This day last week an adventure began for me just off the Canary Island of La Gomera. I will never forget it. I had an opportunity to fish for the iconic blue marlin which is a summer visitor to these waters. In the eyes of many anglers the blue marlin is the holy grail of game fishes. I am a stranger to fishing of this kind but fortunately I was in the company of a very experienced big game fisherman, Johan Terblanche, and was lucky enough to be aboard his beautiful 48´ boat Impi which was skippered by Mark Lee.
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My brother Sean and our old buddy Mark McCann head west at this time of year to fish Lough Arrow in county Sligo. If things go according to plan (and they usually don´t) their brief adventure coincides with the hatching of our old buddy Ephemera danica although the mayflies this year appear to have not kept up their part of the bargain and didn´t really get going during the days of their visit. Unfortunately I am unable to extricate myself from duties here in Spain but I am there each year in spirit.
View full article »Sunday was as hot as hell but I had it in mind to take a trip to the river. I was equipped with my strange newly-concocted worm fly in case a carp or two were around but, in the event, I never had a shot at a carp which was an outcome I more or less expected. I did however at least see a couple. They had been spooked from a shallow broken section and pushed ahead into a relatively broad slow-flowing pool. It was my fault that they were disturbed. I was some distance away but clearly they had their antennae tuned in to whatever wavelength I was broadcasting.
View full article »If you only allowed me one month a year to fish the Río Grande I would probably ask you for March, or maybe April. The heavier rainfalls of the winter are pretty much done but the river holds a good volume of water and, if there has not been a recent shower, the river runs clear. I have never fished a chalk stream but my friends who have tell me that the Grande has many similar qualities at this time of the year. Who could ask for more from a river than that?
View full article »I noticed that a piece that I wrote was published in Fly Fishing and Fly Tying December 2020 and I had completely forgotten about it. When I looked into it I realised I had sent it to the magazine in 2010!
I´m sorry about the format. I have tidied it up a little but it still looks a bit odd. I don´t wish to blow my own trumpet here but the subject of mentors is a chapter in my book where discuss it in greater depth. It was the most personal part of the book for me.
Anyway here´s the article as published in the magazine:
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