In the first of a new, occasional series, we examine novel ways of cleaning out your tackle bag after a hard season. #1 – Leaving it open in a chicken coop. A disappointing effort from the chooks who seemed utterly disinterested in pecking all the grotty grittiness from the inside of the bag. Cleanliness rating …
This chap was literally found in the back of the Editors tackle shed. Despite widespread Daily Mail inspired panic, they’re a non-aggressive arachnid. Four species of Steatoda (False Widow) are native to Britain, and even the slightly poisonous nobilis strain (which this one appears to be) have been here for at least 150 years…
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Whatever the weather and whatever the time of year, step into a pine forest and there is a strange sense of eerie calm. Soft and cool on a summer’s day the blanket of dead needles make a comfortable, dry seat in a winter storm. Find a young, dense plantation and it is downright cosy. Then …
Arguments continue regarding the creation of Chesil Beach, but fishermen don’t worry themselves with such trivia. This is one of the top marks on the south coast and is particularly noted for its trigger fish. In early summer the mackerel are the biggest draw, with shoal after shoal crashing into the shingle when the whitebait …
Admittedly, if you get within ten yards of a singing nightingale then the hairs on the back of your neck do actually stand on end, but no song lifts the soul quite like a blackbirds’. The notes are lazy and yet so rich in tone, and they’re not so rare that you have to escape …
Our prevailing wind has been rather scarce this year, with a steady string of northerlies bringing cold air from the Arctic. As a result, many of our migrants have been backing up around the Mediterranean, waiting for an incentive to carry on to our shores. Come on wind – sort it out – we want …
‘You don’t know what you’ve got, until it’s gone’, sang Peter Cetera of American rockers Chicago. Unfortunately, this sentiment is all too true when it comes to the eel (Anguilla anguilla). For years they tangled lines, swallowed hooks and snotted up trousers but today their dramatic demise is a major conservation concern. If you catch …
Our rivers may be off limits until June, but we are already thinking about that initial cast and what it might produce. There is something magical about the first fish of the season – that reconnection – and even fish that we might not normally care for get special attention on the Glorious 16th.
Too modest to have included himself here, but Fishpool is happy to make him blush. Words are in his blood, and he tells a story rather well. He can spot a good story too though, and then present it quite beautifully….long may it continue. He is pictured below with an Angler Unknown.
Perhaps the most famous advocate of the Transcendentalist movement during the 1820’s and 30’s, Thoreau was a thinker whose beliefs echo within every angler. In his book Walden, he immerses himself fully into the natural world, learning lessons that are ever more relevant today: “We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we …
