Fly fishing forums

If you pick up Trout and Salmon Magazine this month (February) and turn to page 10 you can read my thoughts on angling internet forums.

I contacted the Trout and Salmon editor a while back proposing a piece on Taimen fishing in Mongolia, thinking readers might be as intrigued as I was about the mysterious Taimen, one of the oldest and largest of all the salmonids.

I had written a piece on Taimen in Mongolia for the FT's How to Spend It Magazine (the forthcoming May issue) so it was all still fresh in my mind.

Trout and Salmon replied that they would be interested in a feature on internet forums. They had seen something I had written on forums in one of my columns. I offer Taimen, they ask for forums - this happens all the time in publishing.

It didn't matter. I really am intrigued by web forums and the way they work and wanted to write something that outlined the good, the bad and the ugly of web-based conversations.

I thought the article would be a useful way of telling people who might never buy the Financial Times that (a) a fishing column exists there, (b) that I write it, and (c) that the stuff that I write can also be read here at RichardDonkin.com.

Another thing is that I read Trout and Salmon magazine (even if I experience a feeling of deja vu over many of the articles) so it was nice to be part of it for a month.

To all my fellow members of the fly fishing forums, if any of you are reading this and have read the magazine, I hope you think I did the subject justice.

Fishing notes

Welcome to my new fishing blog, Tight Lines. Up to now I have written fishing notes within my original blog, Donkin Life. These include references to fishing trips in Mongolia, Norway, Scotland and Newfoundland, often as they happen.

From now on I am separating my fishing notes so that those who are only interested in angling news and references need look no further than these pages. I shall continue to post on my web site the fishing column that appears monthly in the Financial Times.

But in the coming weeks look out for an update to the fishing section with the addition of new links and features. The second blog on this page is news from the River Wandle, transferred from Donkin Life.

I'm hoping that future notes will also be a little more informative with more links. If the notes on Mongolia appear a little thin it is because the meat must wait until my article from the trip has appeared in the FT's How to Spend It Magazine in May.