RH Fly Fishing

    Paul Roberts, who used to own Rovers Tackle in Fareham, ran another Sweepstake competition at Chiphall this year, in a very cold January. Quite what he gets out of it now he’s sold his tackle business is not clear, I expect he does it for purely benevolent reasons, perhaps philanthropy? Whatever the reason this was the first after a two year lay-off due to Covid. £50 for a four fish ticket, including a bacon butty and a hot drink (saving on the norm) plus £5 for the sweepstake. The winner is ’first past the post’ after which he pays out for ‘heaviest bag’ and ‘heaviest fish’, I think there was a fourth place prize too, not sure what, but you can only have one pay-out. The rules are straightforward: draw for starting order heading clockwise from in front of the lodge, one hundred yards apart save for those three permanent pegs, the angler must move upon catching a fish, and the first hour is strictly dry-fly only. Not much hope of catching on a dry in this weather, but it a...

    Invited Brian to be my guest for another crack at the River Itchen before the Association beats close at the end of this month, thereafter no more river fishing until the Trout season starts again in April. As last time, there was a leaden sky overhead, little wind, and it’s been cold for about ten days now, barely climbing past 5C. This was a new stretch to me, and foolishly I neglected to print off the most up to date beat map, so we didn’t know the proper access point and yomped around the water meadows for quite a while until we made it to the hut. Just as well we were properly fortified by an excellent ‘full English’ from Bean Below in nearby Twyford.   The Itchen is broad here and was running full flow but clear. There were deeper channels and shallower runs, a deep slack at the big bend; plenty to go at, but the low angle of light this time of year made it nigh impossible to spot fish unless they were moving.   We started at the bottom boundary to fish u...

    Currently isolating (no, I haven’t but there’s two in the household) leaves plenty of time on my hands, so in a more nerdy moment I thought I would provide a listing of the ‘adventures’ by fishery.   The readers of the Fly Fishing Forum’s Blogs section will not be familiar with the Prequels in the list, but readers of rhflyfishing.blogspot.com will have come across them before. To the FFF crew, I suggest you have a mosey at the other blog, which has additional material and is enhanced with photographs.   In one way the listing could be a reference work which might prove useful for someone who has not previously visited one or more of the named fisheries. In some of my blog posts I fell out of the habit of listing prior visit’s episodes, which is another reason for the list below, in alphabetical order: FISHERY                          ...