The submission date for the Caption Competition has been extended to January 31st 2015, to overlap with the publication of Issue 2 of Fallon’s Angler. To enter the competition, you must first have purchased a copy of Fallon’s Angler Issue 1. When you purchase a copy, you get a unique order number. Please submit this …
Be the first to officially declare your love for Fallon’s Angler, but be quick, there’s a queue forming…
The Wandle Piscators, and angling club in London of which I am a member, has launched it’s own club e-zine, The Piscators’ Chronicle In my experience, the best angling clubs have a strong sense of conservation. In fact, I’d go so far as to say a good angling club MUST have a strong sense of …
I had a very strange driving instructor once (bear with me please). He was an odd chap, to say the least. He never shut up, always talked about his conquests (that gets boring after a while, believe me) and had a nervousness about him that made me think he had a dead body hidden in …
By Fred Buller, Stanley Paul, 1979 I first discovered this book when I was in short trousers, and it makes me feel that way even now. How can these fish be real? Of course, some may not be, but the accounts are there, and as a young boy I always returned to this book every …
By Bernard Venables George Allen & Unwin LTD, London 1958 Described as “The modern counterpart to Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler, this beautifully illustrated book from one of angling’s great fishermen and authors “combines in one volume the whole practice and delight of angling”. It was bought in a bookshop in Kinsale, Ireland, by my …
The Ravensbourne rises in Keston, South East London, and flows for 11 miles through the boroughs of Bromley, Lewisham and Greenwich, before joining the Thames. It is a mixture of urban regeneration and urban control, with areas bound in concrete sitting next to others that are as wild as any river in the countryside. It …
I had fished for a week, and caught a lot of fish, but none past the magical 20lb mark, which all around me had achieved. It was silly really, but I was growing frustrated, having travelled half-way around the world to catch a big lake trout. In desperation, I turned to my dead father, and …
I was sharing a boat with a red-haired Irishman—granted that’s not in itself unusual—but what followed was unforgettable. We were trolling quickfish lures over a bay on Lake Athabaska, Canada, when the fish struck. For some reason, when I’ve been on a foreign fishing trip, the size of my catches has increased as the trip unfolded. …
Born in Billericay, Jeff Hatt is an Essex boy and gifted magpie. Early tackle was secured through the generosity of relatives: Aunty Sandra’s Green Shield Stamps got his first rod, from Uncle Paul, a southpaw ‘300.’ Aunty Thelma provided more, and her husband Ron, likewise. Elder cousin Alan gave a season ticket to South Weald …
In the summer of 1980, aged ten, Nick Fallowfield-Cooper was given some fishing tackle. He took the rod, reel and plastic box that contained various floats, weights and hooks to the local Sussex Ouse and started to unravel the mysteries of angling. In the early 1990s, Nick moved to London (where he still lives today) …
Peter Scott is not a fisherman, though he wishes he could be, and sometimes thinks he might be. He is publisher of Apollo, the international art magazine, and a founding editor of online quarterly The Junket. He has written about things that have nothing to do with fishing for The Daily Telegraph and Literary Review …
Niall Fallon was a newspaper journalist and the deputy editor of the Irish Times in the 1980s. With a passion for fly fishing, he lived in Co. Meath, Ireland, surrounded by boggy fields and limestone rivers, and spent most of his free time chasing the illusive trout of the rivers Deel, Boyne and Suir. He …
Rob Forth is a professional poker player. Born in London, he nevertheless grew up near the Welsh border, and lived for a stretch in South Africa. When not playing poker he likes to check for the early onset of Alzheimer’s by participating in pub quizzes. When the sun shines he can be found cycling in …
Theo Pike is a freelance environmental, fishing and marketing writer. He’s also Chair of Trustees of the Wandle Trust, and founding editor of Urbantrout.net, a website and eco-brand dedicated to the urban fly fishing and river restoration movements. His first book, Trout in Dirty Places, was published in 2012, and his new Pocket Guide to …
Jon Day teaches English at King’s College London. He writes for the London Review of Books, n+1, The New Statesman, the Times Literary Supplement and Apollo magazine, and is a regular book reviewer for the Telegraph and the Financial Times. He is a contributing editor at The Junket. There is a river at the end …
Depending on the weather, Kevin Parr is an Idler, fisherman, writer, amateur naturalist and fungi forager—though by his own admission he excels in no particular field. He is the author of Rivers Run, The Idle Angler and black comedy The Twitch. Longtime angling correspondent to The Idler magazine and contributor to CountryFile and Caught by the …
Tom Fort began fishing on the Lodden in Berkshire at the age of eight, pursuing ruffe and small perch. He became a journalist on leaving university, first working on local newspapers and later for the BBC. He wrote a fishing column for the Financial Times for 12 years, and has contributed to magazines including Waterlog …
Dominic Garnett is a fishing author and guide with a taste for the unconventional. As a result, he survives mostly on berries, tinned food and super strength lager in a cave somewhere in Devon. His books include Crooked Lines, Tangle with Pike, Flyfishing for Coarse Fish and Canal Fishing: A Practical Guide. For more of his …
Chris Yates is a photographer, tea connoisseur, nature lover and prolific writer, having published hundreds of articles and at least 13 books. He is the former British carp record holder with the capture of a 51lb specimen carp from the famous Redmire pool. He lives in a cottage in deepest Wiltshire where he indulges his …
The Diver is a small farm pond, hidden deep in the apple orchards of Kent. It is a tiny, seemingly insignificant bowl of water, with a ring of lilies around its deep centre. It is also full of small carp, rudd and roach, and a great little water to afflict a young child with their …
The river Deel flows past the house in which I grew up. It derives its source from Lough Lene, Lough Bane and the Ben Loughs and then flows for 22 miles through Co. Westmeath and into the river Boyne in Co. Meath, at what was a childhood mecca known as “The Point”. The river spends most of its …
A picturesque town under the watchful gaze of a Norman castle, with a separate old port (Parog) that used to take lime and slate all around the world. The river Nevern leaves the land through these gates, but not before curling around a large inlet and under a rocky coastline on one side, with a beautiful beach …
