Life on a Chalkstream



5th January 2024

Click to view & print 2024 Price List

Dear Simon,

Last year, if you recall, we had a poll to establish the best fishing film or TV series of all time. As it turns out A River Runs Through It, starring a young Brad Pitt, was the runaway winner but what struck me at the time was how few films there are that feature fishing. But low and behold, we go into a New Year with a feature film, Mending the Line, that stars Brian Cox of the huge Netflix hit Succession and Patricia Heaton who is best known for TV roles in The Middle and Everybody Loves Raymond.

The film tells the story of a US marine played by Sinqua Walls who has returned from Afghanistan with PTSD but, despite numerous attempts at recovery in a variety of clinics, is unable to conquer his demons. As a final resort he ends up in a facility in Montana, where his doctor (Heaton) pairs him up with a Vietnam veteran (Cox) who has defeated equal demons from that earlier conflict. Joined by Perry Mattfeld, who plays a young librarian recently widowed with traumas of her own, the three find common cause to chart a new path for their lives through the healing virtues of fly fishing.

Reviews of the film, made in 2022 but only making its debut on a limited cinema release in July last year were generally positive with accolades for the beauty of Montana and the fishing scenes. I must admit I was a little underwhelmed with both. Why is it that all filmmakers seem to believe the hooking of every fish requires the character to display the strength and fury of Captain Quint in Jaws? That said, there were some great shots on fish taking bugs, real and artificial, with the librarian the best caster of them all.

The concept of fly fishing for healing damaged minds and bodies is now established across the US, as it is in the UK, the film reflecting I’d say about 15 years of the sport being formally recognised as such. The first I came across it was about a decade ago when we hosted the annual Fly Fishing Film Tour, a selection of shorts made by independent (for that you can often read maverick) filmmakers. I distinctly recall one film called Healing Waters which focussed on the guilt of being a survivor when many of your colleagues had perished.

Below is the trailer for Mending The Line which is currently available on pay-per-view via Google TV, Apple TV, You Tube TV, Amazon Prime and playing on British Airways if you happen to be flying anywhere in the next couple of months.

Watch the Official Trailer

Darts is a sport. How about fly fishing?

The success of teenage dart thrower Luke Littler sparked a column in The Telegraph newspaper by their Chief Sports Writer Oliver Brown who was decidedly sniffy about any suggestion that darts might be regarded as a sport.

His contention, it seemed to me, was that because darts required little or no physical prowess it failed his test. Now, I like Brown a lot. He is refreshingly forthright about much of the b******t that is said and written about sport in general but I’m still baffled as to why he has taken against darts with such vehemence.

He talks at length about how Tiger Woods transformed golf because he went to the gym to enable him to hit a golf ball further than any of his contemporaries. Ironically, thanks to a Tour now full of muscle bound long hitters and advances in club and ball technology, the game is seen as less interesting with the authorities looking for ways to turn the clock back. 

Luke Littler

I’d ask of Brown if Littler trades in his ham and egg omelettes for meals prepared by a sports nutritionist and replaces his X Box for a rowing machine would darts become a sport? And if not a sport, what is it? A pastime? That seems both insulting and inadequate to say that for a pursuit that has millions of TV viewers, hundreds of full time professionals (by contrast how many UK bobsleighers are there?) and a £500,000 purse to the World Champion.

Which all begs the question, is fly fishing a sport? Turning to the dictionary for a quick fix definition as an answer will only take you so far. Most dictionaries seem to agree on some sort of physical activity being required but nobody defines a minimum measure of such activity. The concept that a 'sport' should be regulated by a set of rules and competitive is relatively modern; in the 1800's shooting and fishing were regarded as field 'sports' hence the ‘modern use’ reference in the Oxford English Dictionary that defines sport as, ‘An activity involving physical exertion and skill, esp. (particularly in modern use) one regulated a by set of rules or customs in which an individual or team competes against another or others.’

But more recently the definition has been loosened elsewhere, to ‘include all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aimed at expressing or improving physical fitness and mental wellbeing, forming social relationships or obtaining results in competition at all levels.’

So, is fly fishing a sport? I think so. It has structure. It has a loose collection of rules or, if you prefer, customs. It elevates and challenges. It defines lives and relationships. It might not be competitive in the traditional scoreboard sense but it does pit man against the fickleness of Mother Nature and her inhabitants.

But most of all, as the famous golfer Bobby Jones said, ‘Competitive sports are played mainly on a five-and-a-half inch court, the space between your ears.’

Following up on Walton

In my, admittedly sketchy, research for the Newsletter which featured Izaak Walton I mentioned in December that there was sparse evidence to indicate why the great author was buried in Winchester Cathedral beyond his family connections to the local clergy. However, I have more news thanks to Colin Jarman and Anthony McEwen who both corresponded with me having read the article.

Colin Jarman, who extensively researched Walton for his recently published novel The Compleat Angler - Part Three, explains something more about the man behind the book,

For us anglers, Walton is rightly revered as ‘the Father of Fishing.’ To scholars, old Izaak was a renowned and prolific biographer of the leading religious figures of his time. Walton published a number of seminal works on the country’s most-revered Bishops - many were close friends; and many fished alongside Walton well before he started working on his angling manual. 

Izaak was also a staunch Royalist in the troubled days of Cromwell’s republican rule. He even put his own life at risk safe-guarding one of the most precious and highly symbolic Crown Jewels - the Lesser George - during King Charles’ exile in France. To have been entrusted with such an important and dangerous task clearly shows the high regard Walton was held in by the highest-ranking clergy.

Given his decades long devotion and service to Crown and Church, it is little surprise that Walton came to be buried in Winchester Cathedral - where he was living with his daughter. In the intervening years, Walton’s early reputation as a religious biographer has faded, eclipsed by the extraordinary ongoing success of ‘The Compleat Angler.’ So much so that later dedications to Walton in the Cathedral unsurprisingly focused on his ever-popular fishing book rather than his long-forgotten spiritual works.



Anthony McEwen wrote along similar lines but added for me a more personal connection in that Walton was Rector of Droxford, a Hampshire village on the banks of the River Meon, which is both close to where I was brought up and caught my first ever chalkstream trout on the fly.

Walton wrote of the Meon, ‘Exceeds all England for swift, shallow, clear pleasant brooks and store of trouts.’ How very true!

All the best for 2024.



Best wishes,

Quiz answers:

1)     George Best

2)     Gary Player

3)     John McEnroe

4)     Bill Shankly

5)     Roger Bannister