11 December 2019
On my recent visit to the UK, I met up with Pete Tyjas. I used to write for Pete’s online magazine “Eat Sleep Fish”, and since he has moved to a print offering (Fly Culture Magazine) I have written for that too. Pete also wrote a “blurb” for the back of my book back in 2015. Not having met in person before, I was looking forward to meeting him. We met at the Fox and Hounds hotel in Devon where Pete holes up. He seems to be part of the crew there. He fetched me coffee from the kitchen and
Connections. On the four eight line, like any others, you needed to ask the exchange for a connection. But within the party line there was a whole lot of connection. Like hearing Mrs Ras talk in Afrikaans to her mother, who lived on the other side of the railway line at the Dargle station, or Mr Smith. Once someone said to the bloke on the other end that he would tell him all the details when he next saw him, because Mr Smith was listening-in on the party line, to which Mr Smith retorted loud and clear over the phone
“There are not many men who can fish all morning without seeing or feeling a fish and not suffer some deterioration in care or keenness that is likely to retard their reaction when at last the moment comes.” Arthur Ransome, Rod and Line, 1929 Who have you have lost a fish, because you weren’t expecting it? A fish chased you fly at the end of the cast as you lifted off, and you were not focused enough to halt your rhythm and leave the fly in the water. A fish took your dry, but you had allowed such a bow
Shrill summer frogs. Black waves. Shining jetty planks. The mesmerizing arc of a fly line replaced by flickering flames, gleaming gunwales and a quieted mind.
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
“So what I am suggesting here is a complete approach to our waters where the competitive, lip-ripping edge is left back in the fast lane of societal superficialities and the joyful spirit of camaraderie, sportsmanship, and involvement with nature are the main goals”. Jerry Kustich I get a sense that my fly-fishing is a more messy affair than it is for the guys I bump into around these parts. Take Squidlips from Smoketown for example: He drives his blue Nissan up to the Bushmans on an appointed Saturday, and a day later there are a dozen glossy pictures on social
“Often enough, the best position for a trout to see and catch these active nymphs is near the river bed” …….. ”It is useless to try to tempt such a fish with an artificial nymph fished just below the surface, or to cast a dry fly over him” The words of Frank Sawyer, from the book Frank Sawyer, Man of the Riverside, compiled by Sidney Vines. Frank Sawyer was famous for, amongst other things, The Pheasant Tail Nymph, which you can watch the man himself tying in this link. Sawyer’s book “Keeper of the Stream was first published in 1952.
I am keyed into these little house builders at the moment. I guess I am just seeing a lot of them around in our stillwaters. Almost without exception, they have built their houses of either weed fragments, or small pieces of grass stem. In his book “Presentation”, Gary Borger says that he “has had superb lake fishing” with caddis larva patterns, but amongst the American literature in my library there doesn’t seem to be more than a passing references to these caddis dwelling in pieces of weed fibre and grass. In “The nymph fly tyers manual” by Randall Kaufman, one