Going the extra mile

One man’s cross-country drive and a fish’s oceanic voyage

- RIVER DEE

I’m what might be called a fish twitcher, and an underwater photographer – I’ll never pass up an opportunity to poke my camera beneath the surface and spot something unusual in British waters. On this occasion it started with a tip-off from someone I know at Natural Resource Wales– an opportunity to see a fish spawning event I’d only ever read about.

It was April 2020 and the UK had just started to allow travel again. The location was in North Wales on the River Dee, a good two-hour drive from my home in Nottingham, so I was a bit worried the fish in question might not be around.