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Life on hold ?

  “I’m guessing you are standing in a river right now” “Naa……at the tyre shop.  You?” “At my desk” “Week-end?” “DIY and a birthday party”             #   “Friday  late morning…how about it?” “I’m dead keen, let me see how much I can get done on Thursday” “I’m in the same boat….lets chat Thursday”             # “You blooded that new net yet” “No…..soon, I promise….soon!”             # The other day my friend Dr Harry  took an expensive flight, and hired a car and drove 5 hours, following some pretty dodgy directions to a place he had never

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7 May 2019

Dances with snakes

My sister reminded me the other day of what may have been my first encounter with a Puff Adder. The damned thing was lying atop an old hessian sack, trying to make itself look like a hessian sack, so that it could take out a little blonde farm boy.  Since then I have stumbled on, jumped over, driven over and recoiled from these things more times than I care to remember.  There was the time a bunch of us came over the saddle at Gateshead on our way back down from fishing and found a cluster of babies. A “gaggle

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22 April 2019

Getting happily beaten

A friend made a valid point the other day. It seems obvious now, but consider this: When you fish a stillwater, there is a very good chance that for at least a portion of the day, you will stand there, or sit there in your float tube, and think about work, or some domestic trouble. Now think back to the last day you spent on a river or stream.  You scrambled up banks and slid down into the water, and waded over uneven rocks, and slipped and slithered , and hiked, and focused and cast and watched the dry fly

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18 April 2019

Adult Caddis

Every now and then I develop a minor obsession with some or other pattern, or rig, or method. Lately it has been adult caddis patterns. Here is a sample from my vice:

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26 March 2019

The Art of Being

As I drove into work the other day I observed a bumper sticker that said “How do I drive?”, and I thought it was a bit late to be asking for such guidance. In front of me was a truck full of waste. I wondered if it was headed for recycling, and then I spotted a punnet of rotten fruit pressed against the bars of the load-bed. It had a supermarket sticker saying “50% off”.  It looked to be 75% full. Then an armoured vehicle labeled “Asset protection” violated just about every traffic rule I know, pulling across the traffic,

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5 March 2019

Lessons from the Landscape: Kamberg and a return to wildness

As a kid we visited and fished Kamberg a fair bit.Many of us did. I have fond memories: Jumping out of my skin when concentrating on a rising fish, in my own little world, when a ranger came up on the river bank alongside me  unnoticed and asked “Liseeence?”  Followed by the rattling off of every Trout fly that he knew. He knew a lot of them! Booking  Stillerus beat number one, and being excited at being offered beat two in whispered tones by the lady in the office, as no-one had booked it that day. I felt so privileged!

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15 February 2019
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