There is little doubt that the UK offers some of the most fascinating fishing in the most wonderful of settings, if you know where to look. Getting away from life’s stresses for just a couple of days of angling is calming, restorative and is a bubble of contentment. It provides…
September can be a glorious month for salmon fishing. After weeks of potentially dry and dusty weather, reliable rains sweep in from the west and, finally, our rivers will again run high and cool. Spring and summer fish, which have been hunkered down in bad humour and uncatchable, wake from…
The Lowlands beyond the Highlands’ is an often used description of Caithness. But while the ‘Kingdom of the Cats’, which is surrounded by the mountains of Sutherland to the south and west and the sea to the north and east, is low-lying it is by no means uniform. In the…
A punk rocker is nothing without his anger, and Feargal Sharkey, former lead singer of The Undertones, is furious. Sitting beside the sparkling River Lea at Amwell Magna Fishery, with a cuckoo distantly keeping the beat, it is hard to find anything to be even vaguely irritated about, let alone…
One of the great benefits of my position as fishing consultant for the BBC 2 series Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing is that I get to spend much of the year on our great game rivers talking to the owners and keepers who matter. The overwhelming consensus is that fishing…
We have all sat on the edge of a riverbank wondering what fly to use next as the latest neglected offering is dolefully returned to the fly box. Luckily The Field is on hand for such a moment and has whittled down the countless number available to present the 10…
Despite the hype from tackle merchants, most artificial flies only ever catch humans. Trout, it seems, don’t share our obsession with ‘match the hatch’. Trout fishing is a battle of wits, pitting wily angler against crafty fish. It is an undisputed fact that it takes a canny fisher to catch…
In October 1938, shortly after declaring that there would be “peace for our time”, Neville Chamberlain repaired to the River Tweed for some fishing; much-needed respite following the travails of bartering the Munich Agreement. Like so many before him, he echoed the angling bard Izaak Walton’s affirmation that “God never…
Here are 9 pieces of fishing kit you shouldn’t be without whether you are casting from a grassy bank or wading in the middle of a river. 9 MUST-BUY PIECES OF FISHING KIT WENSUM COTTON FLY-FISHING VEST FARLOWS Cast your eyes on this British-made vest with a plethora of pockets…
I was fortunate to have grown up on a beautiful arable farm in the north-west of England. As the youngest of three daughters, I was encouraged, along with my sisters, to grasp life and live it to the full. Holidays were mostly spent in the fields building ‘handy pony’ courses…
