Love is..........

How many of you did this morning ? - woke up, took the dog for a very early walk, completely forgetting that it is Valentines Day today, suddenly remembered half way through your walk, rushed back to the car, then stopped at your local shop on the way home to buy an (overpriced) card and some chocolates, put them on the table before your wife or girlfriend wakes up and then bask in the glory of her thinking that you had been so thoughtful the night before when they see your offerings lying there at breakfast. Who, me ? Never.............

I think my wife knows me too well.

The clouds that have come in this morning can not spoil what has been the most perfect last few days, indeed when England is like this it has to be the best place on earth. And when it is wall to wall overcast and grey for days on end, I want to emigrate. I shot a stunning feature with Nick Hart yesterday for Trout Fisherman magazine, up on Bratton Water fishery, and just the drive from Nick's place up over Exmoor was worth the day alone - it is an outrageously pretty part of the world and Exmoor is fast growing on me. I know the North Devon coastline fairly well through sea fishing, but the moors are simply breathtaking. Nick caught some great conditioned rainbow trout, using mainly a #3 Greys Streamflex rod and matching Greys Streamlite reel and they worked perfectly for presenting the tiny flies he was using. It was flat calm all day and plenty of fish were moving and feeding in the margins, in fact Nick caught a nice brownie at the end of the day as well, right off the end of his rod tip.

Big blue skies give a photographer like me so many options for shooting. Don't get me wrong, I like the challenge presented when you have to make an overcast day look as good as you can (it sorts the men from the boys), but nothing ever beats being able to shoot wide with my 16-35mm f2.8L Canon lens and a polarising filter on the front. Getting in the water and really taking advantage of some foreground interest and putting Nick against the big clear skies is great for magazine photos, and the type of picture you see above is a typical DPS (double page spread) style shot that you need to look for when you are out on a job. Gving your editor plenty of options is always a good thing - plenty of room for bleeding, headings, inserts and text etc. I can not wait for the river season to kick off, for they are one of my favourite locations to photograph. The people who (very kindly and bravely I might add) watch my TV programmes may well know me as a sea fisherman, but in truth I am happy to fish for and photograph anything that looks good and is fun to be around. I don't care much for splitting fishing up into different disciplines, for in the end it is all just fishing to me, however you choose to do it.

I did a load of website updates recently, click here to see full details. Plenty going on this end with lots of fishing/photo trips overseas either in the diary or taking shape, plus a few other interesting projects that are coming to fruition. As and when things happen and I can talk about these plans, I will put them up here. As I have said before, working in fishing is never what it seems. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it..........