Gone fishing

Comedian, radio presenter and author Mike Harding is writing a book about how to tie north country flies and needed a hand in photographing the steps involved. I volunteered to take pictures of him tying the little hooky things but didn’t expect to be given a pair of outsize waders and told to get in the river with him. We drove out to a spot by the river Ribble near Settle where Pen-y-ghent could be seen in the distance and literally waded in. As it turned out we got a few shots worthy of the book’s front cover.

Then Mike spotted a pride of fish flopping about, or whatever the technical term is, and gestured that he’d catch one for the camera. I snapped a few shots while Mike snapped his rod! One section of his carbon-fibre rod completely broke away, but it didn’t stop him landing a brown trout.

We did a four hour session as well that day, photographing over two hundred step-by-step images for the ‘how to ...’ section of the book. The dining room of his house was rearranged to build a small desktop set with a colorama cove, a soft box over the top and a snoot to catch some highlights. I used a Nikon D700 with a 300mm lens over Mike’s shoulder to get in on the action.