(Caution: contains spoilers) Fishing at dusk and dawn can be very rewarding. There’s something about being by the water and out in nature when most people are tucked up in bed. Being outside after the world has gone to sleep, or before it has woken up, allows us to experience some of the quiet of …
Garrett Fallon meets Bob Hornegold, chairman of the Osprey Specimen Group A thick mist clings to Epping Forest, oozing from the ground like smoke from a burrow, badger bonfires blocking out the world. It obscures all, revealing light only at the very last moment: dodging cars on sharp bends, clenched teeth and arse cheeks desperately …
This is the first of over twenty short stories about life in Ireland by Niall Fallon, who died suddenly in the 1990s, before anybody had seen them. They have remained hidden from public eye, but no more. PADDY MURPHY WAS A LOCK-KEEPER ON THE GRAND CANAL. He lived alone, in the small, compact cottage set …
Garrett Fallon finally publishes a story he wrote nearly 25 years ago, about the capture of an Irish tench. To me, there are few fish more beautiful than the tench. It possesses in its strong lines all the grace and form of Grecian sculpture, yet has the power of something perhaps better suited to war. …
A river in the south of France leaves a lasting impression on Garrett Fallon. After weeks of lockdown, my fishing season is drifting slowly into focus as a punt might emerge from the mist, gently nudged along by a benevolent breeze. With relief, I’ll soon be casting a line again, but regardless of this enthusiasm, …
Garrett Fallon remembers how he’d like to fish. I rested on the wooden platform, my legs dangling over the edge while my eyes wandered over the still water of the canal in front. They were tired and reluctant to focus, nor could my mind hustle to attention, as if it was off playing somewhere in …
Niall Fallon recalls the life and times of one of Ireland’s best-known anglers, who taught him much about the Tipperary Suir. We had fished hard, the party of four rods, for the best part of three days. For all of that, bar the balmy hours of the July nights, the sun had beamed benevolently but …
I’d like to say it was a typical Irish summer’s evening, but it was not. It was warm and nurturing, not too hot, with the rain being contrary and going somewhere else for a while. The cornfield opposite blushed with colour as it flirted with the last of the sun and rippled gently as it …
The sound of the line unfurling through the air cut through the distant thrum of the rapids, bird song penetrating the backdrop like needles, sunlight dappling through the boughs of hornbeam, birch, and willow, splinters of shine, bouncing and carrying on the riffles of current. Then a step or two, the push of water as …
“Tramp” said her eyes, sunk into an intolerant, pityless look that contorted her face. “Weirdo” said the face of another, while hastily averting his glance less I ask him for any spare change. “Fisherman” said the welcome smile of a third. She knew her onions, recognised the rod as a tool (not a weapon), recognised …
The green-eyed monster, a pack of lies and a big pike, by Garrett Fallon I was getting frustrated with all the talk of twenties. We’d been fishing the lake and its bays and inlets for three days, swapping between hunting lake trout and plugging for pike, but we hadn’t caught or hooked a single 20lb pike …
I’m not a sun worshipper, not with my delicate Irish skin. I crisp like burnt potatoes, dry out rapidly like a jellyfish stranded on a beach. I find myself wishing for any of the many types of rain we have back home, hitting my skin and exploding into little balls of steam. Still, once the …
Surface tension for sun worshippers: chasing carp from the top Read More »
“Spare any change mate? I need six quid for breakfast.” I give what I can, and the homeless man departs. That’s London prices for you. 7.30am, Sunday morning, Vauxhall station; a toxic junction of smell and sound that assaults the senses. Voices clash loudly, night owls mix with the morning larks. Drunkenness or drama? Violence …
None of us are strangers to unforeseen delays. As it is with trains, planes and so forth, so it is with publishing a magazine. We do our very best to avoid them, but there are many ways a spanner can be thrown, and we were hit by quite a few. But sometimes, those delays can …
The shop on Holy Street: Fallon’s Angler issue 9 Read More »
It’s cold. Damn cold. The lake is iced over across two thirds of its width, a mischievous crust selling an illusion of solid ground, and a boisterous wind blows towards the outflow, slowly pushing the thaw with it. Winter can be beautiful, especially with a frost or snow, but nature is naked today without a …
In memory of Niall Fallon, who passed away on 26th January 1996. Originally penned by Garrett Fallon in 1992. As a child I had little appetite for work, seeing it as something horrid that served you right for growing old. I also had a distinct lack of interest in grownups, as they talked incessantly of …
5am. It’s dark. Sort of. There’s a full moon that lights up the garden like a five-a-side pitch. I can see my cat racing along the grass to tackle a trespassing fur ball. I like these early starts, when it feels like the whole world is asleep, but of course it’s not. A couple of …
I have long entertained a penchant for old fishing tackle. Collecting it was a hobby of my late father’s, though as a determined wordsmith, he was mainly interested in rare fishing books. Nevertheless, his office was stuffed with all manner of angling ephemera, mostly gathered from house auctions that proliferated the Irish midlands in those …
Of a certain vintage: drop shotting with split cane Read More »
The howling wind—the song of a thousand banshees—tossed the ship up into the swell, urging the men to their death. The angry sea threatened to overwhelm the deck, the mast creaked and groaned and cracked like twigs under a heavy boot. The knight turned to face his God and prayed: “Please Lord, let me live, …
A Knight’s tale: the forgotten trout of Tintern de Voto Read More »
“Bring your coarse fishing gear!” read the text message. Three hours later Rick arrived, caught late on that devourer of Bank Holiday time, the A21, with wife, three children and sizeable dog in tow. They were visiting our little coastal bolt hole for the afternoon. I myself was visiting it for the weekend so that …
“Wexford. The oldest place in Ireland,” some would say. “Like Cornwall, only wetter,” say others. I snuck an old sturdy carp rod into a packed car heading for a family holiday in Ireland, and found myself fishing on Booley Bay beach near Duncannon on the aptly named Hook Peninsula. The tide was racing in, the …
“It has always been my private conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming.” John Steinbeck No matter how great we think we are, we are quickly brought back down to earth by those finned creatures that swim and attract our longing. I have caught a few …
March 15th and another chapter closed, the book back high on the shelves for now, out of reach unless I stand on the tackle box that is on holiday in the back of the shed, any maggots within slowly turning to flies. If they’re lucky they might see daylight, if I get around to cleaning …
Written by Niall Fallon My biggest brown trout, which as I write stands nobly mounted in a case on my study wall, as stately and plump as any Buck Mulligan, was taken in total darkness on a mid-September evening on a small limestone lake. A day of wild wind and rain had been succeeded by …
As an Irishman I’m comfortable with rain, in fact I miss it when it hasn’t fallen for a while. I love the way the ground opens up to drink it after a dry spell, like that first pint after work on a Friday. You can feel the earth’s thirst being sated and the plants being …
Fallon’s Angler issue 5 is currently winging its way from the printers near Brighton to our distribution house in Slough, from where it will make its way to you, wherever you are. If you currently subscribe it will automatically be posted to you. If your subscription is due for renewal, you will get a separate email this …
“Come on son. We’re gowan to ketch a perch,” sez he. I was too young to shave and still at an age when I thought girls were pointless and as annoying as acne. But I followed him like a puppy, yapping at his heels in joy. We approached the old stone bridge that crossed a …
I was introduced to Dominic Garnett in the middle of 2014, courtesy of my friend and fellow angling writer Theo Pike, when I was gathering contributors to appear in the first issue of Fallon’s Angler. I visited his website first, and devoured his material. There was something different about his work, something I hadn’t encountered very often …
We’re knee deep in the stream of production, with words and pictures gathering around us like salmon beneath a weir. We don’t like settling for second best so we’ll continue to tinker until we’re satisfied that we’ve published the best issue we can. At this moment, we’re hoping to send the magazine to press before Christmas, but with the …
Update on Issue 5: including subscription renewal Read More »
My older brother spent 25 years in sales, driving all over Ireland—staying in hotels and B&Bs, attending expos and events, meeting customers—his arse sunk in the back-straining seat of his car or van, gravity doing all it could to drag his spine into the ground. He’s out of that now, fitter and at least an …
I am in the field by the woods again. It is late October and the ground is sodden, and beneath the big oak trees the myriad fallen acorns crunch under my feet like crisps. “Howya Aran.” “Howya Garrett. How’s it going?” I patted his dog Sparky, a cheerful lurcher, rescued from Battersea, sleek and friendly, tail …
This summer of 2015 found us in a wet Co Kerry, joining old friends and extended family for the first time in a very long time just outside the village of Glenbeigh on the Iveagh Peninsula, part of the world-renowned Ring of Kerry. I spent many happy summers in Kerry as a child with a …
Why is it that we spend so much of our lives running, when really all we’d like to do is walk? We have a propensity to complicate our days, rush through them, fill them with activity, purpose, goals and achievements. But does it actually get us anywhere? Do we actually know where it is …
“May the luck of the Irish be with you!” is a well-known Irish blessing. I’m not sure of its origins, seeing as I don’t remember being especially lucky at any time, if you discount meeting a lovely lass and marrying her, and having a wonderful child. I’d like to think those things happened because I …
“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.” Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Actress and bishop jokes aside, it is healthy to occasionally ignore the brutish force of the colossal for the intimate pleasure of the small. As as with the best …
If you exit through the back door of the house I grew up in, walk past the sloping field and along the driveway, over the rattling cattle grid, then turn left, you will see, at the end of the road, two large, imposing stone pillars—guardians of a hidden realm—in between which hangs a solid, wide, …
My late father was a prodigious purchaser of fishing books: H.T. Sheringham, G.E.M. Skues, Charles Cotton, Frederick Halford, Zane Grey, BB, Dick Walker, Bernard Venables, Chris Yates and so the list goes on. But the one that stuck out the most was The Domesday Book of Mammoth Pike by Fred Buller. I was a teenager …
“No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” Samuel Johnson The close season allows the river angler a chance to explore without the temptation of casting a line. With my life currently following a frustratingly urban routine, I could …
This was first written in 1994 It had been a strange week indeed, with so many things of a different nature spinning frantically around me as to make me dizzy and tired of the hectic way I was prone to live. Too often I allow myself to sink so low, so far down where …
The River Test perks the ear of any angler. My late father would often talk about it in exalted tones, referring to its glorious brown trout. In later years, I learned of its grayling, and as my circle of angling interests widened, its big roach and dace. To have the chance to fish it was …
For as long as I’ve fished, I’ve wanted to catch a big perch. I caught a lot of stripeys when I was young, from the rivers and canals around my home in Ireland, but they were all small fish, with nothing much over a pound. The closest I came to snaffling a monster was finding …
The Royal Canal in Ireland was a white elephant. It had been built by an over-zealous entrepreneur who intended it to compete against the nearby Grand Canal, but it went disastrously over-budget and he was nearly broke by the time it was completed. Then the railway came to Ireland and didn’t so much eat into …
I hit the road early but got gridlocked in the Blackwall tunnel, so was suitably late when turning up for my days fishing at Walthamstow reservoirs with the angling writer Dominic Garnett. Thank heavens patience is a virtue often found in the heart of an angler. Fallon’s Angler was launching the next day, and Dominic …
I have twin seven year old nephews, Tom and Fred. They are energetic dynamos, indefatigable creatures of havoc, as entertaining with their ludicrous antics as their devilish double act is testing to the patience of the most tolerant of adults. A day with the prankish pair requires deep reserves of many attributes, most of which …
There are many things about print that are beautiful and out of reach to the digital world. The printed word is a tangible thing, real to touch, hold in one’s hand, turn the pages with one’s fingers. But print has a harrowing and unforgiving side. If a mistake is made, it will last forever. And so I owe …
A funny thing happened at the weekend. What was lost was found, and a once-burning flame was rekindled by a chance series of events that fell into place like a float to the water. I rediscovered my love of the simple angling adventure. I cannot wait to see the little pond again, and taste the …
