Looking back on the decad: The first ten days of February.
Taking a look at how this ten-day period of fishing season panned out over the last 40 years (1983 to 2023)
14 February 2023
My tapestry, your tapestry
Each of us builds a set of reference points in our flyfishing journey. We all have a history of where we went and what we caught, and what happened along the way, and with whom. It is a tapestry, in which our history matches that of a fellow flyfisher for only as long as it takes for our threads to cross. We spend a day together here, and then, and for an instant we saw the same frames in that movie in our minds that is the flyfishing aesthetic. For the rest of it, it is a personal and unique
2 July 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 Longest Silence
In Thomas McGuane’s wonderful book of the same name he writes “For the ardent fisherman, progress is toward the kinds of fishing that are never productive in the sense of the blood riots of the hunting-and-fishing periodicals.” That is a deep thought, and one that makes me feel a little better. Clearly I am progressing, because I am not catching a whole pile of fish! Of course I would like to catch some better sized fish, or a few more of them, but I will bow graciously to this “progress” that has been bestowed on me. The truth be told,
2 October 2014
Bakkies, dust and lost reels
Every now and then, the eight to five world of suburbia, commitments and credit cards, releases me for more than just a day trip. In other words, every once in a while, I somehow find a gap, and head out on one of those fly fishing trips that involves a night or two in a fishing cottage. Not a few stolen hours, in which you are watching the time. I am talking about two or more days at a trot on the water. It is heaven! The anticipation of those trips is childlike in my case. It is childlike in
29 June 2014