Devon School of Fly Fishing Team blog

Fly Fishing in Devon commenced on 1st of March for salmon but trout fishing started yesterday. I met with some friends where we chatted,fished and had some fun.

Water temps were low and there wasn’t much hatching apart from the odd Large Dark Olive but it was just great to be back on the water and in the company of friends.

"so what are you tying on?"

Toby had the first nice fish of 10 inches but Mo topped it with a 14 incher which I missed but Mike was on hand to measure it and help pop it back.

Mo fishing a likely spot

Howard throws a heavy nymph into the depths

Mike works up a pool

www.devonschoolofflyfishing.com  Fly Fishing in Devon-Fly Fishing Guide and Fly Fishing Lessons and Tuition

We’re on the final stages of the count down to the start of the trout season in Devon. One more week and I’ll be hitting the water and trying my luck. The salmon season started March 1st and it was good to hear of a fresh fish being caught down the bottom of the Taw.

The more settled weather has meant fly fishers are getting ready for the season and are looking for some casting tips to get their flies just a little further or to get them to land a little more gently and with no drag.

I met with Chris on Friday who wanted to add some distance and learn to spey cast. We had a 1/2 day to do this and we started with the basic overhead cast and then worked up to the double haul from there. If the basics are right (which they were!) then it is simply a case of adding elements to this. As it was a full on casting session I made sure there were plenty of breaks and a chance for us to peak an eye at the river. It is looking really, really sweet. I am off today to try and trim a few more branches to make it look even better still!

Once Chris had mastered the rhythm of the double haul it all slotted into place and after a quick break we headed to the casting pond for some single handed spey work. We looked at the basic roll cast and from there introduced the Forward Spey and worked on a consistant anchor placement. Chris picked this up really quickly and from there went naturally into the Single Spey. We also worked on the Circle Spey too which is a really useful addition.

He is back in a few weeks time and I reckon he will have mastered what we covered and we’ll add the Snake Roll and Double Spey too.

www.devonschoolofflyfishing.com  – Fly Fishing in Devon- Fly Fishing Lessons,Tuition and guiding

The salmon season kicked off yesterday with pretty good water and high hopes of some good fishing. News is already filtering through of a fresh fish being taken at the very bottom of the river and with a big tide I can’t wait to hear how things will play out.

I still have some light bank maintainance to sort out and loaded the truck with various loppers and a bow saw and headed off to the river. There is a section that is really pretty and popular with anglers and I was keen to make sure that there was going to be nothing stopping a fly getting to a good lie.

I popped on my waders, unloaded the truck and headed down to the river. It looked really, really good and I am afraid that I made an executive decision. I had a rod in the truck and thought it would be right that I had a cast and a quick go at the pool before commencing the pruning.

I got into the flow a bit too much and decided to have a crack at another 3  pools just for good measure. Having felt I did a good job I popped the rod down and got back to work. Wouldn’t you?!

www.devonschoolofflyfishing.com   Fly Fishing in Devon-Fly Fishing Tuition Lessons andGuiding

March 1st marks the start of salmon fishing on the river Taw. I plan to have a couple of casts and to also prune a few branches as well. Mo gave me a hand last week on one of my favourite trout beats and we were really pleased with the progress. There were a few branches that had more than their fair share of flies in them and so the path to a likely looking spot is now a little clearer. I am one who believes in making it a little easier but not too easy!

I met with Andy on Saturday for some fly casting tuition. We covered plenty and he was throwing a really, really nice line by the time we had finished. As he is a reservoir angler he was looking to add a few yards to his cast which he was doing with ease. The fish better watch out!

The weather has started fine here this morning and my hope is that we have some settled weather, it has been a long winter and I can’t wait to be out on the river again.

I got a nice message from Kevin who I had taught last week…he was slammed by a fish first cast he made with a fly on and I am not sure who was more surprised!

Kevin

www.devonschoolofflyfishing.com    Fly Fishing in Devon – Fly fishing tuition,lessons and guiding

Fly fishing in Devon is not far off from the start now. Salmon starts on 1st March with trout fishing not far behind on the 15th. I always like to keep opening and closing days to myself to have a fish and mark the occassion by just being in the water casting at a few fish. Sometimes it might feel like you are going through the motions but after a long miserable winter I don’t care. I can’t wait and we are on the final leg of the countdown!

After writing this blog I plan to try and trim a few trees and start getting ready for the season. I was on the river yesterday with a great fishing club I belong to. As always there was a good turnout and a chance to catch up with, or meet, members you might not get to see through the season. It is also a good to re-aquaint yourself with the river and see a spot you might have struggled with during the previous season become just that bit more accessible after some careful pruning.

Saturday was a case of from the fire straight to the freezer. I’d left behind tailing permit (photos to follow) and 92 degree heat for snow and low lying rainbows. Not that I am complaining, I’d enjoyed both immensely and it was great to help a newcomer, Kevin, on the road to becoming a trout fisher. He had done plenty of sea fishing and wanted to try his hand with a fly rod. Once he had mastered the idea of a climbing backcast the world was his oyster and he was up and running.

We are lucky being located with a lake and river so that we could cover all aspects of approaches to both still and moving water but I have a sneaking suspicion that he’ll be heading to a river some time soon. The trout better watch out!

www.devonschoolofflyfishing.com                Fly fishing guide and instructor in Devon,UK

A good friend lent me a book the other day that he thought might be of interest to me. It is called ” A fishing life is hard work” I don’t know if you have read it or not but is pretty quite eye opening. It is about a guy who worked in the fishing industry and fell out of love with fishing until he had one of those epiphany moments and things started to change.  I think it got bad as it was at the stage where he would drive over a bridge and not peer over…man, that’s bad!

I often worry I am going to lose the truck in the river when I drive over a bridge and try that tricky move of driving and watching the river. I have been know to stop on a bridge and get out for a quick look which, although tends to happen on quieter roads has made me unpopular with other road users. I think they just don’t get it or perhaps they have fallen out of love with fishing.

I am often asked if it is difficult turning your favourite pastime into a business and after a fair time now I can say no. If it is ever the case this changes then it is time to move on but how could you tire of seeing a stunning caddis hatch or watch one of your pupils make a cast that brings the big boy up for the fly?

If you are under the illusion that as a guide you go fishing every day or you are aching to grab the rod from your guest and make the cast then it could probably be the worst job in the world!

I met with Darren, Nick and Lance yesterday for a 1/2 day of  flycasting tuition. Nick and Darren are relatively new to fly fishing but had a really good grounding and along with Lance an insatiable thrist for knowledge. It is great when you have people so keen and they picked things up really quickly. This meant we could cover lots of topics and go into mechanics a little more deeply. I was amazed how controlled they were given the amount of rising fish there were on the lake!

They stayed on for a fish for the rest of the day and I hope the things we covered helped just a little bit. I found out it was Darrens birthday so a very happy one Darren, I hope you caught a big one!

www.devonschoolofflyfishing.com  Fly Fishing Tuition and Guide in Devon

I was going to write this and suggest a list of things that would be cool to accomplish in 2010. There are certainly lots of things I really would like to do and to experience and will hopefully get the chance in some cases but is it always good to set yourself targets? I guess sometimes this is the case and can be rewarding to tick things off as they happen but I want to enjoy the ride and whatever is thrown at me. It can sometimes be the little things like that drag free drift to THAT trout that you would never have thought of listing but all the little things add up along with the big things too.

Sometimes it all comes together, a UK fish to remember….

I think that is why I like being a fly fishing guide. No two days are ever the same and all the fun and challenges that go with it are always different.

I think someone once said that “it’s an adventure” and I’m going to make sure I enjoy every moment I get on the water be it working, fishing alone or in the company of good friends.

Have a great festive period and I hope a fish filled 2010!

www.devonschoolofflyfishing  Fly Fishing tuition and guiding

Apparently the server for the site got hacked into. Sounds exciting, perhaps agents are trying to get the details of how to tie the scruffy klink…

I suspect it is more a case of someone trying to load spam selling products to enhance prowess in the sporting, or more likely, some other arena.  All the excitement! I probably shouldn’t say that as I know the web guys have not enjoyed the ride too much, reminded me of a great film that was out a few years ago called Sneakers that deals with hacking and espionage. It looks like I am going off on a wierd direction again but even this has a link with fly fishing as it stars Robert Redford and we all know his link with fly fishing. Sneakers was actually the next film he made after that fishing one.

I met up with my pal Luke the other day. He builds excellent bamboo rods and has come up with the taper of all tapers for his latest creation. It is a fast one that sort of feels familiar to a graphite rod but still has that bamboo feel to it. You could say it is the best of both worlds and I think that is just about right.  I have either the first or second of these rods and it has the ability to pick up and laydown the shortest of lines but will also throw a long one with needle pointed loops if that is your thing too. It fishes fantastically and works perfectly as a rod for someone who has grown up with graphite but would like to try bamboo. 

A lot of people think you have to buy an old rod to try bamboo but it is great to hear that there is an army of builders making brand new rods on well tested and trusted tapers of yesteryear. Luke also does this and I have one of those too but I do have to admit I am a avid fan of all things bamboo!

I was trying his latest prototype and was honoured to be asked.  To see Lukes wares take a look here.

The fly fishing magazine hunt goes on and I find myself popping into newsagents just to see how many fly fishing magazines they have on offer. Carrying on from the last blog I went to Exeter Station and there were none but I was really pleased to see a healthy selection in WH Smiths in Exeter the other day. They even had an American one which I ended up buying. It is always nice to get a different perspective.

www.devonschoolofflyfishing.com

I love my job more than I could probably write down but as my life revolves entirely around fly fishing I somtimes wonder if when I meet people for the first time (outside of fly fishing) that I worry I am going to bore them within a few minutes talking about fishing. John Gierach said that a good fly fisherman can turn any conversation to fly fishing but I often find that when you are asked what you do for a living it is often enough to get the conversation going on a fishy basis.

In the grand scheme of things it probably strikes most as a pretty uninteresting job ( to those that don’t fish) and compared to “real” jobs it doesn’t really rank that highly on the important scale.  I guess it is no different from teaching people to ride or even drive a car. That having been said I have always wanted to be just a little different (not too much) from the norm and being a fishing guide is just about “out there” and you know what? I like it just that way and man, do I love my job!

Grayling have been the target species of late and Faure was back to try his hand. I’ve a new name for Faure it is the “Inducinator” We found that by finding a pod of grayling that just a gentle lift was enough to make the difference between just a couple and picking off a fair few. We managed a few on dries too and saw a bunch of late mayfly. The fishing was pretty consistent throughout the day but as the afternoon turns to early evening and the sun is covered it just switches off. Sometimes you need these moments to get you off the river and on your way home at a vaguely sensible time compared to when it is summer.

It looked like there were a few other anglers on their way for some grayling and I hope they had a few too!

Although the river season is over on the River Taw our fly fishing school  still has it’s doors widely open. I met up with Keith yesterday who has never really held a fly rod before, bar a short stint on a river in Germany over 20 years ago, so he was pretty much coming at it as a newcomer.

He was keen to learn to fly cast and how to approach river, lake, pike and bass fishing. This was a really interesting proposition for me as with these forms of fishing listed there is a need to be able to cast at short and long ranges and to be able to land your fly accurately,overcome drag and to be able to turn over heavy flies. I was also keen that Keith went home with not only a good understanding of how the casts worked but also how to put them right if they didn’t go to plan.

I love this sort of stuff and was really looking forward to meeting up with Keith and to get him going. As ever, I was early knowing that Keith had booked himself in for one of the Fox and Hound’s ”Full Devon” breakfasts. I met him as he tucked in and I sipped a coffee!

We headed off with a chat about safety and how the tackle works and I got him roll casting. Within a few casts I could see he was a natural. He immeadiately understood the use of a controlled wrist and letting the rod do the work. This was going to be fun!

One of the things that I notice as a fly fishing instructor is that people try and hang on to everything that you are explaining and can quite often suffer from information overload so I make sure that I explain everything as simply as possible and break things down into digestable chunks. It is easy to “get all technical” but I really believe that keeping it simple is best and as long as my guest has a good understanding then they will hopefully enjoy many hours on the water!

With Keith I wanted to make sure that as we were going to cover so much  I didn’t give him too much to analyse as he was a natural caster. As a result when he picked up the concept and mechanics of the overhead cast I tilted the casting plane over to the side to let him see what was going on with the line and rod. This often allows the guest to visualise how everything is working making the overhead cast a whole lot easier and also gets the caster “false casting” really quickly and naturally without me having to explain until after they have learnt it. It also helps with timing, rhythm and casting planes although I try and introduce this during the roll cast as it shows there is nowhere you can’t get your fly to.

Needless to say Keith was a star and we covered just about everything including how to cast a tailing loop, slack line casts, drift, creep and he was double hauling with no problems at all. The fish better watch out!!

I checked my computer this morning and recieved a message from Keith

Hi Pete

 

What a great day.  I reallly enjoyed it and I came home confident that your tuition has given me the confidence to perform on the water.

 

Your relaxed style of teaching was great.  You answered my questions and explained the mechanics of casting so well that I understood it and you also gave me lots of prompts to remind me of how and what is going wrong and also what it feels and looks like when I get it right and how to analise if things get out of synch.  Great.  I will certainly be keeping in contact and would not hesitate to recommend you to anyone who wanted to learn to cast and enjoy it.

 

Thanks

Keith

 

I wanted to wish every single fisherman on the Devon rivers that has an extension good luck. Sadly we don’t have it on the Taw but I took my video down to the river after the rain we had on Tuesday. There wasn’t quite enough water but it didn’t stop the fish from wanting to move on. 

Click HERE to see a few Taw salmon.