Writer, fly-fisher, river restorationist
When you’ve already been sniffing out the secrets (hmm…) of urban rivers for more years than you might care to count, it’s easy to forget that not everyone else has been on this journey of discovery for quite that long. So here’s a little guest blog post I wrote recently for my good pal Dominic […]
We all know early season fishing can be a gamble. And we all know gambling’s not for everyone. That early April morning, you could bet your shirt on what most people were thinking about their chances of decent fishing that day. Strong winds and heavy rain across the whole chalk country? No dice. They’d all be […]
Quite apart from the constant hum of creativity that means we’re now getting to play with some of the finest, most sophisticated tackle ever deployed in search of elusive fish, I think it’s fair to say that two developments – no, movements – within the last 20 years have revolutionised the lives of most of […]
I’ve got a thing for a really good fabric print. It certainly started when I was working at the big old Liberty department store in the mid-1990s, first on the shop floor, merchandising a 15-yard wall of silk ties, and later in the buying offices, where I’d spend hours rifling through fabric swatches, picking out […]
If you had to rely on your fly-fishing skills for survival (except in the sense of avoiding relegation from the next round of a game show…) would you live to tell the tale? This was the self-set challenge faced by Fennel Hudson in the lead article of this winter’s issue of the Flyfishers’ Journal, which was […]
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 last two years have been one hell of a fly-fishing experiment. A major highlight of life as a freelance copywriter is getting to hear about new products and services – and, better still, writing about them – long before they reach the general market. In the last few months, for instance, I’ve written copy […]
It’s genuinely been years and years since I fished in Slovenia. Leafing back through my fishing diary, I can vividly remember exploring the Soca for the first time in 2003, and the Baca and Idrijca in 2004. Scrambling over white limestone boulders under fantastical mountain peaks, stalking evanescent trout and grayling in water as clear […]
A few weeks ago I got back from a flying visit to the Pas de Calais with my fishing pals Jeremy Lucas, Keith Wallington and Jacques van Niekerk, and published a short account of part of our visit on my Urbantrout blog… Steep chalkstream headwaters with constant year-round flow can only mean one thing… historic […]
Thanks to all my fellow Members of the Flyfishers’ Club who contributed articles to the Summer 2015 issue of the Flyfishers’ Journal, our latest issue is now apparently cruising at 35,000 feet to many corners of the earth as essential in-flight holiday reading… a global affair in all senses of the word. There’s a brace […]
