFRA and the Forestry Commission and put in a grant application. We were successful and with the help of a splendid fellow from Norfolk County Council (the Tree Officer) put together a plan for planting around 10,000 native trees and a mile or so of hedging. The Forestry Commission then insisted we change the tree spacing to 2m apart, which increased the number of trees needed by 50% and meant the grant we got would no longer cover the cost of the trees and their planting, nor their maintenance in the following critical early years. But, by early May 2003 most of the trees were in and then the poor things sat there through a very dry summer and we feared the worst. Fortunately, we only lost around 15% and these have now been replaced in the following planting seasons. In all, some 20,000 trees have been planted so far and I’m feeling smug about my carbon footprint, which is more that can be said of my dealings with DEFRA – the amount of waste paper they send out is just unbelievable, ream upon ream of meaningless gobbledygook which probably kills another Swedish forest on each print run.

The embryo forest took up approx 12 acres of the 25 available; we rented out another 8 to the local organic farmer, who underwent the conversion process and two years later the land was fully certified by the Soil Association. This left 5 acres and thoughts of a lake began to materialise again. The environs here are basically fenland, ie fabulous soil over peat which sits on clay and/or sand. We thought at the time that getting water would not be an issue, it being the Fens and being surrounded by the stuff. Whenever we had dug more than a foot or two in the garden the hole filled up with water.

So it was off to the local planning office to see what needed to be done. Having established that we needed to apply for permission but since we had no intention of making a "commercial" we would not need to a go through the rigmarole of highways access planning and car parking, etc etc etc. All that was needed was "engineering drawings". Then I found out that these had a square metre charge, so the bigger the lake the more I had to pay for a rubber stamping exercise. I asked what was required;

"A plan" was the answer.

"You mean a sketch of a hole in the ground in plan view and section?"

"Yes".

"And how much will that cost?"

"£440 for a one acre lake".

Picking myself up off the floor I went away, selected my best "Vision On" pencil, drew the "engineering drawings" and handed over the money.

There was, however, a bigger sting left in the tale. Our farmhouse is built on the site of a medieval priory. Despite the knowledge that we have dead monks in the front garden and huge foundations going off in all directions appear whenever we dig around the house, the site of the priory is apparently uncertain. So, before we could gain final permission for the lake, we had to commission an archeological survey. This had happened previously when we were renovating the house, but it was then called a "watching brief". This is the most aptly named procedure I have ever come across: some poor woman in a cagoule and hard hat came and stood, briefly, in the pouring rain while we dug foundations. She ticked some boxes on a form and then disappeared. For all I know she was a lost motorist who poled up and did her crossword in front of us.

The archeological survey was something else entirely. Time Team weren’t interested and so we had a local university unit do the "dig" – scrape more like – and produce a report. All of which we had to pay for, plus VAT. All they found was evidence of a medieval ditch and a King Charles II coin and permission for the lake was forthcoming.

So having gone from the premise that digging a lake costs around £1 per cubic metre, our costs had more or less doubled with red tape and planning regulations.

Finally, in June 2003, digging began. The estimable company run by Doug Gooch, Fen Ditching (By Appointment to Her Majesty), turned up in force. This included the driver Doug described to me prior to the dig as his "young lad", and who was an expert in lake construction. It turned he was as old as me, but younger than Doug and therefore qualified as a "young lad".

Within a matter of weeks the hole was dug. The process was fascinating to watch. Topsoil and subsoil was moved away into piles and bulldozed into its final position (we wanted a meadow area around the lake which needed poor quality soil, so that was assigned to these areas). Beneath this was a layer of peat and beneath that the thick, unctuous blue clay which was dug and used to line the sides of the lake. The digger drivers were consummate artists in the way they dug up the clay and smoothed it into a consistent layer 18 inches thick, following the contours of the lake. Two islands were constructed and the lake itself had a dog-leg shape. In all it was around 100m by 30m and depths varied up to 2.5m.

The only problem was water. We had all expected the lake to fill as it was dug and we intended to use a borehole for the rest. It didn’t fill. After a few dryish winters and dry summers, the water table had receded and we were left, literally, high and dry (well, as high as you can be in the Fens). As I write this, the water table is at its highest for a decade or more and the septic tanks won’t drain properly because of all the groundwater, but in that long hot spell it was very different.

So there we were, it was summer and we had a large hole drying out rapidly. Worse, all the beautifully sculpted clay was beginning to crack. Urgent enquiries were made to see if we could extract water from the river, 150m away. The answer was yes, but only subject to planning approval and then only in the winter months. We pored over plans of ditches and dykes to see if there was any way we could move water from somewhere else, all to no avail. We consulted a water engineer who advised that any deep borehole would only fetch up saltwater so that was a non-starter. We just had to apply for an extraction licence and wait.

We watched as the lake bed cracked and split like an overdone cake. The odd storm made pools which were quickly infested by mosquitoes and the deeper areas of the lake gradually filled up. The banks became overgrown with weeds and the whole demeanour was one of an unkempt acquaintance. But even that early, dragonflies roamed the edges and butterflies patrolled the islands. Time seemed to stand still. Finally, as 2003 slipped into 2004, we got permission to take water from the river. However, there was one more hurdle; in order to do so, we needed planning permission to thrust-bore a pipe under the road and into the river so that we could put in a permanent link. There was another interminable wait whilst permission was sought and granted. In early February 2004 water flowed from the river into the lake and in two or three days it was full.

Then disaster struck. Even a casual observer would have noticed that, far from maintaining its level, the water was going down, and fairly rapidly. Doug and the boys returned and inspection revealed that some land drains had been left in and water was just gushing out. Luckily it wasn’t the cracking the clay had undergone in the previous year, the bed seemed to be holding. We actually located the rogue drains by divining with copper rods, and if any of you are sceptics you should try it – it works. The diggers came back, leaks were sealed, clay was re-applied and the water level stabilised. All this work was done in double-quick time because the licence stipulated that we could not extract after March 1st, so the race was on to find and repair the leaks and re-fill the lake before this date.

Calm returned and the next stage was planning the planting. I had decided to plant the lake in 2004 and introduce the first of the fish the following March. Again, through internet searching I found an amazing supplier www.britishflora.co.uk who helped plan what was needed and delivered the whole lot (some 3000 plants), with his aged mother riding shotgun, one Saturday in May. He said he had promised her a day out; I’m not sure this was exactly what she was expecting. Weekends for the rest of that month, and June and July, and holidays, were spent in the back-breaking task of planting everything, usually knee deep in water and sliding about in the clay. Any passer-by would have seen demented, slimy creatures emerging from the mud and run screaming from the scene. Here’s what went in:

Latin Name	Common Name	No.
Lychnis flos-cuculi	ragged robin " "	100 above
Angelica sylvestris	wild angelica	25 above margin
Geum rivale	water avens	70 above margin
Hypericum tetrapterum	square stemmed St Johns wort	70 above margin
Cardamine pratensis	ladies smock	180 above water
Eupatorium cannabinium	hemp agrimony	135 above water
Pulicaria dysenterica	fleabane " "	135 above water
Butomus umbellatus	flowering rush	50 below water
Nymphaea	water lily " "	1-2m deep
Stratiotes aloides	water soldiers	25 floaters
Acorus calamus	sweet flag	50 margin
Caltha palustris	marsh marigold	45 margin
Eleocharis palustre	common spike-rush	70 margin
Carex pendula	pendulous sedge	90 margin and above
Epilobium hirsutum	great willowherb	70 margin- above
Alisma plantago	water plantain	50 margin-water
Carex acutiformis	lesser pond sedge	180 margin-water
Callatriche stagnalis	starwort	100 oxygenator
Ceratophyllum demersum	hornwort	100 oxygenator
Myriophyllum spicatum	spiked milfoil	100 oxygenator
Ranunculus aquatilis	common crowfoot	100 oxygenator
Filipendula ulmaria	meadowsweet	140 water to above
Juncus effusus	soft rush	100 water - above
Lycopus Europaeus	gipsywort " "	90 water - above
Lysimachmia vugaris	yellow loosestrife	25 water - above
Lythrum salicaria	purple loosestrife	135 water - above
Mentha aquatica	water mint "	105 water - above
Myosotis scorpioides	water forget me not	35 water - above
Ranunculus flammula	lesser spearwort	75 water - above
Rumex hydrolapathum	water dock	35 water- above
Iris pseudacorus	flag iris	100 water to dry
Phalaris arundinacea	reed canary-grass	180 water - dry
Phragmites communis	common reed	180 water -dry
Stachys palustris	marsh woundwort	50 water - dry
Menyanthes trifoliata	bog bean " "	25 water line
Veronica beccabunga	brooklime	105 waterline

That year the lure of the river finally became too great for me. I took up fishing once more and became a regular fixture outside my front gate before exploring the wider and spectacular world of fishing in the Fens.

Inexperience raised its head again as summer turned to autumn and winter. The mix of above- and below-the-water plants and marginals had been planted in specific places. Of course, we failed to appreciate how much the water levels would change. By December the level had gone up a foot or so and marginals were now submerged aquatics. Added to this, the cold winds that scour the Fens blew almighty waves which crashed into the shores, washing away plants which had not fully established and destabilising the islands in the process. We also had numerous visiting geese that nibbled away at the tender young shoots in the following spring.

There was nothing for it but to plan to replace some of what had been lost in subsequent years and protect them better from the elements and the wildfowl. The whole idea had been to establish a haven for wildlife in an area of habitat loss, so we did not want to discourage the swans, geese and ducks which called in. In 2006 we had one breeding pair of greylags and this year we have three, so the policy of encouragement is clearly working. "Build it and they will come" certainly works. We were inspired by Phil Drabble and his own development of a woodland habitat – the description of the heronry still lingers with me.

One particularly galling failure so far has been the lilies. I adore tench fishing and my idea of heaven is a misty dawn on a reed-fringed lake, with a profusion of lilies, their leaves wobbling gently as the fish grub around below and bubbles break the silky surface of the calm water. I want to create this but so far virtually every lily I have planted has failed to thrive. I’ve planted them in pots, I’ve planted them straight into the lake bed, I’ve covered them with wire netting to protect them in case the fish are grubbing them up, but all I have to show for it is about 6 straggly clumps from the 50 or more that have gone in. Maybe this will be the year they start to take off; certainly, many other plants have taken until now to really establish properly. I will be putting in more as Spring advances, but I will resist the temptation to plant the ubiquitous brandy bottle (Nuphar lutea) which thrives in these parts and can choke a lake with the roots as thick as your arm. One of the clubs I belong to has a lake with water fringe (Nymphoides peltata) so I will get some of these during the spring clearance and transplant it to see how it fares.

As 2004 became 2005, another winter of gales lashed the lake and took its toll on the plant life and the integrity of the islands. By now, the first fish had been ordered and after gaining EA approval a mixed batch of coarse species was introduced. This comprised approximately 1500 small specimens of roach, rudd, tench, crucian carp and a few bream and perch. In addition, a few chub were included. I had decided against pike and carp at this stage. The perch and chub were to be the predators. This was followed by 100 rainbow trout for a bit of fluff-chucking variety and for eating, and also for their predatory instincts. I would love to put carp in but I feel they may take over and eventually out-compete the tench in particular; my aim is to create a true mixed fishery. I have spoken with several hatcheries who assure me they can provide males only in the breeding season, so that would give me an option to put 20 or 30 in which could grow to a considerable size without bullying everything else or breeding them out of contention. I am still pondering that one.

One big problem has been the trout. The very hot summer of 2006 saw a number of them die and I have come to the conclusion that they are not suited to this environment, so I doubt I will replace them when they are gone. I could install some sort of oxygenating pump to see if that makes a difference in very hot weather.

Also in 2005 I built a jetty, which involved falling in twice, and scoured EBay for a cheap rowing boat. Eventually I found one near Norwich and for £100 and a hairy drive home with it strapped to the car on a makeshift roof-rack in a howling easterly gale, it was ours. I have since added an electric outboard, bought ridiculously cheaply in America ($90, about £50) and brought home dismantled in my luggage. Trying to get the propeller end through as hand luggage caused immense consternation for the none-too-bright security guards in Washington and so I had to check it in and pray it survived the journey in the hold. It did.

The lake has begun to mature, the trees planted on the banks are becoming established and the wildlife is moving in. Cowslips have self-sown onto the banks. So far we have had snipe, woodcock, kestrels, sparrowhawk, two barn owls (at the same time), little owls, tawny owls, many geese, swans and ducks, various passerines, herons and (sadly) cormorants. A kingfisher is a regular visitor. Moorhens and coots visit from the river but have yet to nest. Damselflies and dragonflies patrol ceaselessly in summer and butterflies and moths are growing in numbers and species annually. At least one hare is resident in the field and a fox and stoats have been seen this year. Hedgehogs abound and can trip up the unwary night walker. As yet no frogs have been seen in the lake but they are certainly around and about. The crowning glory would be a grass snake or two, but as yet they haven’t been seen. Perhaps in future years.

And what of the fishing? Well, I’ve tried my best to leave it alone (apart from the trout, now few in number). I feed the fish regularly with pellets and other goodies, and they are certainly growing and breeding well. I want to try to wait another couple of years, to allow everything to grow, before I angle in earnest (I have, of course, dabbled a little from time to time – who could resist?). As I know what went in there, I need the surprise element to work, for fishing without mystery is not fishing, to me anyway. Just sitting out on the bank as the summer sun dips over the western horizon and sends crimson light through the trees and over the lake is enough for me, at the moment. An occasional glimpse of a rolling fish, or the scatter of sunlight and the wave of ripples as one leaps set the pulse racing and increase the anticipation.

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