Archive for the tag 'Chub'

Fly Culture: Limestone Chemistry

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 […]

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Chub, Coarse fish on the fly, Fly Culture, Fly-fishing, Trout, Writing Mar 14 2020

Caring for our coarse fish

Just in case you missed all the social media chatter a few weeks ago, I thought it’d be worth mentioning again that my review of Mark Everard’s important new book River Habitats for Coarse Fish has now been published on the Fallon’s Angler website. As I said in my introduction… In these days when all […]

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Barbel, Bream, Chub, Dace, Environmental policy, Fallon's Angler, River restoration, Roach, Trout, Writing Nov 17 2016

Bashing balsam

Several evenings in the past two months, I’ve followed the track of one of our previous volunteer balsam-pulling days, sniping late stragglers that pop their heads above the parapet of rusting brambles and bindweed. Absent overshading and other competition from its fellows, it’s amazing how the most inconspicuous seedling will snatch its chance to shoot […]

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Chub, Coarse fish on the fly, Dace, Fly-fishing, Flyfishing.co.uk, Invasive non-native species, London, River restoration, Urban rivers, Urbantrout, Wandle, Writing Oct 07 2013

Eat, Sleep, Fish: Ultralight fly-fishing

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 […]

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Chub, Coarse fish on the fly, Eat, Sleep, Fish, Fly-fishing, Tackle, Trout, Ultralight fly-fishing, Writing May 04 2013

Hogsmill holiday

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 […]

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Chalkstreams, Coarse fish on the fly, Dace, Fly-fishing, River restoration, Urban rivers, Wandle Feb 27 2013

Chublining

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 […]

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Chub, Coarse fish on the fly, London, Urban rivers Oct 19 2012

Fly-fishing in the freezer

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. […]

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Chub, Coarse fish on the fly, Fly-fishing, How To Spend It, Wandle, Writing Jan 02 2012