Last knockings or first light are often the best times for fishing, but you have to be able to bear the sounds and shapes of the night. The hours between dusk and dawn is the time of magic, myth and monsters. The angler—Garrett Fallon—fishes through both in the hope of a decent catch. But things …
Micro spinning for wild brown trout on a lost urban river in England with David West Beale. The angler keeps returning to a favourite urban river to check on the health of its miraculous stocks of wild brown trout. After years of experimentation, he practices the Japanese technique of micro spinning, using a tiny rod …
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 …
(Cassell Illustrated, 1991) With over 30 books to his name, amongst them evocative, pastoral titles such as The Poacher’s Handbook, Fresh Woods and The Idler’s Companion, it would seem wholly natural that somewhere, within the bibliography of John Kincaid McNeillie, there would be a work dedicated to angling. Published in 1961 and written under the …
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 …
Peta Brabner left Co Cork, Ireland for England as a young woman and after a chance meeting ended up staying at the Gliffaes Country Hotel for a lifetime. This film tells her story and her love of the hotel, her family, and being drawn to the river Usk and the salmon and trout fishing. A …
In pursuit of trout, by Chris Yates. It was 51 years ago when I acquired my first fly rod. At that time, when I was 16 and living near Epsom, Surrey, there was no local trout fishing available to me, but there were plenty of dace and chub on the nearby River Mole, …
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 …
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 »
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 …
“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 …
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 …
