1 January 2020
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
“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
When I was a youngster, my Dad took me out to a wattle grove that grew out along a ridge in front of the old house, and taught me to shoot with a .22 rifle. He coached me slowly, and with great patience, teaching me about stance, and nestling of the rifle butt into my shoulder. He cautioned me about the position of my cheek, too close to the rifle. Then he folded his hankie, and put it up on a tree nearby as a target. I hit it on the first shot. Praising me, he proceeded to fold the
“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
Isn’t it funny how, when you are searching for one thing, you find another. We went in search of backpacks stolen from foreign hikers in the mountains and found other things. I had gone looking for trout, and found cold driving rain at Highmoor. From there we infiltrated the next valley, where vagabonds and miscreants, might descend from the hills and make their getaway with their loot, and we found: A trout stream. And Gaffney. OK, so we knew the Trout stream was there, but I hadn’t been there in a little while, and I wanted to show it to
On the back cover of Sheridan D Anderson’s wonderful manifesto is an advert for what Frank Amato publications called the C.I.A. That is, the Central Intelligence for Anglers. Now that concept will surely appeal to my mate Graeme. Ever scanning Google Earth, he is. Looking for new Trout waters. He checks out the background in big fish pictures and uses sublime clues to work out where it was. I help him. Not much slips him by. One that did slip him by was the location of a particular water that I may have hinted existed. It didn’t. It still doesn’t.
I had never hooked a trout before this week-end. That is to say, I had never held a fly between my two fingers, and used it to hook a trout. There is a first time for everything. There is also a heavily wooded valley cut by a tributary of a favourite stream, which I had never entered. Here a reclusive and interesting man resides. I had never met this hermetic bloke before. What I have done before, is to go on a day’s fishing and not take my fly rod out of its tube. That happened once when PD and
“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.
“Hey laanie” “Heey Larnie” I ignored him. “Hey Larnie” ..he tried again. And then, proceeding to the assumption that I was in fact listening he added “How menny feesh in da sea?” He had spotted the fly casting decal on the side of my vehicle, and he abandoned his task of selling fruit at the roadside to connect with me as a fellow fisherman. I shouldn’t have been so rude, but he wasn’t reading it right. Neither was PD when he replied “60 fish…..hell I can’t remember when last I caught even 10 fish!”. “Easy tiger” I replied. “It was
