The sun's still shining - bring it on !!

The weather down here in the south west has been stunning for a few days now - clear cold nights, relatively warm, blue sky days and a real feeling that spring is on the way. Or am I speaking too soon ? I was out late last week photographing some casting tips with Nick Hart for Trout Fisherman magazine, and before we started I took a few photos of this great looking new Hardy Demon fly reel you can see here. Some fly fishing kit is simply stunning and reels like this really make you want to buy them (I think that all anglers have a bit of the tackle tart at heart syndrome). Nick is raving about this new Demon range. All I need now is some casting lessons off Nick to bring me up to scratch and I could even look like a half-decent fly angler............

Check out pages 136, 137, 138 and 140 in the new Sea Angler magazine - it is a feature I shot a while ago now, about a thoroughly nice couple called Simon and Claire Jackson who love going fishing together. How cool is that ? We need to see more female and junior anglers in our sport. I think fishing can sometimes come across as a kind of "closed shop, secret boys club", when nothing actually could be further from the truth. Fishing is a blast and it is accessible to anybody.

Now I don't as a rule watch any of this influx of US TV programmes that seem to be all over the place - I hear that many of them are very good, but personally I tend to watch films, wildlife documentaries and sport if I get the chance. But one of my brothers gave me a DVD last week for my birthday and you have seriously got to see this - it is a recent US series called Over There, and it is the first scripted television series about a current, ongoing conflict, that being the war in Iraq. I have sat totally spellbound through most of the series already, especially as I was babysitting on Saturday night so my wife could go out with some friends. Over There is simply breathtaking, and it centres on a platoon of men over in Iraq, plus the lives of their families back home and all the various interlinking threads. You can get hold of the entire series on DVD by going here. I have rarely seen such powerful, moving television and I can't get the haunting theme tune out of my head.

And I nearly forgot this - what on earth is going on with English rugby ? First game of the Six Nations and we throw away a good lead to Wales and get stuffed, and then on Sunday we play perhaps the most turgid, boring game of rugby I have ever seen to narrowly beat Italy. If we had lost we could not have complained, we were that poor. Rugby is my thing, I love it, but I am having a hard time supporting England at the moment. The thought of playing France in a couple of weeks fills me with dread. Are we ever going to get back to the glory days ?