Guest writers
Redmire. If you have any interest in carp angling whatsoever, that name will conjure magic. If your angling is rooted in traditional carp angling, that name will open a gallery in your mind from a time when carp fishing was in its infancy and everything was a glorious and exciting adventure. I pored over the …
In the car, he thinks about time, and how much there used to be. How, years ago, playing an LP was a thing in itself. You lowered the stylus, there was that amplified crackle, and then you sat on the bedroom floor, playing every track before turning the disc with a deft flip of …
Charles Rangeley-Wilson discovers a relaxed approach in Alderney It was a few years ago now, on a bucket-and-spade holiday with the kids. One still evening as the light washed out of the day I got away for an hour and walked with my fly rod along the cliff top above Fort Corblets strand. I …
“It is the magic of the Los Angeles River, a concrete corset that many know from Hollywood films: Drive, Transformers, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, it’s a long list that shows the concrete, but not the hidden seven miles or so nature has reclaimed.” The Los Angeles River is the unlikely scene for some urban …
Photography and words by Matt Minter What do you get for a man who, at the great age of 80 years, has all the material things accumulated from a life well lived? A day’s autumnal angling seemed just the ticket, so along the banks of the nation’s river—old father Thames just above Oxford—a somewhat motley crew …
By Maurice Neill THERE are more words for a fool in Irish than in any other language and it takes a particular type of angling amadan to venture into the Galway Gaeltacht and onto Lough Mask when the forecast is for bad weather. It is a beautiful, vast and dangerous piece of water where squalls …
A tribute by Kevin Parr I am obviously not going to bother to look, and nor would I suggest anyone else does, but nevertheless I’d be astounded to read anywhere a bad word about Jan Porter. For someone who put himself out there, certainly when creating his image as the Man in Red, Jan came across …
Written by Greg Freestone There’s a river not far from here. It’s a miniature river, a Trumpton river winding through toy-towns and out into their rural hinterlands, flowing beneath hilltop churches, through ancient fords and under bridges, draining and watering this ever-thinning strip of old farming Essex, a shallow agricultural valley still surviving against constant assault …
Words by Nigel Ling New Year’s “fabled infant” comes to me stillborn. After the festival of Christmas I cannot shake off January’s slump; the winter bears down, the dim fairy lights in house windows, waiting on Twelfth Night, are relics of a better time. Fishing in January is usually hard; floods are expected and cold …
Words by Jon Berry I have just been carp fishing, not in itself unusual, except it is something I never do at this time of year. It wasn’t a bivouacked endurance test in thermals, wet gloves frozen to fingers, slack lines freezing in cat ice—more a casual few hours with an Avon rod, a pocket …
Christmas Eve always meant a midday finish, and though there were a few loose ends to tie, the bulk of the morning would be spent nattering and clockwatching. I’d turn my computer on, and probably check my emails, but even my games of solitaire would be half hearted. In years past I would have clocked …
Words and pictures by Steve Roberts. Peace. Tranquil expectant peace. I sat in the boat waiting, the only movement the lazy passing of the foam from the weir, and some stirrings from a tent away downstream. A girl’s tired face peeped out and looked at me curiously as her boyfriend mixed up and lobbed out …
By Chris Netto The tendrils of mist wound lazily around the tree branches as I stood on the banks of the Dorset Stour on a dull, grey, mid-July dawn. I had planned this adventure for weeks, keen to get in among Throop’s not inconsiderable chub population, but really hoping for one of its sizeable barbel. …
The ‘wrong’ type of gold—memories of a river capture Read More »
Words and picture by Nick Fallowfield-Cooper Just over three months ago I had a long chat with Garrett in the Captain Kidd pub that stands by the Thames in Wapping. The conversation resulted with my experience as a picture editor and photographer being recruited to oversee the next stage in the development of Fallon’s Angler. …
Words and photography by Stuart Harris It was the sudden flash of blue that brought me back to earth and out of my daydream. It happens a lot you see, lazy, hazy spring days where the sun’s rays warm my shoulders, I slip out of reality and into a faraway land where nothing matters and …
Garrett had mentioned many times before the huge shoal of bream that swam up and down the canal near his home. He had seen them during the spawning season where they congregated in vast numbers on the stretch of water between an aqueduct and a road bridge, a 60 yard shoal. He had watched them …
Henri Bresson (1925-2011) was a celebrated French fly fisherman, known best as creator of the French Tricolore fly. Jack Sellen has put a short extract from Bresson’s biography into English with kind permission from the rights owners and he hopes to translate the whole book, ‘Le Sorcier de Vesoul’ (Vincent Lalu, 2nd edition, La Vie …
Written by Matthew Tanner For too many years I suffered from a prolonged bout of naivety, the sort normally associated with the folly of youth, turning down multiple requests from my Mum’s friend Steve, that I accompany him on a days fly fishing. In the end it became a running joke between us. However, I …
By Michael Comyns Where can you get a conker match, a cello recital and a crack at a double-figure barbel? Well, I don’t know where or when they might occur together again, but on a recent weekend at Llanthomas, where The Sheringham Society held its Autumnal Equinox Meet—dedicated to the memory of a recently departed …
