Necessity is the mother of invention that’s what I was always told as a child and I suppose that much of my life has been living proof of that adage. I regularly have to solve problems with the tools at hand. It is frequently the case that something crops up for which one was unprepared […]

aka: “The roll cast pick up” This is one of the most versatile and useful casts you will ever learn to make not perhaps technically a cast in itself but a very useful skill to master. So what is a roll cast pick up? Or perhaps we should start with “what is a roll cast”. […]

The effects of angles on torque and force or what you really need to know about physics if you are to play fish more effectively There is a little exercise that I have almost all of my clients experiment with on the river. It is a very useful one for everyone to try if you […]

Streamside Meditation – Prozac for the soul. I have recently been reading an excellent and newly released book “Lost Connections” Uncovering the real causes of anxiety and depression-and the unexpected solutions.  (Johann Hari Bloomsbury Circus Jan 18) I won’t go into the details although that may come in time. What I can do is […]

If you follow the road out of Cape Town and travel north for long enough if you wind your way over mountain passes that make your head swim and your brakes smoke. If you wend your way past dam walls and dirt roads ox s and donkeys. If you push on heading higher into the […]

Die Antwoord We have just returned from five days of fishing on the Bokong River in Lesotho. The water levels dropped each day cleared each day and the fishing got better each day although as a result the fishing equally became a tad more technical with the passing of time. On day four the “Balbyter […]

nice cob

To the fly tyer there are few things quite as exciting or for that matter daunting as the arrival of a new and as yet empty fly box. On the one hand it is a clean pallet an empty canvas on which to exercise one’s own creative spirit. On the other it is a mildly […]

“It isn’t so much a matter of feet but of inches”.. wise words from a client on a local stream trying to land a fly across a current seam between two boulders and under a tree so as to get a six inch drift drag free and close enough to a feeding fish to illicit […]

Are lead underbodies worth the effort? I remember a story from years back where a young girl asked her mother “why” whilst she was preparing for Christmas lunch “do you cut the gammon in half before cooking it Mommy?” The mother said that she had learned to cook it like this from her mother the […]

Some thoughts on our responsibilities as both anglers and people in making sustainable choices.   I can recall fishing as a youngster in the local canal a waterway that contained all manner of fish species. Carp Tench Rudd Roach Perch Bream etc.There I was rod in hand a bait of bread paste dangling under […]

Is frailty a key trigger for trout? Sometime back I published a post “The Cuckoo and the Trout” based on the genetic considerations of “super stimuli” as discussed in Richard Dawkin’s exceptional book “The selfish Gene”.. The basic premise being that some stimuli override other considerations such that in this instance a tiny […]

This is the third of a series of articles  written for Vagabond Flyfishing Magazine this one a little more detailed still and focusing on the relationship between rod flex and casting arc. You can’t escape it fly fishing is about fly casting or at least that is the starting point. So in the next […]

This is the second of a series of articles I have written for Vagabond Flyfishing Magazine this one a little more detailed and focusing on essential elements of a good cast. You can’t escape it fly fishing is about fly casting or at least that is the starting point. So in the next few […]

A recent post by Dan Morris linking to an article on the Field and Stream Blog by Kirk Deeter caught my attention it was about the ever increasing prevalence of “bobbers” on trout streams. He like me doesn’t think that it is quite the done thing and perhaps like much in life whilst in moderation […]

What if you could choose where to spend your last moments? There is that old saw that appears on social networking pages now and then where it is stated “I should like to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather: not screaming in panic like his passengers”– Yes ha ha an amusing paraprosdokian (you […]

What happens when you combine a Gung-Ho attitude to personal safety a secret hankering to be an investigative journalist a life–long passion for fly fishing and a love of the unspoiled beauty of one’s natural surroundings? Well for starters you end up with a sore body with bruises and scratches all over plus a hefty […]

It’s an act of faith going fishing in a desert but then sometimes one simply has to follow one’s heart (or gut for that matter) and take the plunge. I have fished the Orange River flowing along the Namibian/South African Border for more than a few years and there is always the same mix of […]

As part of my visit to my home county indeed the veritable “raison d’etre” of my travels really I was to join the celebrations of my sister’s 60th birthday. Around a year back she moved from Tiverton in Devon down to Truro the county capital and administrative center of Cornwall. Despite having lived in […]

Journeys down memory lane part one: I never really did get my head around long distance air travel. Being in a car you can see places there is time to adjust; the nuances of changing scenery and the architecture give the journey meaning. The anticipation as one nears one’s destination provides some sort of perspective […]