fishing history Archives

The timelessness of a river

“..the river moves on and on ; the heart follows, willingly, always glad to be Hunter, discoverer.” Harry Middleton We describe rivers as living beings. The concept resonates and it allows for the attachment of a personality to a thread of water in Trout country. That seems appropriate. Yet rivers, if they are to be living things, are an anomaly, because they never die. Sure, in the lowlands, some factory may dump waste and the river “dies”. But even there, look at the Thames and its tributaries now compared to how they were in the industrial revolution! When man has

5 March 2015

On the water with older folk

I have a few good fishing pals who are older than I am. I really enjoy fishing with them. I have never been able to put my finger on why that is. In mulling over why that might be, these two conversations come to mind: A friend of mine recently returned from a family holiday. It was one of those extended family things where each family within the greater gathering takes a bungalow, and then you get together for meals to argue and create family politics. You know the set up. Anyway, he and his wife were placed with some

28 January 2015

The Hardy anglers’ guide

When I was a child, my bedroom lead off a small study in our rather strangely designed house. That study was like a staging post between two long passages. One passage lead to the rest of the bedrooms, and the other to the lounge , dining room and kitchen. In that study was a great big desk, at which my mother sat, with her “Facit” adding machine and did the farm accounts. She wound the handle vigorously, ran the lever across with gusto, and punched in numbers until the machine obliged with a delightful little ping, and she could write

28 November 2014

Blogging on paper

This blog started in 1981. I know, ………………………..there were no blogs in 1981, and our computers still ran on paraffin. But the concept started back then, even though I didn’t know it at the time. In fact I only came to that realisation the other day, when my son was paging through my personal logbooks, and he remarked that what I had there was a blog on paper. That would be because my fishing log is so much more than that. From about 1983 I started recording every day’s fishing in the same format. The same format that you will

18 January 2013