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.
We might not have done very well in the sea fishing stakes during our summer visit to Anglesey but we managed to get out and about a few times so here are a few of the better photographs I took while we were there. All of the photographs in this post are taken using the Canon EOS 450D with most of them using the standard ‘cheap’ 18-55mm lens. To enhance the skies I used a hoya circular polariser which also cut [... read rest of post]
We’ve just returned from a couple of weeks sea fishing, walking and generally relaxing on Anglesey, one our favourite places to unwind. We stayed in a cottage at Ty Cristion which as usual was excellent and as the schools hadn’t broken up was very quiet so when we needed to just sit in the sun and watch the Buzzards circling overhead or read, our rest wasn’t shattered by the screams of “can we go to the beach now” from hordes [... read rest of post]
I’ve given up trying to get a photo of this chrysalis hatching. I’ve been getting to the car park early and visiting it and a few others like it, to see if I can catch a Comma butterfly emerging but I think this latest damp, cooler spell of weather has effectively stopped them hatching until the sun returns with a bit of warmth. Which is a damn shame as I’m going away for a couple of weeks and they’ll have [... read rest of post]
After spotting a Cinnabar Moth a couple of weeks ago I started looking for the tell tale signs of the yearly invasion and today I found the first signs of the annual ragwort decimation by these tiny Cinnabar Moth (Tyria jacobaeae) caterpillars. They were only about 1cm long but they were everywhere I looked, marching over their chosen battleground, leaving no Ragwort plant standing. Were they in Queens Park where I’d seen the adult and been looking all week? Were they hell… [... read rest of post]
Sea Fishing… it brings out the nutter in some people and last weekend I joined the crazy crew as a few of us arrived at the mark known as The Rock Channel at New Brighton on the Wirral Peninsula, Merseyside at 4:15am. Yes, you read that correctly just past 4 in the morning, I’d left the house at 3am arriving to meet a few of the guys from the Wirral Sea Fishing forum after driving South through an eerily quiet [... read rest of post]
