In a moment of post Christmas madness I decided to buy myself a drone! A primary driver was the notion of filming myself out on my mountain bike up on the North Yorkshire Moors, Yorkshire Dales, Lake District hills etc but I also had some exciting ideas around filming fishing expeditions. In the end I opted for the DJI Mini 3 Pro because it had the ‘Follow Me’ function which I have yet to use but will be essential for me to put into action some of my plans. So far I’ve only managed a few flights around my local village and a quick sojourn to the River Wharfe but the potential is clear, I wish ..read more

It’s 7:30 in the evening, I’m holed up in a 1 man tent half way up a mountain and I’m defecating into an Asda tie handle freezer bag to the incessant sound of rain drumming against the fly sheet. Only, it’s not actually raining….. Assynt fishing holidays began in 2007. 3 young men and a mountain of gear piled into a 99 plate Mondeo cruising up to Scotland feeling like we were on an epic mission. Turns out we were….Assynt blew our tiny fucking minds. None of us were ever the same because for the rest of our lives we occasionally lapse into daydreaming about the Inverpolly Jurassic park. Some o ..read more

Last October I managed to swing a weekend away with Stu to go do some pike fishing at our ‘never fail’ venue down in Wales. I shall not name it, but it’s a big man made reservoir with an interesting history and has a ‘glowing’ reputation. I’d only fished this place once before back in 2017 but caught my biggest ever pike so was very keen for another visit. Last time we stayed at a cracking little pub near Blaenau Ffestiniog which had some good beers on and no one was outwardly hostile to us so as far as I was concerned it got 5 stars from me. However, Stu decided to book us into a different ho ..read more

Our little Fly Fishing Club, Roundhay Fly Fishers currently has room for a few more anglers. For what we believe is excellent value at £100 you get access to a mile of the River Wharfe near Burley and a beautiful, secluded stillwater not far from Harrogate. Our bit of the Wharfe is not stocked but produces some excellent trout and grayling each year and the reservoir offers challenging but sometimes very rewarding fishing for both brown and rainbow trout. For further details either reply to this blog post or contact me on Twitter @Mantog. River pics Reservoir pics ..read more

Not a lot to write about here but it’s still going in the blog. Back in November myself and Stu drove down to Wales for a pike fishing mission on a water I’ve fished once before (catching my pb pike) and Stu has fished numerous times and “never blanked”. I rarely get out for any pike fishing these days so it was good to get out on a proper overnighter mission with beers involved. However, the pub we stayed at was a touch odd and felt even odder when Stu accidentally ventured into a secret broom cupboard room next to ours which contained a man sitting in the dark, presumably watching us through ..read more

Quick post just to record a session I had back in October, a rare half a day to get out and wet a line. Still determined to get to grips with French Nymphing and actually get good at it. I dressed for Winter by default but it wasn’t actually that cold and I sweated buckets inside my neoprenes! Similar to previous attempts I’ve had, it took a while before things started to come together at which point I caught a handful of shott and a nice ‘proper’ grayling. I’ve been reading different books on nymphing in general, but with a definite slant on French and the one consistent theme is that there ..read more

It could be argued that my trip to Assynt this year began on the toilet. It sounded like I was emptying buckets of water down the khazi but the reality was that me and the rest of our household were struck down with norovirus or something equally nasty and I was spewing my guts up and defecating through the eye of the proverbial needle. As I sat there, quite literally in a shit state I realised my plan to drive 8 hours up to Gairloch later that week and do some wild camping and fishing was well and truly fucked. I’d booked my base campsite months earlier to ensure I had a civilised bracket to ..read more

Saturday night was a damp squib as I was still feeling out of sorts from another dose of Astra Zeneca’s finest and a week of rubbish sleep. I only had a couple of beers and retired to bed relatively early but not early enough to justify waking up at 5:45. Unable to get back to sleep I decided to make the best of a bad situation and put in a couple of hours on the Wharfe to try get back into the swing of river fishing. I’ve always been shit at river fishing and now I barely do any I’m even worse despite trying to read up on tactics and techniques. Fishing a river, it seems, is not like riding a ..read more

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As regular readers of this blog will know, the highlights of my angling calendar were always the annual week’s fishing in either Assynt or Wester Ross in June with mates, followed by a long weekend later in the year in that area on my own. Neither of these events took place last year due to fatherhood and this year was looking like a write off on the Highland fishing front as well due to fatherhood, illness and general Covid 19 lockdown bullshit. However, August 2020 found me with a scheduled pass out for the weekend due to a very understanding girlfriend, manageable health issues and a relax ..read more