Can Trout Laugh?

"When the beginner can cast his fly into his hat, eight times out of ten, at forty feet, he is a fly fisher; and so far as casting is concerned, a good one."
James A. Henshall, MD, 1881

In the spirit of 'what gets measured, gets done' I thought James Henshall's criteria could be tracked. I mulliganed the first two casts, but as you can see from the landing sites of one through ten, I'm still falling some way short of the hat. When you deduct the length of the rod (eight feet) it's even worse! I keep telling myself the Chalksteams are only ten to fifteen feet wide and that the fresh Trout aren't the only reason I'm doing this......

"Unless one can enjoy himself fishing with the fly, even when his efforts are unrewarded, he loses much real pleasure. More than half the intense enjoyment of fly-fishing is derived from the beautiful surroundings, the satisfaction felt from being in the open air, the new lease of life secured thereby, and the many, many pleasant recollections of all one has seen, heard and done."
Charles F. Orvis, 1886

SO TRUE.

But then he would say that wouldn't he? He's got an agenda to push, and fishing gear to sell!!

I'm lovin' spending time outside, but the Trout are perfectly safe.

Any pointers gratefully received!

SBW

This Weeked I'll Be Reading

Maybe you've noticed in recent months I've developed an interest in the gentle art of fly fishing. Why? Well opinion varies; Skippy has it 'you're so lazy no wonder you've chosen fishing as your sport, if you can call it that'
Thanks Skip.
Jonah (who taught me to fish) "you've got everything! When are you going to do some actual fishing?
Well Jonah I might say the same about your 'adventures' in carpentry.
Regretfully I must concede, our chubby coastal dwelling friend has a point - I don't really manage to get to the water that often. But I do enjoy reading about/living vicariously through, those who do.

I found This Is Fly a few days after my trip with Jeremiah. As we'd sat outside the pub we both noted the way the fishing media have failed to keep up with the times, where was the magazine aimed at us?
Fishing magazines are pretty dull, written by and aimed at an older crowd. Which is strange when you think about it, as the canal sides, river banks, beaches and piers where I meet people fishing are enjoyed by all ages. Teenage louts, and grumpy granddads are well represented, as are paunched hipsters in the full flush of middle youth (like myself and Johna) with young children in tow.

If even golf can be 'reinvented' - w'appen?

Where there's an obsession, there's a niche, and where there's a niche, there's an audience, and where there's an audience, there's the potential for ad revenue... ....and at the end of the line there'll be a bunch of obsessives with long suffering wives, dreaming of someone else paying for them to pursue their obsession, and a laptop. Starting a magazine.

There are loads of 'online only' magazines most of them not worth the paper they're printed on. But every so often something happens which defies the natural order of things, confounds inevitability, and surprises.
This Is Fly is just such a magazine. A fishing magazine that starts with 'mixtape': what we were listening to as we put this edition together. It looks like the graphic designer was previously working on a skating magazine, and reads like it was written by guys who'd be good value around the camp fire. The editorial style is brave enough to say "you wistfully dream of 'A River Runs Through It' if you like, this is our time, this our thing and this is how we do it".

So this weekend, if you like fly fishing, or have ever been puzzled by the rules of understatement and reverse snobbery that the English live by, be sure to read 'A Duffers Guide To The Chalkstreams' by Rufus Cartwright in issue 9!

Thanks for reading
Your pal the bushwacker

Really That Long?

Yes i know its been a while since I added to the chronicle of my journey but life, as they say, keeps getting in the way. First i crashed my scooter (painful but no lasting damage), then came the stag do (joint second in the clay pigeon shooting - 14 pairs and 4 singles smashed after a two year hiatus - yeah yeah, kids stuff, you can do better, write yer own blog) the wedding itself (THE social event of the year - congratulations to Sir Hiss and the newly crowned Mrs Sir Hiss) and then a family holiday to the coast (an evil conspiracy of childcare time and tide banjaxed any fishing, there was a little bit of gathering but no hunting).

Now that i can get back into it I'm very happy to tell you that I'm due to take my first fly fishing lesson early next week.In class bound Blighty 'on-the-fly' is still seen as the way toffs fish, this is mainly due to the massive cost of fishing on the classic 'beats'.
North of the boarder, where our Caledonian cousins have perfected the art of marketing their waterways and fieldsports heritage, there is one Scottish fly fishing blogger, Alistair, who is starting to redress the balance with his tales of low-cost fly fishing on the Kelvin just outside Glasgow. Through reading his blog I found out that down south a blogger called Jeremiah Quinn has taken on the mantle and is chronicling his exploration of England's (mainly urban) low-cost Trout waters. Not for him the stocked lakes around London where bloated rainbows rise, secure in the knowledge that if they have bitten a man made fly they'll soon be back home in the water.He turns the traditionally costly country pursuit of fly fishing in to a low cost urban adventure.

During our email conversations it became apparent we're both fans of a writer (and later TV presenter) called Charles Rangeley-Wilson and his book (and TV series of the same name) 'The Accidental Angler'. For the most part C R-W travels the world to visit some of the most amazing destination fishing, then the story moves closer to his home as he investigates London's disappeared rivers, and takes on the challenge of catching a trout within the M25 (the orbital ring road that encircles London). He dismisses my local river, the Ravensbourne, and heads west to the Wandle a chalkstream transformed by the intervention of fishing enthusiasts calling themselves the Jet Set Club and local school children. C R-W wasn't successful on the Wandle, but did later do the business on the Chess. Also fished by Jeremiah

In the 18th century the Wandle was regarded as the premier trout stream within easy reach of london. In 1828 Humphry Davy wrote in his classic Salmonia:
"...of the blue dun, there is a succession of different tints, or species, or varieties, which appear in the middle of the day all the summer and autumn long. These are the principal flies on the Wandle - the best and clearest stream near London.
In early spring these flies have dark olive bodies; in the end of April and the beginning of May they are found yellow; and in the summer they become cinnamon coloured; and again, as winter approaches, gain a darker hue. I do not, however, mean to say that they are the same flies, but more probably successive generations of Ephemerae of the same species."

For navel and fly fishing history buffs it's also worth noting that Admiral Lord Nelson liked the Wandle so much he commissioned a house there, and with the cunning that made him such a great leader - he wisely told Lady Hamilton it was a present for her!

Those halcyon days were followed by 200 years of using the river as a convenient way to dump rubbish, but thanks to the efforts made the river is now one of the cleanest in europe, and as Jeremiah's picture testifies fish are thriving.

Thanks for reading
your pal the Bushwacker.

PS
If you want to know more about fishing the Wandle i found this blog
If you want to get involved in a clear up later this year the dates are:
May 11 Sutton
June 8 Merton
July 13 Wandsworth
August 10 Sutton
September 14 Merton
October 12 Wandsworth
November 9 Sutton
December 14 Merton

Tis The Season To Be Silly

There's more!

Hunting Birds or should that be Birds Hunting?

I’ve started following a really neat blog where a grade ‘A’ foodie from northern California, who didn’t grow up around hunting, has taken up wildfowling and bird hunting. At the start of her adventure she suspects that being a woman taking up a male dominated activity will be the hard part….
Between the lunkheads and the professionally patronising, she finds the same challenges we all face when going into the great outdoors; finding clothes to protect us from the worst the weather can throw at us, weapons and tools that consistently do the business when asked, and someone to show us how to get a result.
Nor Cal Cazadora sites some recent research showing that while hunter numbers are down, the number of women afield is rising, and rising significantly.
Except at my house.
I’m forever trying to sell Mrs SBW the benefits of eating wild meat and hunting for it ourselves, she remains unconvinced. Meanwhile on the other side of the world BoB (brother of bushwacker) is married to a woman made of sterner (and more weatherproof) stuff. When Mrs SBW was pregnant she wanted to: reorganise storage and redecorate the house. When Mrs BoB was in the family way it was a different story. Just before they left for New Zealand, we all got together for a family dinner. At the table I saw her staring dreamily at a Sunday roast saying wistfully, “when I get home I really want to shoot a pig” Mrs SBW further endeared herself (although not to me) when she pointed at me and chipped in “you can shoot this one if you like”.

Thanks for reading
Bushwacker.


Translation ‘Birds’ is english for ‘Chix’
Photo Credit

Those Thirteen Little Words Every Dad Wants To Hear

If you read the discussion boards on the Outdoor and Hunting/Fishing sites you’ll be familiar with the problem so many of us are wrestling with: how can I pass my enthusiasm on to my boy, get him to share in my obsessions?

During our recent adventures in the Languedoc region of France Bushwacker jnr and I wandered down to the bank of the Canal du Midi which connects the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of France. While we were feeding the ducks we sat on a drain outlet were rain water (and being France probably other kinds of water) ran into the canal. A four-inch perch (?) swam into view, exposing itself in about three inches of the clear warm water. It looked just like you could reach in and grab it.
My lad kept trying to, and to his frustration Mr Fish kept swimming off.
His frustration built up as Mr Fish kept taunting him by coming back, and swimming off, coming back, and swimming off.
On our third visit he said
“Dad, I don’t care what I have to do, I’m catching that fish”

I know that feeling little dude!
Bushwacker.

Canal du Midi on wikipedia

Free Lure with Every Beer! Well Sort Of.

I'm off to south west France in a couple of weeks so I’ve been getting my fishing kit together.
I’m been hoping to spin for trout while I’m there. So I bought some new 5-10g (quarter ounce) lures and was about to buy some spinning blades too when I remembered bottle cap lures. I'd seen these things in action as a kid, and like so much stuff you can make at home for nix, they match the stuff you can buy bite for bite and you get the added satisfaction that only home made kit brings.
Best of all they are very easy to make. OK. Correction they really are very very easy to make.
First the hard bit - drinking the beers. Mission accomplished.
Then retrieve the caps from the recycling bin - you and I would call it interference (or sabotage) Mrs SBW calls it tidying up.
Use a nail to make two holes in the cap, near-ish to the edge, exactly where depends on the size of split rings you have to hand.
Fit split rings
There are two (or more) schools of thought as to what shape to make the lure
A. a tunnel or shell shape that creates turbulence and bubbles as you pull the lure through the water.
B. a Z shape, which will act as a propeller as it moves through the water.
Now for the technical bit: ring one gets a swivel, ring two gets a hook.
Jobs a good 'un.

Beer-Fishing-Recycling. It's All Good

I though I’d have quick look online, in case anyone had really innovated with a 17 bend design, and boy did I get a shock.
People actually buy them!! They pay $30 for Six -THAT'S $5 EACH!!
Only in real life - you couldn't make this stuff up!!!
A guy has set himself up in business selling them. Shrewdly exploiting the brand loyalty many of us feel towards our favourite brewski he sells them by beer brand.
I can't see the fish thinking 'oh no I’m a brand X fish, I’d never bite for brand Y'. But people just ain’t that smart.
He's also tried to play the recycling card, but missed the point by packaging each lure in it's own plastic and card display pack. Hmmm.

Give a man a fish he eats for a day.
Teach him to fish and he sits in a boat drinking beer all day.
Bushwacker.

Dr. Lure Fishing

Dr Mike Ladle is probably the leading British authority on lure fishing in the salt for Sea Bass (like Stripers in the USA / AKA Suzuki in Japan) and in freshwater for Pike and Carp. He is often credited with kick starting the popularity of salt-water fly fishing in the UK.
Lure fishing with 20-30 pound braid, he takes a stand against the super light tackle idiocy that claims to ‘give the fish a chance’ pointing out that this is actually giving the fish a chance to swim off with a lure in its mouth.
Unlike the fishing journalists in fishing magazines he has no agenda to keep advertisers sweet and sell you new gear. His approach is based on having a small amount of inexpensive gear and large amount of understanding of fish behaviour. His book Operation Sea Angler is free to read online, and his blog is informative as he puts a lot of time into keeping up to date with the latest findings from marine biologists across the world.
Doc Ladle uses his blog to promote his range of DVDs detailing the tactics he uses to fish in the Caribbean. What he doesn’t mention is that he’s also the designer of the SureSpin range of rods – including the highly rated 4SureSpin travel rod. I use Shimano STC myself, but next time it’s a 4SureSpin for sure (!).
One of the good guys check him out
Bushwacker

http://www.mikeladle.com/osa.html

Doc Ladle is asking the UK's fisherfolk to sign this petition to Increase the MLS for Bass to 45cm for commercial and recreational anglers. A very good idea. Please help.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/BassMLS/