A Diary.

 

 

 A fishing diary will never find a better reader than the man who wrote it '.

ARTHUR RANSOME 'MAINLY ABOUT FISHING'.

It was not until1962 that I started writing a fly-fishing Diary. Before that time I had made notes in diaries I have got as a Vet. Surgeon from a medical firm in Copenhagen.

I started first after I have read Arthur Ransome's book "Mainly about Fishing",1950 - where the author recommends to write diaries.

I went to the bookbinder Haarslev in nearby  Hobro, and he made a diary of 200 pages 14 x 24 cm and bound it in bordeaux- coloured oasis goat-skin. It covered the next five years and after that it has got five  'brothers' more - most often with 300 pages -then the prize for the binding is nearly the same – independent of the number of pages! My good fortune was, that he recommended 'ledge paper' - calendared but absolutely no chalk - and as such I could use it with all types of writing tools and moreover if needed even use water-colours.

The pages were totally blank without any disturbing lines etc. In the first one I myself numbered the pages by hand; but in the later ones I abandoned that. Shall I refer to some earlier writings then I use the dates. It has one drawback - I have to look for the year on beforehand, then each item starts with date & month, but the year is only written at the start of each year.

To prevent 'too much of a hitch' I use a sort of ruler-paper, when I shall write several text-lines.

Already early in my career as a diary-writer I used to include samples of materials for mentioned flies, and in the last years I have moreover included samples of the flies glued to the pages - one has to use a flexible glue that doesn't penetrate the paper [Devcon Duco cement].

It has of course given some problems, when I shall write on the next page. It has always been a problem to me how to store flies given to me by friends - should I place them in separate boxes with the tiers name enclosed or in bigger boxes together with flies from others? Storing them in my diaries can keep them in order and moreover keep them at a place related to the time I got them.

Should I to day let a new diary be made then I would ask the bookbinder to place narrow strips of heavy paper between the sheets of paper.

 My angling diaries have changed style so to speak over the last years: Now they are more a sort of gastronomic calendars with enclosed etiquette's of famous wines and whiskies, and as a result of this the diaries are showing symptoms of bursting - using an addition of heavier paper could give them a better opportunity for 'expansion'.

Underneath I give some proofs of the ways I have used my diaries!

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my first real successful watercolor of a dayfly. I caught the fly on my home stream and made the drawing and coloring shortly after at home. I have most of my experiences in this new hobby in my diary and can by this follow the very fast progress I made. It’s the special writing/drawing with china-ink in a diary:
There is no way back – done is done and the same with painting.

 

 

    This is from drawings made the same year – 23. August – where I inspected some dayflies under a magnifying glass to see the finer details of their anatomy.

 

This is a special page in my diary – 22. May 1971 – I met one of my eldest friends, who told me, he had not any more of a dry fly I had given him years ago. I had to speculate a bit to find out after his verbal description, what fly it was. In those years we created and tied a lot of flies; but had never thought to give them names. This fact bewildered some fly fishers who met us at a stream, when they asked what fly we had caught our fish on, and we couldn’t give them an answer. In their eyes we looked like pure novices – not knowing the name of the flies on our casts.

Looking back in my first diary I found the recipe – I had created it to my eldest son, when he started fly fishing – I had equipped it with a body-hackle so that it would be easier for him to retrieve it, should it be caught in the vegetation.