ARTICLES DEDICATED TO THE SPORT OF FLY FISHING
I am in a fortunate position to have a few close friends and associates who are, shall we say, high up in the fishing tackle food chain. And as a consequence of their generosity, I am privileged to be given […]
As a flytyer, I am always drawn to vintage auction lots that contain healthy proportions of tying materials and associated ephemera. More so if the auction lot is north country related or of Yorkshire origin. I like to buy “working” […]
The upstream presentation of traditional soft hackled wet flies on rivers is a subject close to my heart. It is a presentation method I favour, even though it is not a productive searching technique for trout and requires more effort […]
It is safe to say that for the past century a certain brand of silk thread has become synonymous with the tying of traditional north country spiders. I am of course referring to Pearsall’s Gossamer which after two centuries of […]
In his 1924 publication Fly Fishing in Northern Streams, Lieut-Col William Keith Rollo made no bones about being a “Wet Fly” fisherman in an age of “dry Fly” supremacy. And in this now largely forgotten slim volume, he reprints some […]
A number of years ago I set out to dress a selection of traditional North Country spider patterns in the most authentic manner possible. With a degree of enthusiasm that bordered on insanity, I scoured the internet and fishing tackle […]
Providence often takes a hand in the world of collecting vintage fishing tackle and fly-dressing materials. More often that not, valuable collections are split up, and dispersed around the four corners of the globe, without ever coming to form the […]
Arthur Ransome remarked that “Anglers, make fine old men”, and George Morrell, angler and schoolmaster comfortably fits into Ransome’s characterisation of a “fine old man”. A native of Darlington, and a leading light in the Congregational Church. George Morrell first […]
I have a secret passion for angling books. Not the well-known classics of the chalk streams, or even the collectable masterpieces of the North Country. But moreover, angling literature of the interbellum period of the 1920’s and 30’s. When, it […]
