Upsteam

I consider myself as a fly fisherman, trying to catch trout in Hampshire chalk streams. I have been asked to go salmon fishing three times in Scotland; the first on Loch Long that fed into the Kyle of Lochalsh, just east of the evocatively-named Sound of Sleat. Our host had...

It was a glorious return to the riverbank, after weeks of banishment and then, uncertainty. England has never looked more verdant, with a thousand shades of green – sap, viridian, permanent, cobalt, olive, Windsor, helio, phthalo, olive, May, Perylene, Hooker’s, all the colours in my paintbox, and many, many more....

Poaching fish has two meanings. One involves placing a whole foiled salmon in a fish kettle with a slosh of dry white wine, a few sprigs of fresh herbs, a couple of bay leaves, slices of lemon and onion and a sprinkling of black peppercorns, then put in the oven...

  The English countryside has settled comfortably into summer, with trees heavy in leaf, and the borders along the little lane leading down to the river brimming with wildflowers; cornflowers, irises, poppies and celandine with pink willow-herb and thistles towering over them all. Robert Byron, in his prose-poem All I...

The original binomial name for the kingfisher, Gracula atthis, was devised by the great Swedish toxicologist Carl Linnaeus, but later re-named Alcedo atthis, which actually stems from the Greek ‘alcedo’, meaning halcyon, in turn derived from the Greek goddess Alcyone, daughter of Aelous, God of the winds. Atthis was a...

  It’s been a six month since I last cast a fly on the river, six long months of feeling the autumnal chill enfolding the evenings and penetrating one’s very bones, russet and parchment leaves cracking underfoot, shortening days shuffling into night, a white confetti shower on scrunching grass, ponds...

A six month season seems like a reasonable span, stretching from around Easter to the end of September, but it just whistled past, and as the days get shorter and autumn turns to winter, one is immediately thinking about  next Spring. Having well-defined seasons is one of the joys of...

Although there are now few UK rivers, certainly less than 15%, for which the flow regime can be considered natural, the rivers and streams have basically followed the same course since the last Ice Age, around 12,000 years ago. The need to drain land, to protect it from flooding, to...

By Don Grant   Everything was perfect for a day’s fishing. It was warm without being too hot; there was some wispy ‘cirrostratus’ to take the edge off the summer sun; the water was, if not gin-clear, certainly ginger beer clear; there were some mayfly coming off the water virtually...