Writer, fly-fisher, river restorationist
Mayflies must surely constitute some of the most perfect symbolism of a flyfisher’s sport. Beautiful, fragile and famously ephemeral. Patient and enduring, living stoically and nearly-invisibly among dark stones and silt for a year or more… before emerging together into light and air for a celebration of life that seems all the more urgent and […]
As I’ve recently written in the Wild Trout Trust’s autumn newsletter, this is the kind of story that many of us know… A spring, or a line of them, bubbling and gushing out of a rocky hillside. Tumbling downhill, meandering through an upland meadow where trout and bullheads dart above the gravel, and human huts […]
In the past few months I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading about geology, as well as thinking about ways of helping urban rivers now and in the future. So I guess it was slightly inevitable that these themes might emerge in some of my own current writing too… For the latest issue of […]
Four years ago, give or take a few days, Sally and I took our final walk up the Wandle to hand over our keys to the estate agent who’d (mostly) been helping us to sell our house by the river in Carshalton. As much out of habit as conscious farewell, we stopped and peered over […]
Late May / early June means it’s time for the summer issue of the Flyfishers’ Journal. Truth to tell, this wasn’t the easiest issue to be responsible for editing, including as it does some very poignant Appreciations for friends and fellow Members of the Flyfishers’ Club: recent past president Paddy Laverty, author and historian Tony […]
As the start of trout season creeps round again, I’m feeling incredibly proud and privileged to feature in the latest issue of the beautiful Fly Culture print magazine – this time alongside work from Richard Baker, Adrian Grose-Hodge, Henry Giles, Ben Jailler, Matt Eastham, Dan Osmond and many others. Editor Pete Tyjas asked me to […]
Mere decades ago, these were waters that still ran black with coal dust and the toxic effluent of steel mills and other industries. Today, many Welsh urban rivers still suffer from litter, drainage misconnections and misbehaving sewage treatment works, but if you look carefully, you’ll find wild fish among the remaining shopping trolleys: trout (some of them very big indeed), grayling, barbel and even salmon… Some writing projects can be a slow […]
A few days ago I heard from my publishers Merlin Unwin Books that they’ve finally sold out of all the printed copies of my first book, Trout in Dirty Places. I’m still working out exactly how I feel about this: on one hand, of course, books are supposed to sell out, but on the other, […]
… means Trout in Dirty Places in Italian, and this week I’ve been surprised and thrilled to find out that I’ve featured in this article about urban street fishing as an antidote to lockdown and C-19, in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. For urban and rural dwellers alike, being able to #FishWhereYouLive, or anywhere […]
Christmas is coming… and so is the Flyfishers’ Journal. This ‘lockdown edition’ reflects the fact that it’s surely been the strangest fishing season that any of us can remember. For most Members of the Flyfishers’ Club, and that includes me, the simple prospects of getting onto the water, or just contemplating the associations of time spent […]
