Devon School of Fly Fishing Team blog

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

I know I am not supposed to moan, I’m not a moaner by nature and don’t subscribe to the “poor me” way of thinking but when is the weather going to let up? I thought there might be a break this morning and a chance to pop out and throw a few loops but once again it is throwing it down!

This time of year is a quieter one for guiding for me as many of the rivers of Devon are shut and The Taw doesn’t have any grayling. It means I have to travel further to both work and also to fish. I use this time to catch up with all the friends I have promised I would fish with when the fishing season is in full swing. The travelling doesn’t bother me , you’ve got to do what you can to get to the fish and I enjoy the drive and enjoy listening to music on the way.

I was talking to a pal about driving tunes yesterday and one of my favourites to get the trip going is The Foo Fighters “Times like these”  along with anything by The Specials. I’m fishing Monday (weather willing) and they will be blaring out of the truck at stupid o’clock in the morning.

I was planning to write something about what defines good fishing and being the time of year that it is I sort of expanded that and got thinking about what defines a good season. I suppose it is lots of things. A memorable fish, a big one that you had to get to which was rising in a back eddy, one that you had tied a specific fly for on nothing more than a hunch and, for some perhaps, it is all about numbers. The really funny thing about this is how we always seem to remember the one we had on briefly and lost. I can remember loads of those occassions not just from this season but from a long way back too.

One I’ll never forget is a trip The Dude (Ray) and I made to Wales. The wind was blowing a bit and Ray was sat sheltering on a bank and I tied on a March Brown and was going through the motions a bit. I turned to him and probably said something along the lines of we really needed to get some food. As we have matured the days of fishing, fishing and fishing have eased just a very small notch and we now stop for some food every once in a while. Anyway, I turned to Ray and my rod just bucked over, seriously bucked over. I struck, felt a pull and it was gone. I have no idea about what it was but I know it was a big one and it would have been good to see. Funnily enough a similar thing happened to Ray on the same trip and as I have said before he is Mister Chilled but that one got to him.

I went through a spell in NZ where fish were just busting me no matter what I tried. I hooked plenty but went a couple of days without landing one. On one of those days we were on a river. It had split into two 10ft wide forks so Ray and I took a branch each. I came across  a really good fish rising in 4ft of water and knew if I landed my fly in the right spot he was mine. I even went as far as playing the fight out in my mind before I made the cast. He was tight in one the banks (aren’t they all?!) and there was a lot of roots he could wrap me on. It had been a case of fishing slightly heavier tippet and hanging on when they took and trying to keep them out but this fish was bigger and probably smarter. I thought that I would give him hard side strain into his bank so that he would swim away from there. Well that was the plan. I made the cast, he took, I held my breath and then struck. He was on and my plan sort of worked. Applying big side strain to his bank did stop him from heading where I feared and he shot out headed upstream a short way and bust me off in a similar spot to where he had been holding.  One of those things I guess. The funny thing is that the next day I hooked and landed a fish that I had a long chase down stream through all sorts of obstacles and landed that turned out to be one of the biggest of the trip. This was one I was amazed that stayed on!

 I am hoping to fish on Monday and will tie a few extra flies just in case we do get out…..

The beard has settled down a bit now but I am not sure I am in it for the long term with facial hair.

Below is a pic of the stream in NZ where the magic nearly happened, unremarkable looking with remarkable fish.

wwww.devonschoolofflyfishing.com   Fly Fishing tuition and guiding in Devon

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!

There is always something new to learn in fly fishing. I think that is one of the resons I love it so much. It might be a new technique or new perspective that makes you think “mmm, I see, I’ll try that.”  The real nice thing is when it works and you, in turn, can share it with someone.

There are so many avenues fly fishing can take us up.  It might be casting, fly tying, entomology or rod building to name just a few and then you throw the actual fishing in too. The moment we think we know it all then the adventure is over and then do we just sort of go through the motions?

I was on the river with Richard The Trout Slayer the other day and watching him catch some nice grayling so I guess we’ll have to change his name a bit. Anyway, the thing that struck us was how much the chalkstreams are suffering through lack of water. It meant long leaders, small flies and gentle presentations and it worked.

We ditched the bright pink stuff and fished size 20 bead head pheasant tails and red Copper Johns under a dry. There were even a few taking the dry despite some pretty heavy rain. I had some nice photos of some grayling that he caught and a nice one of a grayling that decided it didn’t want to pose but Charlie, my daughter, had been playing with the camera and set it to macro. We wanted to get the fish back quickly so the photos didn’t come out but they are etched on our memories….don’t get me going about my memory!

Well, I’ve covered a fair few miles over the last few days but there will be more of that in slightly later blogs. One of the trips I made was to Wales to our fly fishing instructor’s get together. I was lucky enough to meet up with a few people making their first steps into becoming fly fishing instructors and I was amazed by the high quality of people I met as casters, fishermen and as nice guys too. I guess our Association’s (AAPGAI) standards are high and having this sort of benchmark that makes it such a challenge to pass and such a reward when you have passed it. I was only there a short time as I had to shoot off  and whilst writing this blog have just had a call from Jim saying that sorry we didn’t get much chance to catch up…I hope we can get to fish soon fella!

I was back Monday meeting up with Chris and Joan for some fly fishing tuition who were over from the Isle of Man to learn how to fly fish. Chris had tried it once before but Joan was a newcomer. They are lucky enough to have both lakes and streams on the island so I gave them a good idea of how to approach both so that they can tackle anything the fish over there want  and we did a bit of fishing too.

It is great when people are learning together as you can show them what to spot so that if they are out and something doesn’t go to plan they can help each other out.

It was great to see Joan land her first fish! At the end of the day it started to get cool so we headed back in for a cup of coffee and in Joan’s case a hot chocolate and rum and reflect on a job well done!

It is typical we now get some rain and I guess I’ll be watching the salmon making their way further upstream.

I got a text from Dave from Portland the other day asking what I was going to be doing now the river season was shut. Thankfully there is plenty to keep me occupied with fly fishing guiding after other species and tuition too but I also get a little bit more time for some fishing myself. I’d told him I was going grayling fishing with some pals and he said he wanted a photo. So Dave this is for you!

The 2 pals I fished with yesterday and I were talking  over lunch yesterday about what fly fishing meant to us and we sort of came to the conclusion that it was everything!

Now, there are probably quite a few other people who could say the same, which is great, but there are also some who enjoy it now and again. I try to fish as much as I can when I have the time and both Emma and my daughter Charlie have become really nice fly casters. When I get new rods I will often ask them to cast them as I get some really good, unbiased feedback. When it comes to the fishing itself I would love it if both of them fished and loved fishing like I do but I have to accept that you can’t just force a passion on someone. That having been said I do use Fathers Day as just a tiny bit of leverage to get Charlie on to the river with me and although she couldn’t make the day itself this year I didn’t forget and she agreed to join me on the river for an afternoon. Usually it sort of ends up as a nature ramble but I took Charlie where there was a chance of catching a few and she duly did the honours. I also wanted her to road test a Helios for me and she gave it a thumbs up!

Charlie is 18 next year and I suspect our time on the river will become even less but I think I can just about remember every fish she has caught and despite my worsening memory I don’t think I will forget either!

Off to Wales now!

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.

One of the challenges of being a full time fly fishing guide is making sure you can get your guests fishing even when conditions might make you think twice. It looked like it might be the case when I had spoken to Dave from Portland about chances of fishing. We knew there was rain coming but decided to have a flier. Dave is as keen as me and I was secretly pleased that we had gone for it.

I mentioned he was keen and I knew he’d be early so I headed to the Hotel a little earlier as I had a hunch he might be there. Spookily enough he was and after a cup of coffee we hit the river. We started by heading higher up the Taw and despite a quiet start we started finding a few fish. We had to head for some shelter as the rain gods did there stuff but it didn’t put Dave from Portland off!

The rain stopped and we headed upstream a bit and Dave spotted a fish, cast to it and caught it. It was simple as that but it was all perfect. After lunch we headed to one of the Hotel beats and again we came across a feeding fish which hit the fly hard. It was a nice fish getting close to 12 inches.

One thing about Dave is that he is cool as a cucumber but when we saw a sea trout take to the air just in front of him I reckon I saw just a hint of the coolness slip just a tiny bit!

I’ve actually been away from giving fly fishing lessons for a couple of days as I was in Athens with the family for some cultural stuff. Thankfully my daughter Charlie takes after her mother and is pretty smart and is into studying Classics. This meant a trip to Greece was a good idea to see stuff up close and personal. We did various tours and the thing that struck me the most was how civilised the ancient Greeks were. Several hundred years BC and they invented democracy and understood what grown up behaviour is all about. I think many, including our politicians could learn a bit about this. Even their plays didn’t involve murder or violence. They might have alluded to it but nothing violent was ever shown. Perhaps another lesson could be learnt?  The other thing that stuck in my mind was that the Greeks were fighting the Ottoman Empire who were holed up high at the Acropolis. Apparently the Turks were getting low on ammo and were taking whatever metals they could from the ancient site to make bullets. The Greeks got wind of this and rather than have their treasured site ransacked they waved a white flag, met with the opposition and agreed to give the Turks ammunition on the basis that they took nothing more from the site! I think that was probably a step too far but I guess you can see what I am getting at?

Anyway, back to fishing, it looks like we have had some rain in the 3 days I have been away. It sort of started Sunday when I took out David and Jan for a casting tune up. This went really well and previously Jan had been lacking confidence when it came to the casts and approaches for various fishing situations she had previously faced. By the end of it she was grabbing the rod wanting to try the next thing I had shown her! David is a good fisherman but hopefully picked up a few tips to help him catch a few extra fish. I am due to meet them tonight for some sea trouting but I have left 100 degree heat in Athens for rain and thunder back here. We’ll see how it goes!

Good luck to Jo and Lyn who are hoping to make their first solo trip on the river having spent time with us. We’re waiting to hear all of the details!

I have added some new bits to the Latest News page.

Previous Fly Fishing Lessons blogs.

A few messages from happy guests of our fly fishing school

Hi Pete

thanks again for a truly wonderful day’s fishing. You taught me so much that I had to write it all down as soon as I got home so that I would not forget it !  I hope that we will be fishing together soon.

 

Best wishes

 

Neil

 Thanks so much Pete.
Thoroughly enjoyed my 3 days on the Taw even if the fish are not quite so big as those in New Zealand!  Still lots of fun.
.
Take care.
regards,
Nick

Pete, thank you for helping us through and replacing flies when needed.  Your expertise was much appreciated and it was good to learn from a master of his trade.

 Best wishes and thank you again.

 John

 

 

 

I had some ladies pop down for some fly fishing lessons the other day. They wanted to learn how to cast and how to fish. It has got me thinking about all this stuff about ladies and fishing. I’m not one of those who believes in pheromones but just simply that ladies are more laid back and if a fish comes by and takes then that is good news but no worries if it doesn’t. I might be wrong and the scents a lady gives off might cause a fish to bite but would it cause both female and male fish to act the same?

When it comes to casting the more relaxed approach certainly works as the whole casting process gets screwed up if we have an iron like grip on the rod. The other good thing is that ladies don’t have the same strength as us fellas and so quickly realise that the rod is a pretty good tool for sending our fly out to the fish than sheer muscle!

It was great seeing everyone throwing a nice loop and also understanding what a nice loop was and what you needed to do to get one. We always maintain that if you know what is happening and why, then you can always understand what has happened when the cast hasn’t gone to plan. Most of all though it is about having some fun and I think the ladies had that!

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