Theo
Fly Fishing & Fly Tying, Fly-fishing, Trout in Dirty Places, Urban rivers, Writing
At last summer’s Game Fair, Fly Fishing & Fly Tying editor Mark Bowler asked me if I’d like to put together a feature nominating my favourite urban rivers, to coincide with the publication of Trout in Dirty Places.
So here’s my top 10*… available by subscription or from all good news stands, in the current issue of FF&FT. (And just to whet your appetite, here’s an all-action extract from that feature, over on my urban river restoration blog at urbantrout.net)
* Ballinderry, Don, Irwell, Kelvin, Lowman, Lugg and Kenwater, Taff, Wandle and Wensum
May 05 2012
(Photo: Roy Eaton) Amid the storm of positive publicity surrounding the launch of Trout in Dirty Places, a moment of sadness: news of the passing of Sidney Vines. As a confidant of both Frank Sawyer and Oliver Kite, Sidney was a link to a genuinely vanished world, which he recorded authoritatively in Keeper of the [...]
Tags: Chalkstreams, Wandle, Writing
Apr 25 2012
One week on from the official launch of Trout in Dirty Places at Grangers in South Kensington, and the slightly scary sense that I haven’t so much dropped a pebble into the margins of a quiet pool as heaved a bloody great boulder into a cast-iron bathtub… … is slowly starting to subside. Still, it’s [...]
Tags: Media coverage, Trout in Dirty Places, Writing
Apr 10 2012
Accompanied by doom-laden headlines about hosepipe bans, double-dip recession, petrol shortages, and killer shrimp in the Norfolk Broads, next Tuesday’s official publication date for Trout in Dirty Places is creeping ever closer. And like that old (but very apt) analogy of a dropped pebble’s ripples widening over a pool, the story still seems to be [...]
Tags: Media coverage, Trout in Dirty Places, Urban rivers
Mar 29 2012
Thanks to my highly-efficient publishers and a very fast slow boat from China, pre-publication copies of Trout in Dirty Places are now available to buy online from Merlin Unwin Books. (Complete with more than 200 colour photos and a front cover shot from the talented Dominic Garnett). Go get ‘em… or contact me direct if [...]
Tags: River restoration, Trout in Dirty Places, Urban rivers, Writing
Mar 08 2012
Raw sewage and the Thames Tunnel? Crunchable data on the social and community benefits of angling, from the banks of the Wandle to the wild hills of Assynt? You’re right, it could only be my latest guest blog for the Financial Times’ How To Spend It lifestyle ezine… click on over to read and enjoy!
Tags: Environmental policy, Writing
Feb 22 2012
My publisher Merlin Unwin promised me a few months ago that there’s nothing quite like the moment when the first copy of your first book finally hits your desk. And guess what? He was right. After years of research and exploration, and almost unbelievable generosity and help from more than 200 people (count ‘em on the [...]
Tags: Grayling, Trout, Trout in Dirty Places, Urban rivers, Writing
Feb 03 2012
Even when you’re supposed to be doing something else entirely, most fly-fishers know from experience, fish can just come out of nowhere. Crammed onto a chilly chairlift in the Austrian Alps last week with my ski-writer sister-in-law and a couple of random Russians, I ducked my chin into my collar against the wind, glanced [...]
Tags: Alps, Austria, Fly-fishing, Huchen, Trout
Jan 19 2012
After several successful outings on his own home waters earlier in 2011, during which I’m almost certain I mentioned a little river in South London once or twice… … it was pretty much inevitable that my West Country fishing partner in crime Dominic Garnett would eventually take the bait and visit the Wandle for the first [...]
Tags: Coarse fish on the fly, Perch, River restoration, Roach, Wandle, Writing
Jan 05 2012
Especially since that revelatory week in Vail when I found it was perfectly possible to ski in the morning, slip away to Gore Creek or the Eagle River for the lunchtime midge hatch, and still get back onto the slopes before the lifts closed, I’ve been deeply convinced by the leftfield concept of winter fly-fishing. [...]
Tags: Chub, Coarse fish on the fly, Fly-fishing, Wandle, Writing
Jan 02 2012
