A Boy's Tale

QUEEN'S BRIDGE, STICKLEBACKS, LOACH AND EELS

by Peter Sharpe

At five years old I was in my shorts and wellingtons and with net and jar, stalking the shallow waters of the small streams and culverts in Bourne in search of sticklebacks, stone loach, and small eels. I am not quite sure how I was first introduced to this but I can only guess that my parents must have bought me a cane-handled net on a hot day and thought that it would be amusing to watch me splashing around in the river. I have often read that smells persist in the memory longer and more vividly than any of the other senses and it is certainly true in this case. If I concentrate, I can still conjure up that highly complex combination of oily water, weed, mud and the unique aroma of waterlogged wellies.

When I became old enough to venture out on my own, my main hunting ground was the length of shallow river, running from the now demolished Notley's Mill, right down to the footpath leading to Bedehouse Bank. This seemed a wonderful and mysterious place at the time, with a glorious mixture of fish, tunnels, weed and mud, everything a small child could wish for. The usual starting point was Queen's Bridge, which straddles the Bourne Eau between Victoria Place and Eastgate. After throwing our bikes against Mr Bradley's increasingly tatty looking privet hedge, we would carefully lower our bodies down the vertical wall into the water to fill our jars and seaside buckets to provide a temporary home for our captives.

As a beginner, one might be quite content to chase the sticklebacks, or kick at the stones on the riverbed in search of whatever lived beneath. Sooner or later though, you would feel yourself being drawn ever closer to the bridge. This was usually the domain of the older kids, if only because the deeper water there required the protection of taller wellies. I can never remember anyone braving the waters without these for protection; after all, who knows what terrible damage an eel's teeth might have inflicted on exposed young flesh.

There was little clearance between the river and the road bridge, but if you were very small, it was possible to crouch down, nervously edging your way into the gloom, hoping to keep the tops of your boots and the seat of your shorts just above water level. With your head painfully scraping the roof of the tunnel and your shirt collar scooping cobwebs down the back of your neck, it was a scary place for a little lad. The water did not just flow straight through though as somewhere in the blackness, the old Roman canal resumed its truncated course at right angles to the stream and veered off under the length of the road for a hundred yards or more before emerging into daylight by the side of the old gasometer. The demons lurking within that black and evil cavern could only be imagined.

The daylight only penetrated a couple of yards under the bridge and as you ventured further into the gloom, the smells and sounds became more intense and the water gradually deeper. Every slooshing and gurgling sound of your progress was amplified and echoed by the concrete walls and I usually became too frightened to continue as the daylight receded behind me. We had every reason to be afraid though as deep inside the tunnel there were reputed to be pike and eels larger than any we had ever seen before, not to mention the bats and the rats. 

The eels we found under the stones outside were little more than elvers but deep under the bridge far bigger specimens lurked among the fallen masonry. I was once panic stricken when a seemingly huge creature of well over a foot long, suddenly appeared from nowhere, and writhed around my legs. I made a few quick thrusts with the net, but soon began to wonder if I was hunting it, or it was hunting me, so I made a quick retreat for the outside, getting two wet feet for my trouble. 

Back in the open air, sticklebacks were the quarry of beginners and needed merely to be herded into a compact shoal so that a quick swoop with the net would see several bristling, leaping bodies bouncing around in the nylon net. Large male redbreasts though, with their spiky bodies and iridescent colours, were prized by everyone. The real specimen hunters among us were those who had learned the techniques necessary to capture a stone loach. Sometimes you might spot one relying on its mottled camouflage, lying still on the silt, although the most effective method was to walk the stream, gently nudging each rock to see if anything popped out. Even a little two and a half inch specimen was considered to be better than a stickleback, although the serious examples were four inches or more, and one veritable monster must have approached a massive six inches. 

The first rule you learned was always to walk upstream. That way, the clouds of displaced mud would be washed away behind you. It was sometimes possible to net them in full flight, but the most effective technique was to nudge a rock and try to follow the lightening fast bolt to another rock a few feet away where you could then note the point and direction of its entry. You needed excellent vision as they would sometimes send up a puff of mud, then do a U-turn, and disappear back under the same stone as before. When you knew where they were, the trick was to hold the net facing the point of their disappearance, then disturb the stone on the opposite side, as nine times out of ten they would come out the way they went in, and straight into the waiting mesh.

Stone loach were once known as the weather fish because in a tank, they were supposed to swim high or low depending on the air pressure. They also require high oxygen levels, which probably explains why within a couple of hours, most of mine ended up on the bottom of the jar, upside down, and very stiff.

Eels were highly prized by young boys, mainly because of their general, slithery weirdness, but also for their effectiveness in making girls scream. There was always a slight feeling of discomfort when hunting eels as you never quite knew when they would appear, or how big they would be. The only realistic method of catching an eel in a fishing net was to thrash the surrounding water to foam with the net and as soon as you felt something kicking, throw the net, and hopefully the eel, up onto the nearby footpath. It was then a race to haul yourself up the brick sides and pounce on the eel before it wriggled back in. 

Very rarely, and if you were very lucky, you might catch a fleeting glimpse of the resident dace shoal, as they made one of their rare excursions into the twilight zone of the upstream edge before disappearing back into the blackness of the underground canal. Dace were proper fish, and so always eluded us until one special day. Further upstream, just below where the old mill once stood, the river once again disappeared under the road, but this time through a round, brick tunnel that was barely two feet in diameter. One brave soul took on a dare to walk all the way through this cramped space, from one side of the road to the other, and while bent double, claimed to have seen dace darting about, inches from his face. Nobody believed him at first, but on my first half-hearted attempt, I also saw the sudden flash as the dim light caught a flashing, silvery flank. 

A plan was hatched. One of my friends would stamp his way through the tunnel causing as much disturbance as possible, while I would wait in ambush at the far end, ready to pounce on whatever came out. As I stood there at the end with net at the ready, the sudden sounds of shouting and splashing announced his entrance to the tunnel, ten or twelve yards away on the far side of the road. The shouting served more to mask his own fear rather than flush out the dace, and it was really quite spooky to stand by the exit, as this screaming apparition came closer and closer, sending wave after wave rolling down the tunnel, increasing in intensity as he headed for daylight. 

The water gradually became cloudy from all the displaced silt. A large eel shot out, then suddenly the end of the tunnel was alive with flashing shapes. Some darted past my net, but others became trapped in the few inches of water in front of my legs, and then joy oh joy, I had one in the net. This was dumped unceremoniously onto the footpath in the tried and tested fashion, and then I had the chance of another as my mate emerged from the hole with his wellies full of water. The dace, which had swum out into the river without their sunglasses, were now trying desperately to get back into the comforting darkness, and made an easy catch as in panic, they desperately tried to find a way past the pair of legs that were now almost blocking the entrance.

We had now succeeded in capturing two of these almost mythical fish, although the first one had become slightly dusty after flapping about in the gutter. We marvelled at the strength of their bodies as we tried to hold them, looked into their cold, fish eyes and watched their pink gills opening and closing. My instinct was to take one home to my parents as evidence of my hunting skills, but these were far too big to fit in a jam jar, so reluctantly, mission accomplished we returned them to the water. We watched them steady themselves in the slack water by the wall, then suddenly, with a flick of their tail fins, they bolted back into the darkness together.