THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

One day, Bob Fitchie and I decided to fish for brown trout in some of pools along the length of Goldrill
Beck which connects Ullswater to Brothers Water, eventually ending up taking a walk around the
margins of Brothers Water in the proximity of the beck junction. It was there that we spotted a dead
schelly floating on the surface.
We already knew they left Ullswater at the other end of the lake, as coarse anglers had caught
occasionally them on both the River Eamont and River Eden. But this was something new. So I
contacted the British Museum, the knock on effect being that Brothers Water has since been shown to
be an additional previously unknown home for the species.
Though rare in the extreme, schelly, powan and gwyniad are easy fish to identify, because they can only
be found in the lakes specified above. You will see them described in some books as being herring like,
but this to me is a misleading description.
I would say they look more like a grayling without the long tall dorsal fin or spots. Quite an
inconspicuous looking fish really, the big give away being the small fleshy blob on the back just in front
of the tail which all salmonids have, the adipose fin.
The mouth is slightly under-slung and to an extent protrusible in a downward direction, suggesting a
life spent grubbing about in the bottom sediments.
When dead, they also have a scent of either cucumber or thyme, though this, as with checking out the
mouth, is something anglers are not now in a position to explore, as all specimens must by law be
returned to the water immediately
As with that other post glacial relict species, the char, when I learned about the existence of the schelly
I was immediately drawn to it. But unlike the char, which I caught at the first attempt and pretty much
to order thereafter, the schelly proved to be a far more elusive, mystical fish, and again it would be
people I worked with who would come to my assistance. And while the pair in question deserve credit
of sorts for that, I'm not going to mention their names for reasons which will become apparent.
Throughout April, May and June,
these two anglers would travel up to
Ullswater to fish a secluded spot
known as Sharrow Bay. There's a
small lay-by at the side of the very
narrow road there, with a path leading
off it to a small shingle beach.
The bay is a yacht anchorage these
days. But back then it wasn't. There is
also a small stone built boat house to
the side of the beach, and there used to
be a couple of old upturned boats on
the shingle itself.
Bob Fitchie, Schelly brace Red Tarn
What made this spot ideal from their
perspective was that you could hear
people coming along the road and down the track. This gave them time to 'modify' their activities in
case it was a fishery bailiff. They would also have a dog with them which would bark when anybody
approached, just in case.
All of that being the case, they felt able to flout the rules on the use of maggots and ground bait, and as
a consequence caught literally dozens of brown trout, with the bonus every so often, if you can call it
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