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a Genre of impermanence and enjoyment

As yellows enter the hillside light and long grass, as ambers of smoke and time tint the mountain view, and the season marches to old hats and penknives sharpened out of shape, so the music changes. I got called a “redneck” this week, and rightly so. It’s all “Seasick Steve and the Level Devils”, “Trampled by Turtles”, and Ramble Tamble. The banjo rules, and when it doesn’t, its all about the sound of that big grumbling diesel motor taking me over the pass at Bottleneck. On our trip there was a roadside stipple of cosmos, and the streams were low

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13 April 2017

Harden up Bevan!

The happy season that was, the one between the arrival of the cuckoos and the arrival of the mosquitoes, is now behind us. Now we have fierce heat, fierce storms, and humidity in between. We have mosquitoes too. I live in fear. The big ones must be on their way. They bite your head off and drink you like a coke. It has been a great spring, I think. By my reckoning, it has been a cool one, (Hell, we had snow in October!) , and it has been a relatively wet one too. Having said that, I got a

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7 December 2016

you get fishing……..and you get fishing.

My fishing outings vary greatly in terms of the feel and vibe. I guess you could put most days into one of two categories. Call it expedition days and exhibition days. Expedition days are all about preparation, and focus and a kind of determination that doesn’t go so far as to remove the fun, but it is definitely about catching fish. Exhibition days on the other hand, are about going through the motions. On Exhibition days we arrive at the water and start wondering which fly rods we brought along and which one we should use. On expedition days we

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23 November 2016

A bitch called Kevin

Just as music is all about the spaces between the notes, and how you can judge the authenticity of a friend who fails to say or do something,  so there is much to learn from when you don’t catch fish. Longest silence, and all that stuff. It’s therapeutic. It’s not about the fish. Bull. It sucks. I recently spent a day on the Mooi, when the wind blew so damned hard that when I got to Krantz pool, I swear the water was occasionally piling up in a great big bulge in the middle of the stream before flattening out

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9 November 2016

“On the Prod”

It is a term my fishing buddies and I have adopted over the years. It refers specifically to Brown Trout, and it is an attempt to describe their behaviour when they are prevalent, on the feed, and generally visible to the observant flyfisher. Browns, as we all know, are fickle things. They have a habit of disappearing, both in stillwater and in streams. Their apparent disappearance is a very common cause of comments about inadequate stocking, or the catastrophic effects of a drought, or deep suspicions and conspiracy theories about sinister fish-kills. I too have fallen for their tricks and

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26 October 2016