To tame a river

“It is old, old fishing landscape, scarred with its human contacts, familiar and friendly and kind to the frailties of anglers.”  Howard T Walden. Upstream and down. 1938. The colonial idiosyncrasies of our heritage have us leaning to a tamed and manicured world. A conquered wilderness, which we celebrate as “wild” but enjoy for its comforts of stonemasonry, or footpaths and trimmed briar.  I for one hanker after the quaint, the named, and the iconic. Do you revel in relating the story of your catch, replete with the name of the pool?  Do you inwardly sigh with nostalgic affection at

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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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