Theo
Chub, Coarse fish on the fly, Fly-fishing, Tackle, Trout, Ultralight fly-fishing, Writing
Anyone who’s fished with me will know that I like to take a light line approach whenever possible – fishing with ultralight rigs matched with 3-weight lines or lighter – for their uncanny ability to deliver delicate presentations, cushion vicious strikes on fine tippets, and still land hefty fish of all species with speed and safety.
I’ve had a few conversations about this approach with fellow practitioner and West Country guide Pete Tyjas, so he ended up asking me to write a feature about ultralight fly-fishing for his not-for-profit monthly ezine Eat, Sleep, Fish.
Other commitments got in the way for a while, but finally here it is, fronting up issue 17 of Eat, Sleep, Fish.
Please click over to read and enjoy!
May 04 2013
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 [...]
Tags: Fly-fishing, Grayling, London, Media coverage, River restoration, Trout, Trout in Dirty Places, Urban rivers, Wandle
Apr 30 2013
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 [...]
Tags: Chalkstreams, Environmental policy, Freelance copywriting, London, Trout in Dirty Places, Writing
Mar 25 2013
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 [...]
Tags: Chalkstreams, Chub, Coarse fish on the fly, Dace, Fly-fishing, River restoration, Urban rivers, Wandle
Feb 27 2013
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 [...]
Tags: Environmental policy, Fly-fishing, How To Spend It, Writing
Jan 07 2013
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, [...]
Tags: Chalkstreams, Environmental policy, Fly-fishing, Writing
Dec 20 2012
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 [...]
Tags: Fly-fishing, Tackle, Trout
Nov 28 2012
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 [...]
Tags: Fly-fishing, Grayling, Trout, Urban rivers
Oct 31 2012
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 [...]
Tags: Chub, Coarse fish on the fly, London, Urban rivers
Oct 19 2012
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 [...]
Tags: Fly Fishers' Republic, Invasive non-native species, River restoration, Writing
Sep 27 2012
