Fly Fishing Outside the Box

This is what I look like after 40 years of fly fishing (were you wanting to identify me at a Fly Show or on the riverbank) -- here on the Derbyshire Wye last October following heavy rain, googling a fly.

I started writing about fly fishing in 1992, first about some fishing trips that turned out to be exciting, and then moving on to looking at fly design in the context of trout feeding behaviours.

I published 18 articles in game fishing magazines over 18 years, and then wrote my first book 'Fly Fishing Outside the Box, Emerging Heresies' published in June 2013 by Coch-y-Bonddu Books,ISBN 978 1 904784 56 2, www.anglebooks.com  
it is 272 pages of, well, heresy; and 207 photographs illustrating my points.

...I have plans for others (See below—the next is out)

The main point of this website is to allow you, if you are wondering what the book is like, to look inside it. There's a synopsis, some of the content, a summary of the book's reviews, and there are some photographs too.

…Oh, by the way, I am not the Peter Hayes from Tasmania who is so rightly famous as a casting instructor and guide(see his link herein).

 I’ve added another—I’ve had a good season for big fish, though I’ve been occasionally fishless on Lough Corrib, and can so far only catch little ones on the Wylye. This one, at 25” and 5lbs 8oz, is from my recent trip to Iceland:-

Below is a great shot of the  big pool below Monsal Lake on the Derbyshire Wye. The photographer, Zhuziqi, just happened to be there on a walk in the rain, and asked if he could take some shots. He caught the precise moment that I tied into a lovely wild rainbow of about a pound.  

Size isn’t everything...

On the 20th September I was signing books at the Annual Casting Tournament of the Ritz Fario Club  of Paris, at the London Hurlingham Club—the brochure for this International event contained a chapter from the book and a new piece I wrote on fishermen’s flies that are endangered in France and UK. I was honoured to be the Glitteratus among great sportsmen and good friends. I’ve been advising their watercolour artist, who’s creating paintings of our UK and French endangered fly species.               I’ll be at the Burton Fly Fair with Coch-y-Bonddu Books, tying flies and signing books, on 5th October.                           My monthly column in Trout & Salmon Magazine, The Trout Diaries, started in the April Edition 2014. Although it's a column, it isn't 'columnar in habit' as a plant catalogue might say. Instead it is more like 'ground cover' and perhaps slightly 'invasive’. It’s got things like the fishing adventures of Fifi my Jack Russell in it, and the evaluation of pork pies for lunch, as well as fishing.  So far I’ve written 9, and the reaction’s been rather good: and I’ve much enjoyed writing it.

Trout and Salmon is Europe's biggest-selling game-fishing magazine.