Tag Archive: writing


Hungover in Hastings

Filed under: Folks I know, Other bits and bobs — 2 Comments
August 7, 2026

They say that an early morning swim in the sea is a good cure for a hangover and so at 08.00 yesterday we dragged ourselves to the stony beach by the harbour at Hastings and launched ourselves into the waters of the English Channel to test this particular theory.

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Three ugly sisters

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Fishing reports, Flies and fly tying, Natural history, Other bits and bobs — 1 Comment
June 5, 2026

A couple of nights back I tied up some flies for black bass. They were as ugly as Cinderella´s sisters and, even worse, there are three of them! Whatever the aesthetic shortcomings of these flies, I doubt it will have much bearing on whether the bass decide to eat them. Bass have history for ingesting any kind of thing when the mood takes them. They are not the wine connaisseurs who will take a tentative sip only after rolling it around in a glass and sniffing it. They don´t even drink wine. They don´t know what it is. It is beer for them and they slug it straight out of the bottle.

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Sean´s little flies

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Flies and fly tying, Folks I know, Other bits and bobs — Leave a comment
October 18, 2025

There is a room in my brother Sean’s house where he can close the door, leave the family and various dogs on the other side, and settle down to tie up some flies. I know the room well—that’s where I sleep when I visit. There’s a single bed with a Munster rugby duvet cover. Sean coaches one of the local Ballincollig rugby teams, and his sons, John and Dan, along with his daughter Nancy, are all club rugby stars. A few feet from the end of my bed, there’s a desk nestled under a skylight, with Sean’s work computer and paraphernalia—and, of much more interest to me—his fly-tying vice.

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The trout in Reinosa

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Natural history, Other bits and bobs — Leave a comment
March 2, 2025

Reinosa is the closest town to the source of the Ebro river and it is a short distance upstream of one of the largest reservoirs that the river passes through on journey eastwards to the Mediterranean. Right in the centre of the town you can see Ebro trout and I have spent quite a lot of time doing just that.

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