downstream

Category: Fly Fishing

  • Week of dreams

    Picture the scene… it’s the final week of my first wild trout season and I’ve been struggling to catch anything. The river has been low for months and the trout have been incredibly spooky. And then the rains come on strong in mid September and the Eden has lifted for the first time in months.

    The conditions are absolutely primed for lift off but my car is knackered, it’s misfiring and spluttering and there’s coolant leaking into the spark plug wells. F*ck it, get the tampons and the tungsten, we’re going fishin’ 

    What follows is the red letter week we all dream about. Fish in every pool, a river you thought was bereft of fish suddenly comes to life.

  • Popping my Eden cherry

    When my mate at work had a stroke, it got me all panic’d about the meaning of life and worried I’m not spending enough time doing shit I love. And with a tiny trout I just caught on the Ribble in mind I decided to decide join a fishing club and try and do it properly.

    I always thought fishing for wild brown trout was a rich man’s game, all top dollar chalkstream’s and Range Rovers. Turns out that’s bollacks, the North West has some prime trout fishing on proper northern freestone rivers. Just the ticket for a fella like me.

    And so it begins on the Eden. I arrived on the beat early and was immediately blown away.

    There was zero fish caught today but I’m writing this a couple of years later and let’s just say the Eden has provided some incredible moments ever since.

  • The Spark

    This humble trout was the first one I got on a fly on a river. I’d had a few trout and a sea trout on the spinners previously but decided to give it a crack on the fly. Used my stillwater dry fly rod a (9ft 5w) with some crappy Amazon fly line and a box of ghetto buzzers and dry flies. Had the trout on a bright orange suspender buzzer (blasphemy!)