Showing posts with label trout. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trout. Show all posts

Monday, 3 September 2012

Fishing The River Usk Pt1

Unlikely as it may seem, especially to regular readers: myself and The Lighthouse Keeper are making our way westwards to fish the River Usk a Brown Trout stream that rises in the notorious Brecon Beacons. The Brecon's are an exceptionally handsome range of hills in Wales that have been the making or breaking of many a military career. I've been up there a few times over the years and the place is usually thick with squaddies being beasted along by their PT instructors. Who will, amongst other choice incentives, be offering age-old moto of the Brecon experience "if it aint raining it aint training!"

While the poor young recruits are suffering it, TLK and myself will be living out our Trout Bum fantasies; drinking whiskey-laden coffee for breakfast, eating fried things, and growing Abercrombie and Fitch style stubble.

A few mobile posts to follow and then a full report on our return, in the meantime more military cliches HERE
Your pal
SBW

Picture credit

Monday, 5 September 2011

Field Sports In Scotland Pt.8


Bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea. 

Ahh the sights and sounds of the river bank; the flutter-by of butterflies, the magic of the rods flex as it loads with the energy it's going to use to flick the line out, the babble of the river, the misanthropic mutterings of the Andy, and the delightful scent of DEET on the breeze. Ahhhhh.

The last of my adventures afield in the Kingdom of Fife (for the time being) took us in search of that magical fish the Sea Trout. Andy and I drove to a river he's fished for years, where water tumbles down from the hills breaking through the soil and out into the Firth of Forth.  Our quarry is making the journey in the other direction, having once spawned in the same waters we patrolled, the Sea Trout are returning to complete the cycle, some of them having attained truely impressive sizes.  On arrival we caught up with Gordon the Water Bailiff - armed with a spinning rig and soft lures in the style of  Sand Eels. His reports were encouraging; He had already landed his 'toon-fash' of the season, and witnessed a twenty-pounder caught by another chap. We held high hopes of a trip to the smoking service with our bounty. Yeah right.


Wether it was my; poor technique, general englishness, or 'sheer-suburban-uselessness' Andy wasn't sure, so he alternated between them and threw in a few other forms of blame for good measure. 

Alas I was once again unable to close the deal with the wild foods of Fife.


As usual our kit pendulumed between the home-made and the high tech, Andy pairing an £800 super rod with one of the skanky-ist spinning reels its been my displeasure to see/use in a long long time. Ever keen to reenforce national stereotypes Andy indignantly leapt to its defence "what do you mean? I paid Ten Pounds for that!" 

Other Bushcrafters had been there before us
 Almost 16C [aka 60.6F] measured with the plumbers non-contact thermometer.
How's that for kit-tart fishing tackle!

It was the kind of idyllic afternoon that fly fishing is made for, the cares of the world were far far away, occasionally a Brown Trout would jump from the water, and despite Andy's prediction I actually came back with one fly more than I set out with!

"Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World," said the Rat. "And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or me. I've never been there, and I'm never going, nor you either, if you've got any sense at all."

More soon
SBW

Thursday, 9 October 2008

Jammyness? Do You Measure Up?

Here's one for the Catch-and-Release crowd, I saw it on wired.com and I thought we'd make it the subject of a little competition. My mum (mom) has just delivered a shipment of her kick-ass jam (jelly) and I'll ship a jars worth of it to the reader who sends in the best use for a tattooed tape measure. Here's what its owner/wearer (Dave Selden) uses it for

"As a woodworker-graphic designer, I use a tape measure or ruler almost every day. Now I have one always within arm's reach. I use it for my work, but also my play. I measured some trout for length with it on a fishing trip to Mount Hood this weekend."

I look forward to hearing from you
SBW

Tuesday, 16 September 2008

Fly Guy ? It Must Be Tuesday




After the debarcle of Laughing Trout and Chortling Elk mocking my efforts, at last there's some good news from project fly caster. I can now cast a strait line. Not very far, but its actually going where I'm flicking it!

It is not difficult to learn how to cast; but it is difficult to learn not to snap the flies off at every throw.
Charles Dudley Warner, 1862

Doh! Still a way to go then.

But, remember the back cast is the foundation, and that unless it is solid the superstructure will be rickety. Remember also that the motion of the rod through the air should be almost, or quite noiseless. Nothing offends the angler's ear more than the "swish" of a fly-rod. It is like a false note to an educated musical ear. It indicates a degree of force about as appropriate to the end in view, as a burglar's jimmy to opening a watch. This should never be, except possibly when casting directly against the wind or for distance only.
Henry P. Wells, "Fly-Rods and Fly-Tackle", 1885

Hmm maybe I should get some lessons?

Calling Fly Fishing a hobby is like calling Brain Surgery a job.
Paul Schullery

Perhaps if I just dropped a little more cash on a new rod?

Thanks for reading
SBW.
PS Dog Lady was at the pond again this morning, she put a lot of effort into not looking at me!

Thursday, 7 August 2008

Trota! Rod? Line? Nah!


Our friend who is yet to get his TLA (three letter acronym) lets call him jon, has just sent me this picture from his place in Italy. Apparently he was standing by his trout stream (you think that's jammy - he has Boar and Deer too!) wondering weather or not to take up fishing (I know! Some people!) when he saw this one had invited itself to lunch by marooning itself in a shallow pool.
So he picked it up and took it home, as yer would!
Thanks for reading
SBW

Friday, 18 July 2008

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

Wednesday, 9 July 2008

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

Wednesday, 30 April 2008

With Jeremiah - Bushwacker On The Fly


Finally managed to get back into it for a few hours earlier this week, and went in search of that most elusive of prey – The Sub-Urban Wild Brown Trout.

Myself, and the living legend that is Jeremiah Quinn, have long been promising to go fishing together and finally, after many false starts, this was the week that was!
I fish in the salt, either in the Thames estuary or down on the south coast with Jonah. We use a mix of tactics; Ledgering Rag and Lug worms, Spinning hard baits and Freelining slithers of Mackerel in our quest to catch that ‘double figures’ Sea Bass. Jeremiah fishes almost exclusively for wild trout and always on-the-fly. Our shared interest is in a kind of low-cost travel-by-public-transport kind of Trout hunting with the holy grail being a Brown Trout taken within the confines of London’s orbital ring road, the M25. A truly wild fish; taken on the fly, and without payment to landowner or fishing club.

Regular readers will know of Jeremiah’s recent west London successs in Admiral Lord Nelson’s river Wandle so we headed east to a Kentish chalk stream fished by Charles Dickens, the Darent (River Darenth).

The best thing about meeting up with other bloggers is that having sat in front of your computer bashing away for all those nights, writing your blog, there in front of you is a real live human being who has not only read what you wrote, but cares enough to ask questions about what is for the most part a personal obsession. We spent a happy hour on the train to Kent chatting about each others adventures and the blog posts that describe them.

Kent is a lot like New Jersey – Jersey is the garden state, Kent is the garden of England. Kent is also home to many of the commuter ants who make their way, by bridge and tunnel, into the city each morning. Both of them are home to mob bosses, fictional and real. One of the things that will always strike a city dweller visiting Kent is the way that the further away from London you go the sooner the locals thrown into the conversation how close to London they live and the stronger their mockney accents become. The bit of Kent we visited is basically one big suburb. Just it’s a suburb with a few fields for horses, a bit of small scale farming, and as the climate changes, ever growing numbers of vineyards taking advantage of the chalky soil. It’s pretty in a manicured sort of way, much like the girls who hail from there, and it’s plastered in KEEP OUT signs…

I’ve been to the villages that straddle the Darent many times and have made sight of fingerlings plenty of times. Once or twice I’ve also seen some pretty decent fish but I’ve never had one of them for my tea. Jeremiah was delighted with the opportunities the river presented and after a quick lesson had just let me loose with his 7# rod when a trout of a ‘dinner invitation’ size leapt out of the pool whose surface I was thrashing with a Sawyer's Pheasant Tail Nymph, snatched the real thing from the air and disappeared, leaving us grinning like enthusiastic idiots who’ve taken the bait. We didn’t have completely unfettered access to the river bank as we’d keep coming to sections liberally (or should that be illiberally) signposted KEEP OUT and NO FISHING, where we’d have to back track to the road skirting around a farm house before rejoining the water. The whole right of access issue is enormously complicated in England. Many farms and estates are crossed by public access rights of way and the land owners have a duty to provide styles to allow the pubic to safely cross any fences without damage to fence or trouser. For the most part as long as you treat the fields with a common sense courtesy and don’t damage crops or let animals escape farmers tend to be fairly tolerant, but there are exceptions and we were both keen to avoid any run-ins with shotgun wielding yokels shouting ‘getorfmoilaaand!!’

Jeremiah looked quite the country gent in his tweed cap and waxed jacket,
I on the other hand looked like a complete numpty with my oversized fleece and screaming YELLOW wellie boots.

As we reached Farningham we stopped for a small libation at the hostelry by the bridge and snacked on samosas before heading further east to the more easily accessible parts of the river.

The path down the river has recently benefited from some drastic pruning, the last time I walked that way there were trees over hanging the river from either side, and now only the most established specimens remain. The chalk streams of southern England have changed dramatically in the last hundred years. Where they used to be a lot deeper they were also a lot narrower giving far more cover to the fish and allowing larger blooms of vegetation for the nymphs and larvae to live in. Letting trees grow out of the banks has weakened them, and with the banks undermined they have slumped and now most of the stream is ten feet wide but only six inches deep. The local dog walkers told us that there was a release of grayling last year and they’ve all seen good fish from the bank. One dog walker pointed us to a deep hole which was holding two Pike; while upstream I tried to master the dry fly with his 4#, Jeremiah made them an offering on the 7# which was instantly accepted, with the Pikes razor sharp mandibles severing the leader quicker than those nifty little cutters they sell in the fishing shops.

At the end of our tromp we fished the pool under the flyover, managing to spook the trout who live there all year round unspooked, by the overhead roar of the M25, that separates our ever growing metropolis from the manicured fields of England’s garden.

In short: excellent company, short train ride, a not too taxing walk, in a managed version of the country, where real life thrives between the abandoned car number plates, all set against the reassuring whoosh of traffic. Just how we like it!

Thanks for reading
SBW

PS if you’re planning a visit to the chalk streams of Kent, or to fish anywhere else that gets graffiti get in touch, let me know how you get on.

PPS the real life ‘don’ of Urban Fly Fishing lives north of the border. His blog. And his site.

Wednesday, 18 July 2007

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.

Sunday, 8 July 2007

Mud Larks of Deptford


Mud Lark - ‘A fellow who goes about by the waterside picking up coals, nails, or other articles in the mud.’
Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue - 1811

On its southern bank, were it meets the Ravensbourne, the river Thames has a natural dry-dock, known as Deptford Creek.
On Sunday afternoon in response to claims of a ‘spawning ground for Flounder’ and ‘squillions of Mitten Crabs’ your pal the Bushwacker and accomplice Deej joined the Creekside Centre’s snappily named ‘Spring/Summer Low-Tide Walk Programme.’
And big fun it was too.
We were issued with thigh waders and broomsticks to use for wading poles and for nearly two hours we were led up-river toward Lewisham.
There were many signs of life, not all of it the stuff vandals leave behind. Between the shopping trolleys and torn down road signs Nature has reasserted herself, the guys who led the walk must have pointed out 25-30 different plants that had self-seeded in the creek and on its walls. Nothing was introduced by the regeneration project; everything there has arrived under its own steam.

The Creekside was the site of many a slaughter house in the century before last, (Tanners Hill is just round the corner) and the sawn bones of cows, sheep and horses poke out of the mud here and there. The Creek was also the launch dock for many a colonial endeavour / piratical raiding party and handmade shipwrights nails litter the site. We had a great time poking around in the mud. Just in case any of the group forgot we were in ‘sarf larn-den’ the guides told us how one school trip to the creek was enlivened by one of the kids finding a handgun sticking out of the mud.

After a few moments to get your eye in, looking through Polaroid sunglasses there are loads of juvenile Flounder in the crystal-clear water and the cast-off shells of Mitten crabs are everywhere. The water must be in good health as Mirror carp, Tench, Trout and Eels have all been caught in the creek.
The chaps showed us how to ‘kick sample’ the bottom, collecting up slit in a white observation tray, we could see hundreds of aquatic creatures swimming about. Londoners are habitually sceptical about the quality of the water in the Thames and its tributaries, but after seeing just how much is living in it I started to believe the guys claim that the Thames is the cleanest metropolitan river in europe.
Would you Adam an Eve it, me old china?

£5 very well spent – if you’re in the area, you gottta go!

"Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts.
So long as we are dirty, we are pure".
Charles Dudley Warner 1800's

creekside centre


Get stuck in
Bushwacker.