Eva and I caught a wild from trout from the Bristol Frome this evening. We rarely take Trout from the Frome, but I took this small trout this evening for Eva's dinner. I tend to only take small fish (less than 1/2lb) for my children's dinner. All big fish go back.

We made a Wild Onion, Elephant Garlic, Smoked Elephant Garlic and Wild Garlic Pesto and Eva had it for her tea. She couldn't stop praising how it all tasted!

Eva also made a giant Lesser Celandine chain and we had a fire by the river. Happy days!!!

The Pesto ingredients;

Pine nuts

Hazel nuts

Olive oil

Vinegar (slash to preserve)

Elephant Garlic

Smoke Elephant Garlic

A small bunch of Wild Onion Leaves

Wild Garlic

My daughter and I managed to catch 35 crabs in around 20 or 30 minutes from the jetty at Dale, Pembrokeshire.

We used a crab line and a drop net baited with bacon and sardines.

The drop net was very efficient catching 3-8 crabs every 2 to 3 minutes.

The crab line works, but the crabs easily fall off, when raising the bait, with the crabs hanging on. So it's best to place a net under it, as you kids pull up the bait. This catches any fallers!

We also caught a single whitebait.

My 8 year old catching whitebait from the shore in Branscombe, Devon.

During the summer whitebait come very close the the beach in Devon often leaping on the shore by the dozens trying to escape predictors. If you are lucky enough to be there at such times, you can catch them from the sure using simple nets.

As soon as I put the gun down on another wildfowling season my thoughts turn towards the sport that bridges the gap and keeps me in wild places, catching truly wild things… sea trout.

These fish start life as humble brown trout but a migratory gene makes its presence felt after a couple of years and, turning blue-silver, some of these small fish head out feed in the estuaries and littoral areas of our coastline on sandeels, small fish and prawns.

They return in late spring and throughout the summer and unlike salmon, they’ll return year-on-year – getting bigger with each passing season – most salmon only get the one opportunity to breed and nearly all die in the process.

Like salmon, sea trout rarely feed once back in fresh water – which makes fishing for them seem a somewhat daft exercise. And they are the shyest of creatures, hiding their often substantial frames in innocent looking pools and in the smallest of rivers. Probably at one of the extreme ends of fly-fishing your sea trout fisherman is likely to be found waiting for dark before casting a line for them with a high sense of anticipation and equal measures of hope.

My river of choice is a small, unassuming and often overlooked gem that twists and gently meanders through a broad, lush valley in Devon.  Recent rain had pestered the region for the past fortnight and the river had just dropped and cleared enough to warrant a trip to try and catch an early season “silver tourist”.

I started as usual - obsessing about the weather, the moon, the tides and whether I have the fly in my bag that will tempt a fish into taking. The trip South has me day dreaming of the river, thinking about areas I want to cover with the flies and hoping I’ll have my favourite stretch to myself.

I arrived early, far too early to be honest, but I got the chance to wander downstream, cross a rickety bridge and settle myself on the bank overlooking a length that I know will have some fish moving at dusk. It’s a magical time, balanced between the nervous anticipation and just drinking in the surroundings – observing otters, herons, roe deer, mallard and egrets as they go about their business. I’ll set up my rods – one on a slow sinking line with two large fishy-looking flies and another on a floating line with a bushy surface lure to pull across the river in the dark. 

The sun sets behind the hills and slowly dusk creeps in – bats zip about the place, brown trout slash at a skittering sedge and then SPLA-DOOSH – the first sea trout makes its presence known 50 metres away. It doesn’t help matters, nor the other couple of fish that boil at the surface whilst I’m waiting – desperately wanting to make a cast but I won’t start until I can’t see the green of the grass on the far bank.

It’s gone 10pm and I can’t wait any longer. Picking up my rod I headed upstream, let out some line and start casting to the nooks and crannies between the reeds and bushes on the far bank. Each cast brings a heightened sense of expectation, anticipating the sudden and savage pull of a fish renowned to be the hardest fighting in British waters. I slowly move down the stretch, casting, gently retrieving the line and trying to be as accurate as I can as it gets evermore dark.

Passing behind a fallen alder I’m now “in the zone”, casting nicely and hearing fish jump every 15 mins or so above and below me. 10pm becomes 11pm becomes midnight ever so quickly as I slowly moved downstream. Then, at 12:30am, that long anticipated surge of life yanks me out of my thoughts and I lift into a decent fish that jumps, runs and strips line off the reel with alarming ease. I need to get control of the situation but the fish is having none of it – powerful runs and dogged spells of head shaking below the surface I’m now almost praying for it to stay on. Gradually I get into the game and can start to control him with the rod held high and line kept taut. 5 mins or so passes and eventually he comes to the surface on his side, I unhook the net and lean down to scoop him up and on to the bank… “My fish!” I call to the world at large and turn my back to the river to admire the prize from all this effort and concentration. He is a good fish, not huge but long, powerfully built and gleaming like a bar of chrome in the torchlight. I check he’s not a salmon (they’re protected here) before dispatching him and putting him in the bag. 

The pressure’s off, I’m calmer but more determined to get a second before I have to leave at 1am. Sure enough the fish have obviously switched on for a short period and it’s only a few casts and ten short minutes later when I get that second addictive take from a slightly larger fish that also gives me the run- around before coming to the net, this one fresh in from the sea within the last 48 hours as he still has sea lice on his gleaming flanks.

Time to pat myself on the back, neck a quick coffee and then head back to the car for the long trip home, beaming to myself with a sense of satisfaction that it all came together once again and wondering when I might next be able to slip away to put myself through that wonderful ordeal again.

We caught 2 Bass from the River Severn that afternoon last summer. You can see the Severn Bridge in the back ground. We cooked them there and then on the BBQ.

We have caught Cod, Whiting, Plaice, Flounder, Dabs, Eel and Bass from this sport at Severn beach.

The boys regularly go back to Aberystwyth, our University. Occasionally we beach cast on the beach outside the pub that we frequented the most at Uni. A few years back we managed to catch this Thornback Ray.

Beach, beer and a lucky catch - happy days!

I have just kindly been given a beautiful freshly caught Devon Sea Trout.

Caladail along with its three sister lochs is tucked away in a fold of limestone in the far North West of Scotland. The limestone on which they sit make for sublime fly fishing. Unlike the acidic, peat bog lochs and lochans  which cover the West Coast – the fast growing fish in these lochs enjoy a  rich aquatic, alkaline, environment with bountiful insect life and hatches. Until I fished the limestone lochs, fishing on the west coast was about the scenery rather than the trout. On Caladail and its sisters – it’s all about the trout.

The water is so gin clear on the limestone lochs you can see a bed of weed 20 feet below the surface as you drift on the wind. On neighbouring Croispol I have seen the flash of a fishes mouth at 20 yards as it turns on a fly 6 inches below the surface. Black-headed gulls circle and swoop to pick off the hatching Olives, while trout snap at them from below. You won’t see this on a southern reservoir, its flyfishing magic.

I was out on Caladail one June afternoon with a good wind blowing. Unfortunately it had been so strong in the morning we hadn’t managed to get out. The downwind shore was lined with foam, full of shucks from last nights buzzer hatch. I was fishing with black thread buzzers – a southern reservoir tactic  not suited to such strong winds and was just about to change to more traditional Scottish patterns, when the rod was virtually torn out of my hand. My heart was in my mouth during the powerful fight that followed – I’d come a long way to experience this and I savoured every moment.  I soon netted a beautiful fin perfect, yellow bellied 2.5 lb wild brown trout which signalled the start of a hatch that continued for the next 2 hours or so. A further 5 fish followed all between 1.5-2.5lb, making this the best days fishing I’ve ever had in Scotland.

A wild brown trout caught from the Bristol Frome. Quite amazing for an urban river. We now regularly see dippers and king fishers using the river. Sometimes we even bump into Roe and Muntjac Deer. It's quite amazing what you can see within the confines of the city these days!