Theo
Editing, Salmo Trutta, Wild Trout Trust, Writing
Salmo Trutta is the Wild Trout Trust’s prestigious annual journal, now in its 27th issue, and after several years of helping the brilliant Denise Ashton with commissioning, proof reading and other matters, 2024 has been my first year fully ensconced in the editor’s chair.
Of course, like most publications of this kind, Salmo Trutta is much more of a team production than an individual effort, and I’ve really enjoyed working with the whole roster of brilliant writers and deeply knowledgeable scientists listed over on the WTT website. Not to mention, too, our ‘ace designer’ Rebecca Hawtrey!
(Whisper it softly, but this year’s overall theme, restoring our rivers’ physical habitat, also gave me a chance to evoke a beautifully dynamic stretch of the Usk which I’ve loved since the very first time I fished it – illicitly, as it turned out, but that’s all part of the story).
WTT members should now have received their copies of Salmo Trutta 2024, and membership costs just £44 (or £23 for retired folks) and comes with a complimentary copy as soon as we can get it into the post to you. Sign up here if you haven’t already!
May 15 2024
Apart from his reputation as an outspoken environmentalist and dedicated salmon fisher, King Charles III has also been Patron of the Flyfishers’ Club for many years… … and the latest edition of the Flyfishers’ Journal records the gifts presented by the Club to commemorate his coronation in May 2023. These included boxes of specially-tied salmon […]
Tags: Editing, Flyfishers' Journal, Writing
Jan 02 2024
I knew all those years of working in charity marketing agencies would come in handy some day… This autumn – apart from editing the latest issue of the Flyfishers’ Journal and hitting a really important new publisher’s deadline of my own (announcement coming soon!) – I’ve also been pulling together the Wild Trout Trust’s autumn […]
Tags: Trout, Urban rivers, Wild Trout Trust, Writing
Dec 20 2023
Earlier this year, the Flyfishers’ Club achieved an amazing coup by acquiring a cased set of six copies of Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler – representing all the versions of the book which were published in IW’s own lifetime. To celebrate this momentous addition to the Club’s Library, we somehow persuaded the talented fly-fishing photographer […]
Tags: Editing, Flyfishers' Journal, Writing
Sep 01 2023
One of the nearly-unavoidable hazards of traditional print production seems to be the way that important details can go out of date almost as soon as the book is published (and this situation has only deteriorated as we’ve started including more and more references to fundamentally ephemeral digital media!) In the case of my own […]
Tags: Invasive non-native species, Pocket Guide to Balsam Bashing, Writing
Aug 12 2023
As part of my busy and newly-expanded role with the Wild Trout Trust, where I’m now leading comms activity as well as continuing to develop urban river projects across the south of England, I’ve recently written a couple of articles for the Sportfish website… … describing how WTT’s river restoration projects are focused on improving […]
Tags: Chalkstreams, River restoration, Wild Trout Trust, Writing
Jul 28 2023
Mayflies in midwinter: the latest issue of the Flyfishers’ Journal has been landing in the midst of a week-long deep freeze for much of the UK… … but I hope it’ll bring something of the warming hope of a springtime hatch to this beautiful-but-Baltic season. Cyril Bennett is on the front cover, hunting bugs in […]
Tags: Editing, Flyfishers' Journal, Writing
Dec 18 2022
There’s a definite urban vibe to the latest issue of Fly Culture magazine (step forward, Matt Eastham, Dan Osmond, Nick Thomas and Peter Coleman-Smith!) and for once it hasn’t very much to do with me… … unless you count a little tale which I might have heard in my old south London local (or much […]
Tags: Fly Culture, Writing
Jun 21 2022
On the few occasions when I’ve tried saltwater flyfishing – also known to its real cognoscenti as SWFFing – around the coast of Britain, I’m happy to admit that I’ve not been very successful. Yet if the fish were fairly insignificant (mainly small pollack or coalfish lured up from forests of kelp with sinking lines […]
Tags: Editing, Flyfishers' Journal, Writing
Jun 05 2022
This month, it’s 10 years since Trout in Dirty Places launched on a (mostly) unsuspecting world. Merlin Unwin Books and Granger’s fly shop in South Kensington threw us one hell of a party, and for a few days, the weird idea of fishing for trout and grayling in urban rivers was making headlines across the […]
Tags: Trout in Dirty Places, Writing
Apr 30 2022