Category: Musings & Anecdotes

It was a pretty grim day, only lightened by a stunning close up encounter with a Golden Eagle and the strange phenomenon of the shells.

Nothing exotic or freakish just a once in lifetime fish from a highland loch, the fish I’ve spent a lifetime and a lot of cash chasing.

I can’t remember the start.  I can’t remember learning. I have always fished and always will.

Loch Leven, an evening last August. Perhaps it would be a good time to admit that the biggest wild brownie I’ve caught is a mere four pounds. Given the time, effort, and let’s be honest, straightforward cash I’ve expended trying to catch a really big one, you could say that a Corrib four pounder is a pretty poor effort – you may have a point.

A delightful diversion, a secret pleasure.   Dapping appeals to the eternal child in every fisherman the one that will spend hours dangling a crab line off a Cornish harbour wall or even longer messing around lifting stones in a Hebridean rockpool.

This one is exotic and undoubtedly the biggest trout that I have lost, except I didn’t lose it, my incompetence meant I didn’t quite get that far.

My recruitment began at Bisham Abbey where I was meeting my best mate who was on a sports physio course. Weirdly I was introduced to Mike as he came off the netball court having...

I love a bit of harmless poaching. It has to be with a fly rod, not impact anybody else’s days fishing and preferably be from a bit of water owned by some absentee English aristocrat.