Getting to know your river So, you’ve identified a river you’d like to work on. Since we last spoke, you might even have started making your first approaches to some of the people we mentioned last month. Yet now, through … Continue reading →

Who to talk to For anyone who doesn’t like lists, it’s probably best to look away now. But for those of you who don’t mind too much, read on… This month, I’ve tried to distil some answers to one double … Continue reading →

A river of your own “Even in the remotest corners of the British Isles, our wild trout are under threat. Housing estates, conifer plantations, intensive farming, municipal water supply, and a hundred other symptoms of progress damage the fragile landscape … Continue reading →

How we got stuck in Jon Beer once said that it’s not always obvious where a story begins. Fair enough, he was writing about another river entirely. But let’s start the Wandle’s modern era in October 1995, when something went … Continue reading →

Meet the Wandle Ever since I found I could catch a fish on a fly, I’ve been mesmerised by the ambiguity of chalkstreams. On the one hand, there’s the natural mystery of where all that water comes from, literally springing … Continue reading →

Take me to the river I’ll start this column with a bet. If you’ve hit upon a site called Fly Fisher’s Republic, then cast around its links for long enough to find this article, you’ll be almost as fanatical about … Continue reading →