INTRODUCTION

UNDERWATER WITH GAME FISH

AVAILABLE PRINTS FOR SALE

ORIGINAL ART FOR SALE

I caught hundreds of trout and grayling throughout my youth, most of them falling to coarse fishing methods on the River Tame, where I did eventually learn to fish the fly.  My introduction to fly-fishing came at a time when I had fallen out of love with carp angling, mostly because of the heavily fished Northern club waters I visited.  To go from these pressured waters to the delights of rivers like the Wharfe at Grassington in late Spring with the cry of the curlew for company instead of the cacophony of electronic buzzers, re-ignited my love affair with angling.  I had been told as a youngster by Jack McCormack, father of one of my angling companions, Neil, that once I had tried fly-fishing the appeal of everything else would fade.  For all sorts of reasons I think I came to understand what he meant by this, one of the main ones being the simplicity of

fishing the fly; if you have ever fished for carp with three rods, a bivvy, bed-chair, stove, cooking utensils, kitchen sink, provisions for a week and 5kg of bait etc, then you can imagine the sense of liberation when you set out for a days sport with nothing more than a waistcoat and a rod and reel weighing mere ounces.  Another is the joy of casting, even for such a clumsy practitioner as myself, especially when a good cast puts a dry fly into the ring of a rise and a fish takes. Then there is the whole world of the fly itself, both from an entomological perspective and the art of fly-tying, and I can well understand how some anglers become just as interested in

		these aspects of the sport as the fishing itself.  I was taught to tie flies by my friend Clive who had the patience to take someone as impractical as myself through the whip finish about three hundred times before I finally grasped it.  I started with simple patterns like coch-y-bondu and pheasant-tail nymph and still recall the satisfaction of first taking a River Tame brown trout on a fly I had made myself. For a short time I became very enthusiastic about fly-tying but soon gave it up as I found it so absorbing that I was spending as many hours at the vice as at the easel. My introduction to boat fishing also came about through fly fishing and some of my best days as an angler have been spent afloat in pursuit of wild brownies - days on beautiful waters like Ullswater, Windermere,Derwent

Water and Malham Tarn.  There is much pleasure to be had in simply being on the water amongst the best of the English landscape, places where the fish come as an added bonus.  In fact, all of my game-fishing has taken me to beautiful locations, places I would have visited without a rod simply for their character and atmosphere.  These include the River Spey, the Welsh Dee, the Towy, the Test and the Lune, all of which ran through my head from childhood books and all of which were a joy to meet in reality. I have actually dived more often with game-fish than with coarse fish and have had memorable experiences with both salmon and sea-trout in rivers like the Aberdeenshire Dee and the Towy and her tributaries and to a large extent diving in pursuit of these fish has replaced fishing for them.  I derive as much satisfaction from a successful dive, seeing these magnificent creatures up close in their natural environment, as ever I did from catching them.

I wish that I had enjoyed half the success with sea-trout (or sewin, as a Welsh resident should call them) as a fisherman as I have as a diver.  Living close to the River Towy and her tributaries I try to dive as often as conditions and deadlines allow, and as a result I have built up an impressive stock of close-up photographs of some lovely sea-trout, some clearly into double figures.   Whilst a poor art student in Carmarthen I used to poach the Towy, but looking nervously over your shoulder never makes for good fishing and I only ever managed a couple of fish around the one pound mark.  There were some nights when so many fish were running it seemed impossible not to catch, if only by accident.  Parts of the river seemed alive with fish, some big ones too, but cast after cast failed to connect. In recent years, especially in the beautiful River Cothi, I have made up for that lack of success by catching specimen after specimen on camera.  To dive in pursuit of sea-trout is now at least as exciting as fishing for them used to be.  There is that same sense of anticipation, a slight sickness in the stomach when ‘tackling-up’ and a real adrenaline rush from success.  I know a stretch of the Cothi well; which pools are likely to hold fish and whether water conditions will make for a good dive.  I usually start at the tail of a pool and swim slowly upstream, as the fish are easily spooked, and a downstream drift dive, although a lot easier, often creates chaos amongst the pools residents.  At first, in the bright shallows, I see only parr, then as I work up the pool I often see a shoal of smaller fish.  It is when the pool darkens and deepens that I start to breath a little harder for soon I will see, usually out of the corner of my eye, one of the rivers giants nestling under a rock ledge.  Sometimes, as your eyes adjust to the darkness it becomes clear that not one but half a dozen big fish are lying up together, squeezed like sardines, to stay hidden from prying eyes.  They don't always stay to be photographed, and although it is a thrill simply to see these great fish in there own world there is a real sense of satisfaction from capturing them in that magical device that is the digital SLR. After seeing so many sea-trout close to I no longer feel any urge to fish for them.  Watching them, sometimes accelerating upstream in water that sends me tumbling downstream unless I almost burst my lungs finning or cling to a rock, has deepened my respect for them, and I always find myself wishing them luck in completing their journey and spawning successfully.

pictures of brown trout	atlantic salmon	northern pike	carp fishing	grayling	pictures of perch	pictures of foxes
sea bass	pictures of tarpon	pictures of barn owls	tawny owls	pictures of birds of prey	grey herons	robins
peregrine falcons	deer	pictures of otters	pictures of squirrels	kingfishers	wildlife art prints	bird art prints