Fly fishing in the country between the Staffordshire Moorlands and the Derbyshire Dales cannot easily be regarded as a single pursuit, for the rivers alter with the underlying stone, and the stone itself changes beneath the traveller almost without announcement, somewhere among the high roads, abandoned quarries and pale escarpments where the moorland begins to break apart into the limestone country. A stream which, a few miles to the west, may have run dark beneath peat-stained banks and leaning alders can suddenly become clear enough to disclose every gravel bed, trailing weed and wavering shadow, so that even the smallest movement of the angler appears to be magnified by the water and transmitted ahead like a warning. One becomes aware, while standing beside such a river, that the landscape is not merely scenery surrounding the act of fishing, but the hidden mechanism governing it, determining the colour of the water, the insects that rise from it, the shape of the pools and even, perhaps, the degree of suspicion with which a trout examines the artificial fly drifting towards it.

The Derbyshire Dales contain some of the most celebrated trout rivers in England, among them the Wye, the Dove and the Derwent, names which have acquired over the centuries a significance extending far beyond their physical dimensions. Their reputation, preserved in books, fishing clubs and the recollections of generations of visiting anglers, can sometimes conceal the practical difficulty of reaching them. Much of the most desirable water is controlled by estates, old-established associations, hotels and syndicates whose boundaries are largely invisible in the landscape. A footpath may follow the river for miles, passing close enough to allow the walker to see trout holding in the current, yet the right to walk beside the water confers no right to fish it. The river remains before you, apparently open and continuous, while in legal and historical terms it is divided into a succession of private reaches, each governed by arrangements which may have been in place for longer than anyone now fishing there can remember.

Across the county boundary, the waters of the Staffordshire Moorlands are less famous and perhaps for that reason retain a somewhat less ceremonial character. The fishing can be rougher, more wooded and more improvised. It takes place beneath branches, beside old mills, within steep valleys and along rivers which have carried the consequences of industry as well as the flow of the hills. The Churnet, in particular, offers something which has become increasingly uncommon, a substantial wild river fishery available through an ordinary local angling society rather than through the machinery of an expensive hotel, a waiting list or a carefully packaged sporting experience. Here the angler may find himself roll-casting beneath alder branches, scrambling around the remains of a stone wall or following the river where it shares the narrow valley with the Caldon Canal, the railway and the remnants of former works. The water seems entangled with everything that has happened beside it.

The contrast between these fishing countries begins below the surface. The Derbyshire Wye is a limestone river, alkaline and fertile, capable of supporting great quantities of freshwater life. Beneath its surface are shrimps, caddis larvae and the nymphs of upwinged flies, while at certain times of year the adult insects appear above the river in such numbers that the air itself seems briefly inhabited by the water. There are mayfly days when pale insects rise and drift over the current, and trout which have remained almost invisible begin feeding openly, though even then the apparent abundance does not necessarily make the fishing easy. The clear water exposes everything. The pale gravel and waving weed reveal the fish, but they also reveal the angler. A careless step, the flash of a rod or the shadow of a line passing over the pool may end the matter before the fly has touched the surface.

It is one of the small humiliations of limestone fishing that a trout can often be seen rejecting the offering which has taken considerable effort to prepare for it. The fish rises slightly, appears to inspect the fly and then sinks back into the current, returning to precisely the position it occupied before, while the angler remains crouched on the bank wondering whether the fault lay in the pattern, the leader, the presentation or some movement made several minutes earlier. The water, which from a distance seemed so welcoming in its transparency, becomes an instrument of exposure. Nothing is concealed, least of all incompetence.

The Derwent is a different river, broader and more powerful, moving through long glides, gravelly runs and deeper pools shaded by alder. It carries the influence of the great reservoirs in its upper catchment and has endured the effects of weirs, fine sediment and the many alterations imposed upon rivers required to serve human settlements. Yet it still contains reaches where wild brown trout and grayling live among riffles, tree roots and changing depths. On the Derwent there is sometimes room for a longer cast, though distance alone is seldom the answer. The fish may lie close beneath the bank, behind a stone or along the almost invisible seam between fast and slow water. A cast sent grandly towards the far side may pass over half a dozen better opportunities.

The Dove is narrower in places but carries a greater literary burden. Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton fixed it within the English imagination through The Compleat Angler, and since the seventeenth century the river has been described with something approaching reverence. The fishing house built by Cotton still stands beside the water, a small stone structure which seems to suggest that angling once belonged to a slower and more contemplative order of life. Yet it would be a mistake to imagine that the river has remained untouched by time. Its fame has attracted visitors, its banks have been walked by millions, and its fishing rights remain as carefully guarded as those of any celebrated water. Nevertheless, in the quieter reaches, where the current slides beneath limestone crags and the noise of the paths recedes, it is possible to sense why this river acquired such power over the minds of fishermen.

The Manifold possesses another kind of mystery. It begins in the high gritstone country near Flash Head and moves southwards into limestone, where in dry weather sections of the river may disappear beneath the ground between Wetton Mill and Ilam. The empty channel, when the water has gone below, gives the unsettling impression of a river whose visible life is only temporary, its true course continuing in darkness through fissures and underground passages. Pools remain in places, holding trout and grayling, while elsewhere the stony bed lies exposed beneath the trees. Few rivers demonstrate so clearly that the landscape visible at the surface is only a thin covering over another, more complicated terrain.

The Churnet, meanwhile, carries a darker history. It descends through steep woodland and former industrial country, passing mill sites, old settlements and stretches where the canal runs so close that the two waters seem at times to exchange their reflections. The river was once badly polluted by sewage and by the dyeing industries of Leek, and there must have been years when its pools carried more of the town’s refuse than the life of the moorland. Improvements in treatment and water quality allowed the river slowly to recover. Trout and grayling returned to its faster reaches, while chub and other coarse fish inhabit the slower water. To fish the Churnet now is to fish a river which has survived the uses made of it.

Perhaps this knowledge partly explains the particular atmosphere of the river. Beneath the trees, among the stonework and rusting remains, the Churnet does not offer the pale perfection of the limestone streams. Its pools are often shadowed, its banks awkward and its currents difficult to read. Casting may consist of a roll cast beneath branches, a sideways flick between tree trunks or a short upstream presentation made while kneeling among nettles. A neat loop carried twenty yards through the air may be less useful than an untidy cast of ten feet which places a small nymph beneath an alder root. The river requires a kind of physical negotiation, an acceptance that elegance must sometimes give way to invention.

On all these waters, long casting is less important than observation. The angler who arrives and begins casting immediately may spend the first hour fishing over water whose clues have not yet been read. It is better to wait and watch the surface, to see whether olives are lifting from the current, whether sedges are moving along the margins or whether a trout is feeding steadily beneath an overhanging branch. A single rise repeated at intervals is more valuable than a dozen random disturbances across the pool. Where no fish are showing, a lightly weighted pheasant-tail or hare’s-ear nymph can be allowed to drift through a riffle or beside deeper water. In the evening, a small sedge may bring fish to the surface when the river had appeared lifeless only half an hour before.

The equipment required is modest. An eight-and-a-half or nine-foot rod carrying a three or four-weight floating line will cover much of the Wye, Dove, Manifold and upper Churnet, while a slightly stronger outfit can be useful on the Derwent or when heavier nymphs are needed. A local fly box need not be extensive. A few olives, small emergers, mayflies, black gnats and sedges for the surface, together with pheasant-tails, hare’s-ears, spiders and small bead-head nymphs below, will account for much of the fishing. The accumulation of hundreds of patterns, carefully arranged and seldom used, can become another means of postponing the more difficult work of approaching quietly and casting accurately.

There are, of course, regulations. An Environment Agency rod licence is required, but this is not in itself permission to fish. The controlling club, estate or landowner must also grant access, and local seasons and methods vary. Such details may seem prosaic beside the remembered image of a mayfly lifting from the Wye or a grayling turning in the Churnet, yet they are inseparable from the modern river. The waters are crossed not only by geological boundaries but by legal ones, by old ownerships, fishing rights, club agreements and arrangements that rarely appear on the ordinary map.

What joins the rivers is not uniformity but difference. The Wye demands delicacy, the Derwent adaptability, the Dove an awareness of its long cultural shadow, the Manifold an understanding of the strange geology through which it passes, and the Churnet a readiness to improvise among trees, ruins and difficult banks. Between them lies a complete education in moving water. To fish these rivers is to begin noticing how the country is assembled, how gritstone darkens a stream, how limestone clears it, how industry leaves its marks and how a river, even after centuries of interference, continues to move through the landscape according to laws older than any boundary drawn along its banks.