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 […]
Tags: River restoration, Urban rivers, Wandle, Wild Trout Trust
Jul 25 2020
Needless to say, the Covid-19 pandemic has already caused vast disruption to all of our lives this spring and summer – and this includes the life of the Flyfishers’ Club in London, where I’m Editor of the twice-yearly Flyfishers’ Journal. I know I’m not the only Member of the Club who’s trying to take a […]
Tags: Editing, Flyfishers' Journal
Jun 24 2020
During these strange days of lockdown (in the course of which I’ve been temporarily furloughed from my Wild Trout Trust urban river role), we’ve all started adapting to new ways of working. Formal meetings and family gatherings alike have moved onto digital platforms, where it’s likely that many of them will stay for the foreseeable […]
Tags: Invasive non-native species, River restoration, Salmo Trutta, Trout, Urban rivers, Wild Trout Trust, Writing
Apr 30 2020
Out now, in the Spring 2020 issue of Pete Tyjas’s excellent Fly Culture magazine, is an article I’ve written called Limestone Chemistry. As the title suggests, it’s a geological, post-industrial and piscatorial study of my years-long love for a little limestone stream, not too far from where I’m living now. A previous, shorter version of […]
Tags: Chub, Coarse fish on the fly, Fly Culture, Fly-fishing, Trout, Writing
Mar 14 2020
Thanks especially to the Norwegian contingent of the Flyfishers’ Club, the latest issue of the Flyfishers’ Journal has a strong Viking vibe. And that’s as it should be, to celebrate the International Year of the Salmon 2019, by drawing attention to the mortal perils that threaten the ‘king of fish’ in local, regional and global […]
Tags: Editing, Flyfishers' Journal
Jan 15 2020
“Hi Theo, any way we can coax you across the Pond to speak to an audience of Maryland Trout Unlimited and our river project partners around Baltimore?” said the email from Tom Gamper in August. “We’ve read Trout in Dirty Places, and appreciated how it laid out the team effort to turn urban streams back […]
Tags: River restoration, Trout, Trout Unlimited, Urban rivers
Dec 04 2019
The end of last month saw the culmination of much of my Trout in the Town work so far: holding the Wild Trout Trust’s latest Urban Conclave, and launching our new Urban River Toolkit. When Merlin Unwin published Trout in Dirty Places, my guide to urban river fishing and restoration, in 2012, it was everything […]
Tags: Rewilding, River restoration, Trout, Urban River Toolkit, Wild Trout Trust, Writing
Oct 06 2019
The kind of fish-imitating flies known as streamers have fascinated me for what feels like forever – maybe ever since I was sitting in my high chair at my parents’ kitchen table looking at the pictures in 1970s LL Bean mail order catalogues, which I now suspect were full of classic Maine-style streamer patterns like […]
Tags: Fly-fishing, Streamers, Tackle
Aug 09 2019
Members of the Flyfishers’ Club (and other readers of the Flyfishers’ Journal) will know that we often like to give each issue a certain thematic look and feel. This time, the 70th birthday of the Club’s Patron, HRH The Prince of Wales, has given us all the excuse we’ve needed to go with a decidedly […]
Tags: Editing, Flyfishers' Journal
Jul 28 2019
When he’s presenting the judges’ verdicts at the Wild Trout Trust Conservation Awards every year, my colleague Paul Gaskell likes to emphasise the odds that are stacked against even the simplest river restoration projects – making it nearly impossible to believe that the spectacular and complicated ones have actually made it through this vicious (and […]
Tags: River restoration, Urban rivers, Wild Trout Trust
Jun 12 2019