Writer, fly-fisher, river restorationist
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 […]
Throughout the Covid-19 lockdown and subsequent restrictions here in the UK, lots of brands have made a special effort to stay connected with their customers through digital channels – and fishing shops have been no exception to this trend. Early in the lockdown, Farlows’ Jonny Muir took the opportunity to start a series of in-depth […]
This month I’ve been absolutely thrilled to see my long-awaited article about the Wandle appearing in the January 2018 issue of Trout & Salmon, which started dropping on doormats and news-stands last week. It’s not a valedictory – the big move from south London to Somerset has happened for family reasons, and I’m still intending […]
Here in south London, trout season opens later than elsewhere, and it’s just another quirk of fishing in the 21st century that social media isn’t letting me forget it. Starting in early March, my Instagram and Twitter feeds have steadily been filling up with photos from big trout hunters in Scotland, Eden, Derbyshire, Wales and the […]
A couple of weekends back – before, during and after the Wandle Trust‘s usual monthly community river cleanup – film maker Jeremiah Quinn came down to the Wandle with his camera to capture some new angles on this little urban chalkstream’s story, and the qualities that have kept lots of us fishing and pulling out […]
Regular readers of this blog will know how much I enjoy contributing occasional articles to Eat, Sleep, Fish, the monthly not-for-profit ezine published by my good pal Pete Tyjas from his base at the Devon School of Flyfishing. For most of the 2015 season I’ve been fishing a Vision Kalu reel, as part of a range […]
The latest episodes of my Urbantrout Diaries were published on Flyfishing.co.uk just before Christmas – this time an end-of-year mini-series in which I’ve reviewed all the great urban river restoration projects that took place across the UK in 2014: In the UK’s river-mending community, this summer feels like the one when it’s all finally kicked into […]
It’s not every day you get interviewed on your home water for an international fishing ezine. So when Germany’s SCALE Magazine offered to send writer-translator Tankred Rinder (also editor of Forelle und Aesche) and photographer Veit Dresmann to south London as part of their round-the-UK road trip in September… … I jumped at the chance […]
Where has this summer gone? Between publication of my Balsam Bashing book, a few freelance copywriting gigs up in London, helping to recruit new staff for the Wandle and South East Rivers Trust and watching over the Wandle’s biggest river restoration projects yet, experimenting with a radical new approach to ultralight fly-fishing, and exploring new […]
As I’ve recently noted over on my Urbantrout blog, this is the time of year which can show even the best angler exactly what he’s been failing to catch all season… and early winter on the Wandle is no exception to this universal law. It’s a curious fact that since we saw that first pair […]
