The Wild Trout Trust autumn newsletter arrived on Thursday bringing its usual fare of news about conservation projects and forthcoming events. The first of the latter takes place today with the Fly Fair at Stoke on Trent. I know that the WTT will be there so do go along to their stand and have a chat with them. If you aren't a member do consider joining this body whose sole purpose is to provide our wild brown trout with a future. The newsletter featured the MAA and our riverfly training day which they sponsored. This was a surprise as the feature has my name at the bottom and I could not for the life of me remember writing an article for the WTT. I know I am getting old and have occasional 'senior moments', but I do tend to remember if people ask me to write stuff. What happened here is that I wrote to the WTT after our training day to thank them for their generosity in sponsoring the day and to tell them how we got on. It's this email that they have published with some slight editing.
I came across this quote the other day
Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a
man to fish, and he'll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and
you're a consultant.
- Scott Adams
Too true!
I spent some time yesterday updating and cleaning up the MAA website so if you haven't visited the site for a while do take a look and let me know what further improvements should be made. It would be nice to revise the photographs before the start of next season so if any of you have some good shots that you would like to share via the site do email them to me. A few more pictures of our wild brownies would be especially welcome.
Now for those of you with cast iron coffee tables as well as cast iron bank balances here is another Christmas list suggestion. Fred Buller has been on the trail of angling's greatest catches and has just published the results of his detective work in a book titled 'The Doomsday Book of Mammoth Salmon'. This complements his earlier work on giant pike. The tome weighs in a a mighty 6lb and runs to 480 pages so it's a seminal work on the subject covering the whole history of angling for big salmon not just in Britain and Ireland, but wherever Atlantic salmon are found in rivers. we learn about massive Norwegian fish of over 70 lb taken in 1951 and an incredible 64 ponder caught in the Thames in 1789. What chance that being replicated today? This amazing book can be yours for £50 from Constable & Robinson or from Telegraph Books for a mere £40 (plus £1.25 p&p).More next week
Ian