Archive for October, 2018


I was wondering if I could ask favour? As you may know my book Dry River was published in 2015 as a hardback (it can be bought in this form by following a link on the hoe page of this blog) but Paul Morgan, the publisher and bookseller, was kind enough to allow us to make an eBook version. This version is like the original but the paintings which illustrate it have had to be reduced in size. The only other change is a small alteration to the “running order” of the chapters. I must thank my wife Catriona for making the file conversion (she wouldn´t let me re-write the acknowledgments to say this). She also put together this blog initially and then said to me “I have put together a blog and called it Fishydreams. Now all you have to do is go ahead and write!”  Continue reading

We´ve had some hard rain here recently and I thought I might take a look on the river on Sunday to see how it was clearing up. As usual I had the rod in the back of the car but thought it unlikely that I would be be taking it out. I live close to the confluence of two rivers, the Río Grande and the Río Guadalhorce and after heavy rainfall it tends to be the Río Grande that clears up sooner. So on Sunday I went to take a look at it in the hope it might have recovered sufficiently to offer me a chance to fool a barbel or two. Continue reading

Most people I know sooner or later get wind of the fact that I´m a fly fisherman. Very often there follows a little exchange of words that seems to follow a pattern that is becoming increasingly familiar. The chances are you will recognise it too.

It´s almost as if the two of us are each delivering lines from a script with which only one of us is familiar. I know more or less where things are leading but the non-fisherman just ad-libs. First up there is the assertion that, whoever it is that I am talking to, just wouldn´t have it in them to “sit around” all day fishing; “I just wouldn´t have the patience for it!” Continue reading