Fly Fishing on the River Piddle

The River Piddle rises from chalk springs near Alton Pancras, high in the Dorset Downs, and runs 18 miles to Poole Harbour, joining the River Frome at Wareham. It flows south at first, then swings east at Puddletown, and runs parallel to the Frome for much of its length, a few miles to the south. Between source and mouth it passes Piddletrenthide, Piddlehinton, Puddletown, Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Briantspuddle, Throop and Turners Puddle, in Dorset. The catchment is mainly rural, about 182 square kilometres, fed by the Lyscombe Stream, the Cheselbourne Stream, the Devils Brook and the Milbourne Stream among its tributaries.

It is a classic sloped-face chalk stream: chalk bedrock overlain by large unconfined aquifers that supply most of the flow. The aquifer takes in autumn and winter rain and gives it back slowly through the summer, so incoming water holds a steady temperature of around 11°C the year round, and the flow stays stable through both drought and flood. Six miles below the source, at Puddletown, the chalk dips under clay and alluvial sand and gravel and the valley opens into water meadows, changing the character of the river considerably. Like most chalk streams it has been heavily worked over the centuries: medieval mills diverted and dammed it, weirs, sluices and hatches were built between the 17th century and the 1930s to irrigate the water meadows (their remains are still visible around Briantspuddle), and dredging continued into the late 1980s. Fly life remains excellent regardless: early olives and hawthorns open the season, mayfly follows, every beat sees a good hatch of grannom in April, and sport often picks up again in autumn with late olives and sedges. The river holds Brown Trout, Grayling throughout, with light stocking on most beats, and salmon are known to cut redds at Briantspuddle.

The Piddle at Tolpuddle was chosen by the Game Conservancy for a six-year study of the wild brown trout population and for research into ways of improving the habitat, work that fed into wider schemes by Wessex Water, the Game Conservancy Trust and the Environment Agency to reduce abstraction and enhance the river. Day tickets start from £60 during the main season. Grayling fishing is available from £30.