Kevin Parr’s fishing diary
I walked among a small buzz of St Mark’s flies yesterday morning, hanging like charcoal-bodied sentinels, their long legs trailing like a ski-jumper in mid-flight. I’ve been told that their emergence stirs the little brownies in the local streams into their first, reliable, rise of the season, and for the first time in 6 …
I rather limped to the end of my coarse fishing season. The rains swelled the rivers (I didn’t fish the Dorset Stour once all season) and the late-winter perch bonanza failed to materialise. There were a couple of finned flurries from the lake I had been visiting throughout the winter. Matt managed a …
December bustled in with its usual tinsel-edged blur; a flurry of fairy lights and fake snow, sentimentalism and overindulgence. Festive smiles seem ever more forced though. Money is tight and political uncertainty, no matter where you sit, does little to inspire the notion of fun. It can be a tough period for the self-employed. As …
Parr’s Diary – December 2018 – History Repeating Read More »
I have always been guilty of ignoring what is on my doorstep, convincing myself that I must travel to make the best of my fishing, that the far bank will always hold more fish than the water beneath my feet. This came in part from growing up in mid-Hampshire, where anglers came to cast dry-flies …
Sometimes, change is so gradual that we don’t notice it until we sit back and reflect. So subtle are the shifts, that subconsciously we accept the new as the original. The baseline moves – and unless we get a rude awakening we don’t notice the lack of chaffinches in the garden, or hair on the …
The autumn equinox is one of the loveliest times of the year, with soft days sandwiched between dew-drenched mornings and slow pink sunsets. Yet there is also a curious sense of poignancy, stirred by the end of summer, with a shift from light to dark and the quiet of the air. The fishing though, can …
Back in the thick heat of July, on World Cup Final weekend in fact, I made my way north across the county line and into Somerset. I snuck through Yeovil, dropped down onto the Levels and listen to the tyres crackle across the dust and loose stone of a well-worn track. Windows down, skin …
The heat has been relentless. July passed with barely a drop of rain and in response the earth shrank, the lawn cracked and the grass dried to dust. I looked upon familiar views with a new perspective. A blanket of brown and yellow, where even the trees struggled to splash any green. I was reminded …
It took more than an hour and a half to inch our way through Worthing. A lorry puncture causing A27 havoc at a spot which always congests. Our hopes of avoiding the worst of the Friday traffic well and truly dashed. It could have been a lot worse, though. The sun was shining, the …
I took a detour towards the end of the month to see how the Frome was looking. I have a favourite bridge on the upper reaches, many miles upstream of Dorchester, but in recent years the river beneath it has begun to look tired. Like so many of our chalkstreams, the Frome has struggled to …
There is a moment in early April when the world suddenly seems a lot less dark. I will sit on the steps of the cottage with a morning cup of tea and my skin will tingle in the warmth of the sun. In a heartbeat, my soul shifts and much of the lethargy and leadenness …
I dug out the lawnmower at the weekend, lifted the blade as high as it would go, and lurched it around the garden. After an hour of hacking, there was a vague improvement, but the mower wasn’t happy and the cuttings were clinging to the mechanism like limpets on a rock. The problem came not …
Six winters have passed since the last spell of prolonged cold weather in this part of the south. We have had odd sprinkles of snow during that time, and one decent covering, but Dorset has remained fairly balmy for the most part. As a result, the recent blast of Siberian winter came as quite a …
Parr’s Diary – February 2018 – Beastly Easterlies Read More »
There is a healthy sprinkle of salt in my father’s bones. He wasn’t born beside the sea, but his family moved to Swanage after the Second World War and he spent his formative years exploring the cliffs and coves of the Purbeck coast. It made for quite a contrast to the shell-shocked suburb of north-west …
I took a stroll along the Cobb at Lyme Regis a couple of days before Christmas. The morning had been overcast, but as the sun began to lower so it sunk below cloud level and gave the seafront an unseasonal blast of warmth. I was soon in a T-shirt, and wishing I’d ditched my jeans …
The spring that supplies us with water, bubbles up just below our cottage before trickling off to the north-east where it becomes the River Wyn. It is a tiny course that soon meets the Hooke and then the Frome, less than three miles away. Unlike the winterbourne that I grew up beside, the Wyn flows …
It has been a little while coming, but this morning brought the first frost of the autumn—with October almost over. The air had a clean, sweet edge that I could even taste from the warmth of my duvet, and as I look out of the window now (just after midday) there is a quality to …
Parr’s Diary – October 2017. The start of the perch season… Read More »
Growing up among the chalk stream sparkle of central Hampshire left me with a slightly distorted view of river life. The Itchen and her tributaries changed little across the seasons. They would invariably run clear, the weedbeds seemed rarely to thin and the trout could always be found in their usual lies. On rare occasions …
Parr’s Diary – September 2017. Back on the Dorset Stour… Read More »
It has been a long time since my fishing took a truly unexpected turn, but July has delivered a fresh and local diversion that has given my summer quite a lift. In fact, there has been enough going on for me to start to diarise as a piece for Fallon’s angler Issue 11, providing our …
Parr’s Diary – July 2017: of mushrooms, mackerel and a quartet of carp Read More »
It seemed so straightforward. All we needed was a small lake or pond, preferably quiet, hopefully natural, but definitely home to a tench or two. Ideally there would be a lily pads and overhanging trees, with a grass snake slipping through the marginal reeds, a song thrush singing and a musty whiff on the air. …
It is easy to forget how close we live to the sea. Our cottage faces south, but is tucked into a fold of the West Dorset hills and we need to climb a few hundred feet in order to glimpse saltwater. Occasionally, with an inshore breeze, there is the faintest briny whiff on the air, …
Parr’s Diary – (May) Thank heavens for the Glorious 16th! Read More »
It rained on the 30th. Not quite the persistent pour that had been forecast, but a significant drop nonetheless. This news shouldn’t really warrant a mention, but April has been desperately dry, certainly down here in Dorset. In fact, in my father’s garden, where he keeps a daily check on the weather, only 3.9mm of …
There is an intoxicating intensity to the final fortnight of the coarse season that is quite unlike any other part of my angling year. Winter is ceding ground to spring, celandines are dotting the banks and verges, and the fishing can be spectacular. There is proper warmth in the sun, though the wind retains a …
I’m not entirely sure where February went. One moment January was dragging its feet and a couple of blinks later the blackbirds are singing and March is upon us. The thin end of the coarse season always seems to rattle by, but I did manage to make it out three times over the past month, …
It was great to see Mark Walsingham (Skeff) on CountryFile earlier this month. He was with Dave Webb of the UK Wild Otter Trust to explain the new otter trapping licence, and the two of them featured in a segment focused on the current otter ‘debate’. Much of the piece was filmed at Ashmead, Skeff’s …
Festive television is invariably underwhelming. Full of re-makes, repeats and Christmas ‘specials’ that make you smile, but only because the excess of port and stilton has left you mildly stupefied. I did watch Charlie Brooker’s 2016 Wipe last evening though, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. Mind you, the past twelve months have delivered plenty of …
I went for a walk yesterday afternoon on my local patch. It was only a few degrees above freezing, but I had in mind that the sunshine might have tempted an adder out. I may have been proved right, but left it half an hour too late. The south facing bank where I had hoped …
I have always had a peculiar relationship with the Dorset Stour. A couple of visits as a child and teenager offered me a river full of mystery and intrigue, but after a long period of barbel obsession (that had a distinct chalk stream edge) I struggled to understand the Stour when I returned to her …
It ended up being two months between casts, give or take a few days. Illness, a lack of time and a monster bout of lethargy had left me dry through all of August and most of September. If I was going to end such a drought, then it may as well be somewhere extraordinary. Ashmead …
Were I not to be reflecting upon the past month then I might not have realised how long it is since I cast a line. In fact, now that I stop and consider the fact, it seems I have spent fewer hours fishing since the opening day of the season than I did on the …
July is normally a good month for an angler. The rivers aren’t always at their best, with low water levels and bright sunshine, while many of the fish remain more interested in one another than they are in eating. The long days give us plenty of time though, and sultry summer evenings can offer some …
It is at least three years since Martin last cast a line. Work and family pressures, coupled with a lack of transport, have kept him dry for far longer than most anglers could bear. After such a period of abstinence, there is only one way to fully reconnect, and that involves an early start, dusk …
I spent a few hours yesterday wandering the heath and bog of Wareham Forest. I heard my first cuckoo of the year, found lizards basking and lost an hour listening to the lamenting song of the woodlark. In the thick of the bog was a dark, peaty pond, reed-lined and slightly rank. A sedge warbler tchked …
