The Water Calls – fishing and advevnture stories from Douglas Paton
Exploring, and the activities that go along with it like fishing, is a funny thing. You can plan and plan and plan out your trek to the Nth degree, cover every square inch of the area you’re in with your map book, Google Maps and prior knowledge and still not be fully prepared for what […]
About five kilometers north of where you’re staying, you’ll see a large rock that looks like a house. People have painted a door and a window on it. There’s even a satellite dish. Stop there. Fish downriver. Don’t go upriver. The water is only three inches deep for a mile. Ask me how I know… […]
It’s been a strange summer here. One of those summers where plans were put in place, routes were mapped out and then everything changed. This happened to me a few times this summer, first when a new boat wandered into my life, then when I signed up for a course for my professional life and […]
I’ve started writing more for my local paper, lately. It’s a fun way for me to get out and do a little bit of writing that is relatively easy and enjoyable. As part of my new beat, I was sent out to cover a local festival. As it happened, the festival was located next to […]
A recent outing to a local bass lake taught me a good number of things about fishing. The first is that all the pollen that the pine trees have been releasing lately has made all the water on the bottom of the valley really murky, which makes fishing tricky. Another thing I learned is that unless […]
Life is funny. One second you’re sitting on the couch enjoying a quiet evening and then, out of the blue, you get a message about a boat. Now, as an angler and a life-long lover of boats, it’s not that unusual for me to get messages about boat. In fact, it happens fairly regularly. This time, […]
I can’t believe it’s been three months since I last sit down to write something. Mostly because it also means it’s been three months since I did any fishing. I mean, I’ve been out a few times, but the conditions weren’t great and the fish weren’t biting. Any writing I would have done would have […]
The low cloud and fog didn’t offer up a lot of hope for a beautiful day as I had my morning coffee, but I really didn’t care. One way or another, I was going fishing. There had been a few weeks where a cold snap, illness and work had all conspired to keep me house-bound. As […]
About a month ago, I was all settled in to write about how great the last year had been, at least from an angling perspective. And it was. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the best year of fishing I’ve had since fishing worked its way back into my life. But, from what I can […]
[This is the fifth in a series of posts about somewhat unconventional advice for becoming a better angler. It’s not tips, tricks or tactics, as such, but suggestions for becoming an overall better angler that you might not otherwise think of.] If there is one thing I’m envious of, it’s people who can keeping fishing journals. I […]