Wild garlic, Bluebells, Lancashire trout and a lone dry fly angler, revisiting bygone boyhood passions.. 

It was a dull afternoon and I reckoned that I should take a trip to the beck, as the overnight rain may have risen the water levels a little.

When I got there I was not disappointed as the stream was running about 6 - 9 inches above summer level. I would have liked more but it was better than last time when the level was very low.

On these small northern becks I have learned, the hard way, over may decades that little fly rods are the order of the day. Any rod much over 6 foot would be typically useless as it would not be able to cast a light line, due to the many overhanging branches present. 

I have written about this matter at great length in my book 'Fly Fishing on wild becks',  yet some egotistical die-hards cannot quite get the gist of it all and seem to think that they are not 'proper men' unless then thrash about with a huge rod on these delicate little streams.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1481250000 

It is a simple question of logic that when casting under such heavily wooded places the top of  a long rod will annoyingly catch in the branches many times. This leads to frustration and lost flies. Alternatively, a faster short rod will not get caught up half as much and it will pick up the line off the surface a lot faster that any lake - length rod. 

The trout were visibly taking various types of dun off the surface. Therefore, I landed several with a general little pattern of mine that sits somewhere between a Pale watery dun and an Iron blue.

The old boyhood magic was really there for me on this occasion. The fish were not giants but they just caught my passion this day.

Being alone in a bluebell wood with nothing but the rising trout and singing chaffinches for company is heaven on earth to a dedicated dry fly angler. 

All fish caught on my dry flies were of course feeding on the surface and cast to. They all went back to the sparking little beck to grow larger too... 

A few lovely hours on the old beck was brilliant - just the perfect place to be on a dull day in May... 

Pink campion and wild garlic kept good company with the bluebells along the boulder-strewn river banks... 

Glorious Lancashire - why would anyone wish to go anywhere else...? 

Find out more about fly fishing on wild northern becks in my book here...

'Fly Fishing on wild becks'

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1481250000

Sun rain and wind but the rainbows came out...

12 May 2013 - on a lonely old lake with the fly rod... 

I thought that it was about time that I visited the water to do battle with a few big trout. The weather was not great for May time but I was not disappointed with the sport... 

When the sun shone it was quite warm, but soon the rain took over the afternoon...  

First trout of the afternoon and not a bad one... 

A nice brace on fly for the table... 

Being pretty cold the fish were quite deep and I used a sinking line with lure to find them... 

I kept two trout. One  weighed 4 lbs and the other 3 1/2 lbs. I also returned several more nice fish that were of similar size as well as losing a few more nice rainbows that fought like tigers with high leaps in the air... 

 

More here...

http://dryflyfisher.yolasite.com/lake-trout.php 

Mayday and the unsurpassable human spirit

This Mayday summer is clearly behind schedule. Lovely yellow daffodils are late along with other flowers of springtime. 

By Mayday in the north of Britain we usually have by this time seen attractive cherry tree blossom, hanging in beautiful pink clusters. However, the damp and chilly spring weather appears to be hanging on tightly at all costs.  Man-made calendars, so beloved of that great control freak the Church, really have no place in the natural seasonal cycle. Mother Nature will decide what is what and when the summer should genuinely commence. The so-called ‘Resurrection’ ethos found within death cults like the Church is nothing more than hollow and rehashed ideals, deviously grounded upon the natural rebirth within the universal cycles of nature. 

The shrewd Church in fact built their Jesus Myth around the seasonal cycle and older Pagan agricultural calendar. Traditionally, the wonderful month of May gains its name from the Roman/Greek fertility goddess ‘Maia’, mother of the god Mercury. She was equated with Fauna, Cybele and Ops; goddesses who were deeply loved and cherished by the masses. 

Fauna's feast day was held on the opening night of May. It was a sacred occasion exclusive to women, as the men honoured Fauna's masculine partner Faunus instead. During Fauna's carnival wine and music blended with magickal ritual.  This produced an outlandish yet blissful mixture of reverberation and adulation for the divinity.

More:

http://www.ufodigest.com/article/mayday-and-unsurpassable-human-spirit-501

April on the Beck with the Dry fly 

I had been very busy with on thing and another but this weekend I escaped to the River Yarrow to see if any sport was to be had on the dry fly.

April can be either mild and pleasantly sunny or cold, hostile and windy. However, on this occasion it was a bit of a mixture with a chilly wild and intervals of sun and a drop of hail too. 

The river was lower than I had hoped but I had high expectations of some rising fish.

Early season trouting is  traditionally  expected to be best on the river from 11.00 am  to about 2.00 pm as this is the prime hatching time for the olive duns. This proved to be the case on this day too. 

As it was, the anticipated hatches never really materialised and the best the stream had to offer was just a few individual large dark olives (LDOs), some pale midges and the odd terrestrial insect struggling in the surface film.

As a bonus, a few spinners also came down later on at about 3.30 pm. I capitalised upon this with an old favourite of mine, the Retro dun...

Above: not many about - but a few LDO spinners showed up and the trout do like these... 

Above: this old Retro dun (an odd but deadly dry fly that is dressed in reverse) is well chewed after being wet in the rivers of the north for many years - but it still works well... 

I flicked my dry fly to feeding fish under some promising branches and was rewarded with several nice wild trout, the best being about 1 lbs 6 ounces  in weight. 

A lovely wild Lancashire trout on the dry fly, returned safely to get even bigger...

Above: a split-winged variant of the Greenwells type of pattern that also produced trout... 

Another fish on the dry fly retuned...

Gentle sunshine was rare but it warmed up the crops of wood anemone that carpeted the riverbanks. 

I shall be aiming to visit this magical place again as soon as possible... 

http://dryflyfisher.yolasite.com/

Mother Nature – The Greatest Artist of All

By Pat Regan: British UFO/Paranormal author and researcher

Driving home along the Southport Coastal Road (25 April 2013) I suddenly noticed an exquisitely coloured radiance in the sky, which was angled to the right side of the setting sun.  But this was not any UFO, it was a natural phenomenon known as a ‘sun dog.’  

I pulled off the road and hurried up a sand hill to get a better look. Thankfully, my trusty camera was close at hand.

A sun dog or sundog (also called a parhelion, plural parhelia, for "beside the sun" or mock sun) is a particular kind of ice halo. It is a coloured patch of light to the side of the sun.

Sundogs can be seen anywhere in the world during any season. In Europe or USA they might be seen 1-2 times per week, but they are not always discernibly intense. However, this one was a real little beauty. 

Above: I zoomed in with the camera and the lovely phenomenon became even more perceptible.

I had seen this type of natural event before and reported upon its existence in several international articles and also the local press.

 Above: in this shot the sun dog is starting to vanish.

I have also videoed other sundogs before in the Southport region.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woHqswqFKxY

Personally, I find sun dogs exceptionally uplifting. They are an intimate reminder of celestial heights and greater spiritual values that are so easy to forget in this overtly materialistic world we all live it.

Sun dogs have understandably been mistaken for UFOs many times in the past, yet this does not detract from their splendour.

Mother Nature, the finest artist of all, has countless lessons to teach us, if we only care to listen.

Council Tree Butchers?

The following is just a little refresher of what 'can' happen when  council authorities get carried away with a chain saw...

This article first appeared on Save Southport Greenbelt website back in 2005... 


 http://ssgb.150m.com/

Council demolishes line of mature trees in Southport - why?

Sunday June 26, 2005

Above: 'Before' the Council tree 'experts' moved in.

Beautiful mature trees on Marine Drive, Southport - waiting for the axe?


Residents of Harrogate Way in Southport  are right to be incensed at the ludicrous butchery of the line of trees along Marine Drive.

I recall when working many years ago with the local arboricultural team, during the time that the dreaded Dutch elm disease was decimating Southport, that we planted hundreds of these now mature trees as small four foot whips along the Marine Drive. To see these established willows and sycamores massacred like this is an act of gross ecological vandalism and one can only stand back in horror at the amount of birds’ nests etc that will have been destroyed via this unwarranted action. Did the Council bosses request an ecological survey of species of wildlife present  from the Environment Agency before undertaking this operation?

When large trees require some essential pruning, let’s say for safety reasons, they should be cut in the winter, thereby minimising impact on wildlife and the trees themselves. This also makes less work for operatives as they are not then in leaf. Sefton Council bosses are clearly out of touch with modern ecological and conservation thinking and I feel that the 'officials' behind this outrage need to be urgently sent on informative courses to educate them for future reference.

Apparently residents had asked the Council to 'trim' these trees and were horrified at the drastic butchery that then took place.

The environment  needs 'more' trees not less and I urge residents to protest further at this disgusting state of affairs. Not only will the wildlife be affected but the residents will also now have a greater lack of privacy and increased pollution/noise from the adjacent busy road to put up with.

"We've managed this operation as sensitively as we can"

Reg Clappison, Tree and Woodland Manager

Above: 'After' the Council tree man moved in.

A huge gape now exists where before proud willow, sycamore and elms once stood.

Local residents were appalled. 

Councils and chainsaws DO NOT always make for the greatest environmental concern!

Brilliant fisherman.... 

Almost reptilian in appearance and the result of millions of years of successful evolution; the cormorant like any other species has enemies and mankind, the world’s worse eco-vandal , is his biggest one!

http://dryflyfisher.yolasite.com/