It’s been well over a year now since our initial taster lesson at Mere Beck with Gordon into the art of fly fishing so we booked ourselves a whole days tuition with Mike Roden, a qualified APGIA instructor and member of the Hardy Greys Academy. We’d been looking forward to this since we’d booked it but the weather looked a bit grim and as we made our way to Curley’s Fly Fishery in Horwich through some very heavy showers we [... read rest of post]
For some bizarre reason I woke up early last Sunday morning so after raiding the freezer for some frozen black lugworm and mackerel I made the epic journey of 5 minutes to the River Douglas to have a quick sea fishing session of a couple of hours up to high water then one down. Although there were a few black clouds on the horizon the weather stayed warm and dry and a few more anglers turned up to see what [... read rest of post]
After my recent poor form in the sea fishing department we had an evening session fly fishing at Mere Beck Fly Fishery, near Preston, a few nights ago. The reports had been pretty poor and apparently trout don’t like bright sunny conditions so the prospects of a fish didn’t look good but we packed some sandwiches and drove the whole 10 minutes (I know!!!) up the road to have a go anyway. Chatting to Gordon, the Owner / Manager, who [... read rest of post]
Once more the urge to get up at stupid o’clock overcame my common sense as it does with a lot a sea anglers as I made my way South through Liverpool and under the Mersey to meet up with a few of the guys from the Wirral Sea Fishing website at Perch Rock, New Brighton. The target species for this sea fishing trip was Thornback Ray as a few had come out of the mark in previous weeks. We would [... read rest of post]
Late last week I received a copy of “Bye Bye Blackbird – Worlds Past and Worlds Away” by Eileen Berry, a book containing poetry from her memories or Marshide, Southport through to Northern Sudan. Eileen’s editor, Susan, asked if she could use one of my photographs for the cover a few months ago and until I received an email asking for my address I’d completely forgotten about it. My first ever published photo – brilliant! Susan found the photo from a post [... read rest of post]
With the wind in the West we decided on a late night sea fishing session up at Rossall near Fleetwood last Saturday to see if any Bass were out playing in the surf. On arrival and after a fly by from the Red Arrows along the promenade we had a quick look at the state of the sea and although it looked a bit rough it seemed fishable enough so we quickly set up the gear and launched some black [... read rest of post]
A few more photographs from our recent visit to Anglesey which include our first visit to Abermenai Point The protected dune plant, Sea holly (Eryngium maritimum) is native to most European coastlines and resembles a metallic blue flowering thistle growing to a height 60 cm. In Elizabethan times in England, these plants were believed to be a strong aphrodisiac and in 2002 Sea holly was nominated the 2002 County flower for the city of Liverpool.