“Duffer’s Fortnight” Becoming Only a Memory on Legendary Test

May 20, 2011 By: Marshall Cutchin

Clive Graham-Ranger writes that the mayfly hatches that once made England’s Test legendary — and drove up real estate prices along the stream — are fast becoming a distant memory. Long-time anglers blame a variety of causes, from wind, to turbidity, to loss of aquatic vegetation. “The most famous chalk stream in the world, which rises in the village of Ashe, near Overton, and winds gracefully through Hampshire’s chalk downlands until it reaches the sea at Southampton Water, has lost its once pellucid, gin-clear flow and become coloured.” In the London Telegraph.