Category — Misc

Right then, the long-awaited blog by one of my good pals has gone online. Actually, it’s been running for more than a month now, but I only just noticed it. Take it from me, this one will be well worth reading. Find it here:

Turning Over Small Stones

The author used to live close to me here in Scotland, but has now buggered off to the USA. Trout and grayling all over the UK have been having a party to celebrate. Eccles, as he is now apparently known, likes cakes, streamers, dry flies and occasionally (masterful) nymphing. He’s a master with the trout, though still has some way to go with large grayling (ask his wife…)

Just had to post this.

First off a wonderful wee article about the vendace, the UK’s rarest freshwater fish: click here.

Then a pretty unbelievable, and extremely unrelated, article from down in New Zealand: click here. Gave me a good wee chortle that one.

How to Fish by Chris Yates is possibly the best fishing book I’ve ever read. It contains no trout fishing, flies, waders or mention of the word ‘tippet’. He even proclaims himself as devoid of the trout fishing bug, preferring the Perch found in the sedate rivers of the south of England to the trout of the tumbling tirades up here in Scotland, or anywhere else for that matter. All of this is totally inconsequential.

As a writer Chris Yates has achieved something close to perfection with How to Fish. He captures the beauty, obsession, madness and gladness of fishing with the most fantastically simple, yet hypnotically engaging style I’ve ever come across. It sometimes seems amazing to me that a writer can have such a thing as their own ’style’. After all, they’re only words, and how many ways can there really be of arranging ‘fishing’, ‘wonderful’ and ‘fell in’? Reading Yate’s offering I feel I’ve understood just as much about writing as about the glory of fishing. The pace of words, the construction of the chapters, it’s all brilliant and just draws you into a different world, populated by stripy fish and gently wafting weed.

The first time I picked the book up I had a slightly tentative feeling towards coarse fishing, born of several years of exclusively fishing flies. That feeling lasted about two seconds once I started reading, and it wasn’t long before my own memories of catching perch and tench as a child crept back. I now find myself in the position of feeling close to finally understanding something about the universality of fishing. It really is about a mindset, and the species and methods are almost meaningless beyond personal preference. Funnily enough I was reading John Gierach’s essay on ‘The Purist‘ just last night, which was rather timely.

If you want to read How to Fish for yourself, you can get a copy from here if you like. Mine is currently doing the rounds of all my family and fishing pals. For a sneak preview, I found the first chapter here in full. As a final aside, I recall downloading a podcast some time back featuring Chris Yates interviewed by Simon Mayo on BBC Radio 5 Live as part of the promotion for the book. It was very interesting to see how the pace of Chris’ voice seems nicely tied in to his writing style. I have a copy of it but have been unable to locate one online. If there’s any interest I’ll try and find a way to distribute it, if doing so isn’t illegal.

It’s not fishing, but it is amazing.

I saw something this weekend to make your eyes widen and your pee turn slightly purple. I was on a wee single track road in the west highlands, checking out a loch I want to fish. Suddenly a sheep came zipping past, faster than I ever realised a sheep could travel (that wasn’t in shrink wrap in the back of a Sainsbury’s lorry). A swift, slightly manic`bound’ I would say. About two seconds later a pair of collies tore past me and bolted up the grassy bank to try and cut off the sheep’s escape route. The whole shebang then ensued, around the corner, before replaying in the opposite direction as once more the sheep bounced past me along the road with the dogs in eager chase. This time, however, there was a cattle grid fifty yards down the road. I expected the sheep to come to a spluttering halt, but instead she jumped clean over the grid and careered off down the road. Even the wily dogs were careful enough to go through the large open gate right next to the grid.

For the last two days I’ve woken up with this bizarre image in my mind of that fluff ball of a sheep in mid-air over the cattle grid. I went to check it out, and it was longer than I am tall, which must make it at least 2 metres. That is some sheep.

Fishing this weekend I hope. Then it’ll be back to real blog posts and not this kind of sheepishness.

I recently started reading `How To Fish‘ by Chris Yates. It’s actually not about ‘how to fish’, and it’s not even about fly fishing, well at least not principally. It’s main subject is coarse fishing, particularly for perch, but the essence of this seems to be utterly identical to fly fishing.

I’m up to chapter 6, and it’s already quite clear that it is a really beauty of a book. Chris has a wonderful style of writing. It is deceptively simple, but also extremely elegant and insightful. The best thing I can say is that he seems to be able to communicate a feeling which gets somewhere close to one’s soul. I’ll try and write a proper review when I’ve finished, so for the moment I’ll leave you with a wonderful paragraph.

“…fishing offers a dimension where, even if you don’t cast very far into it, you can be free of the wired-up world and suddenly in touch with an equally complex, less concise but deeper-rooted reality. The simpler your approach the more intimately you’re involved; uncluttered by a barrow-load of equipment, untroubled by the passage of time, hopefully undisturbed and often unambitious, you rediscover the art of improvisation that you mastered as a child, and as you become more absorbed in the watery surroundings you begin to notice details - the bending of a reed, the forming of a ripple, an abrupt stillness - that gradually join up to create an event that you may be part of. “

Ansel Adams was one of the greatest photographers ever. His landscape photos of Yosemite in the west of the USA really did set the standard for black and white photography of that genre. Photos like `Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico‘ have a kind of magnetic power to draw your eye around the frame. The sharpness, depth, tonality and composition of such photos remains unsurpassed. The fact that many of his great photos were taken in the early part of the last century does sometimes seem hard to believe.

Folks in the UK now have a great opportunity to see a wonderful selection of his own hand-printed photos at the `Ansel Adams - A Celebration of Genius’ exhibition which is now on display in the centre of Edinburgh. If you stand at the east end of Princes Street and look south across the top of the station you’ll see a big poster proclaiming ANSEL ADAMS. The exhibition is on at the City Art Gallery, which is right below the poster.

I’ve been twice, and it really is absolutely fantastic. It’s also a very rare chance to see the real thing, hand-printed by the Master and simply incredible to behold. Well worth the trip from Glasgow, Fife or anywhere in the UK really.

The photo in the first link above link is a horrific JPG version of the original. If you go to the exhibition and see the original you will be truly amazed at just how good a hand-printed black and white photograph can look.

Have a look at the (slightly poor) promotional website here.

Included in the exhibition is a display by a Scottish photographer called Lindsay Robertson. I hadn’t heard of him before, but his photos are also wonderful. He shoots using large format black and white film (like Ansel), and some of the prints are more than 5 FEET wide. You stand in front of them and truly feel like you could step into the frame and feel the cool breeze creeping across Rannoch Moor. His contribution to the exhibition is really excellent.

What else can I say? GO!

At the moment I’m getting more and more interested in photography. My new dSLR has really opened my eyes, and now I’m photographing more with my old manual gear too. During my internet browsing I’ve come across a few great photographers, but Bruce Percy has stood out as particularly excellent. Have a look at his site here. He seems to be based in Scotland, but his photos are from all around the world. Well worth a look.

It was one of those sunsets tonight. The light crawls right through the cooling air and onto the skin. No longer was I a passive observer of a distant photograph. The light fell onto me and everything around. Deep orange and red, oozing across south Edinburgh and coating everything. It’s the kind of sunset impossible to capture on film or pixel, for the light is everywhere except inside my camera. I snapped away gleefully, but I hope the feeling will last longer.

People say: “they don’t make stuff like they used to”. I say this, my pals say this and my dad certainly says this (though I secretly think he’s referring to people as well…). It was rather nice this evening to see that in some quarters, at least, they actually DO make stuff properly, like they used to, good and hard.

I’m always on the look out for a hook to turn a bad situation into something positive, and hopefully something to write on the blog, and this momentous event certainly falls into this category. This afternoon I bought (or rather, WAS bought) a rather cracking bottle of fine single malt whisky. Having taken a good while in the shop carefully sifting through a few malts, I decided on something I hadn’t tried before, from the west coast of Islay. It was a Bruichladdich, and mighty fine she was too.

As I climbed out the car this evening, I put the shining silver case on the roof of my car. Unbeknown to me it was upside down, so after locking the car and turing to gather the whisky and other faff I hoisted her briefly into the air only for the bottle inside to quietly slip out and roll off the roof. I’m sure the scene was comical: a bottle of fine malt careering off the roof, with a stupefied punter moving in comical slow motion to try and grab it whilst simultaneously grasping a large potted plant and two cameras.

The bottle hit the deck with a bone crunching, slightly eye watering `ting’ before quietly rolling up against the pavement. I dashed over, picked her up and cradled her in my shaking arms. Unbroken, just slightly chipped. That is some hard-ass glass man shit. It’s nice to see something made good and proper.

I raised a quiet toast this evening to a fine malt, a solid bottle and good the old fashioned tough stuff spirit. It’s important for fly fishing too, of course. Not long to go now…

There has been some incredible weather this winter. Wild rain, freezing fog, bright sunshine and snow. One of the most memorable days was the 12th of January. I drove up through the central highlands, and took loads of photos. I thought I’d share my favourite one.

I recently got a new camera, and it’s been a bit of a beauty. Photography provides a nice distraction from winter fishing blues. I suppose taking photographs of rivers is about as close as I can get at the moment..