Writer, fly-fisher, river restorationist
The past few weeks have been busy with new project development (of which, I hope, more soon!) but I’ve also had the thrill of meeting two great and influential writers on the banks of the Wandle. First up was Tankred Rinder, Austrian author and editor of the rapidly-growing Forelle und Aesche e-zine. Tankred fished the Wandle […]
Between bursts of freelance copywriting and other life interruptions like running the launch of the new South East Rivers Trust, the last couple of months have had a kinda bookish flavour in and around south London… First there was the very enjoyable task of reading and reviewing a proof copy of my good pal Charles […]
Somewhere in the depths of this apparently endless winter (cue another wild nor’easter kicking snow in the face of casting practice and trying to tune a recalcitrant switch rod to throw big intruders, never mind actual fishing) … … Adrian and I grabbed a window in the weather and headed out for a day on […]
Scotland in September was soundtracked with falling water… Saturated by months of rain, every knee-high tussock on the Isle of Mull gurgled with a thousand tiny rivulets, and every rocky lochside path through the rhododendron thickets chattered inches-deep like a living stream. Mares’ tails billowed white from every crag, pouring over precipitous shelves of volcanic […]
Eagerly anticipated is a term that probably gets overworked in the publishing business… but it really is true of the Salisbury & District Angling Club’s new addition to the chalkstreams’ literary canon. As befits an anthology written by members of the most democratic club on the chalkstreams (well, almost) and edited by the eminent Graham Chalmers, […]
Even if you only believe some of the stuff you read in the fly-fishing niche-within-a-niche of the internet, you’ll probably have picked up hints that Airflo fly-lines have suffered from a pretty mixed reputation. Sinkers like the Di7 are still legendary for their efficiency in plumbing the depths of the great Midlands reservoirs, but the […]
When the authoritative history of whole-river restoration comes to be written, Derbyshire’s Haddon estate will probably deserve a chapter of its own. The Peak District’s limestone River Wye has been legendary for dry fly only rules since 1865, but modern river management took one of its greatest leaps of faith in 2004, when Haddon’s head […]
Thanks to talented and convention-busting writers like my occasional fishing buddy Dominic Garnett, the idea of deliberately fishing for coarse fish with a fly rod is slowly seeping out into the public consciousness. Still, it’s very far from mainstream, so there remains something weirdly subversive about jumping on a train across South London to sight-fish […]
When it comes to identifying and dealing with aquatic invasive non-native species, can there be anyone better equipped than a bunch of motivated, knowledgeable anglers? Well, sometimes, yes. But everyone has to start somewhere, and it never hurts to know more about the actual and potential threats to your favourite river, newly-restored or not… It’s […]
I’m delighted to announce that my latest Trout in Dirty Places flavoured feature has just appeared in this week’s issue of Shooting Times. The article focuses on urban fly-fishing opportunities for trout and grayling in Britain’s market towns including Fakenham, Leominster and Tiverton, and I’ve also (briefly!) addressed the vital role that’s played by good […]
