A story of keeping physically and mentally fit in work and beyond.
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After more than 80 fishing years (and counting), my fly fishing book shares with you a clear view of this wide and wonderfully interesting subject. Whether beginning fly fishing, or changing from coarse fishing, or as an experienced fly caster wishing to improve your fly fishing skills, there is much new and helpful information which you will need and can select from.
Then there is the fact that fly anglers benefit from exercise and wellbeing, well away from work and generated by a sport not limited by age. However, fly fishing is not difficult, as you will find when you read my personal short stories, which can be fun.
Hopefully, it will become a modern classic for its unusually comprehensive fishing information in one volume. This is a great gift to the fly fishing lessons learned, which is not typical of the history of so-called best fly fishing books and their other stories.
Although only about the UK, my fly book’s descriptions provide a backdrop for a deep dive into the creative work from other countries such as: authors John Gierach, Robert Haig Brown, Charlie Meyers; David James (Duncan) Jim Ure (The Laughing Trout), Tom Rosenbauer and Thomas Mcguane (The Longest Silence). Film-maker Norman Maclean. Publications like The Little Red Book and The Orvis Guide.
Most of my fly fishing and tuition has been in Mainland UK, and I have travelled far to beautiful stillwater fisheries from my home in Essex. Examples of these are described in individual chapters and, when collected together, cover most of the UK fisheries you are likely to experience, particularly regarding tackle.
However, the good thing is that stillwater fisheries have spread throughout the country, and the Trout & Salmon practical guide lists 350 in 2021 where you can fly fish.
Regarding river trout and grayling fly fishing, I write about chalk streams (fed from underground aquifers) in central southern England, together with spate rivers and small streams (rain fed) in the West Country and the Welsh Borders. Here local and internet enquiries have to be made regarding availability and access.
Then, for spate river runs of migratory wild fish such as salmon and sea trout, I travelled to Devon, Cumbria and the Scottish Borders where fly fishing letting agencies will arrange access. In all cases detailed descriptions are included, together with the tackle being used for the fly fisherman to follow.
Regarding chalk streams, it is important to remember that fly fishing history was written here, where hatches of flies are legendary in the life giving crystal clear water. Catches could be good using dapping methods if the breeze blew, and the best dressed angler you could imagine was then well satisfied. However, if you fly fish developments take place and, in this case casting, fly presentation and tackle as we know it, evolved, often with heated debate in the fly fishing press of the day..
One of the best pieces of fly fishing advice is to know when to fly fish! Often only a few hours are needed to enjoy a good catch, such as anticipating fly hatches or when rivers are at the right level. Which, incidentally, are marvellous features of nature that we become part of.
So my advice is to carefully assess the fishing you would like to do, in relation to where you live and the free time you have available.These are nitty-gritty matters on which your sport and enjoyment will depend, so it pays to get them right,
But you will discover, people connected with our sport want you to enjoy it so, with a little effort, good local information is not hard to find. And luckily, this also applies to an old-timer like me with helpful ideas.
Having considered your home-based fly fishing opportunities it is now time to think about buying tackle and learning to use it, which are reasons for my book and the existence of this website. Please go to the menu and select from any of the three following headings:
After discussions you can receive a personal quotation for a suitable rod, reel and line combination to give you the best possible start, for the fly fishing you would like to do.
If distance prevents us meeting please consider purchasing Single Handed Distance Fly Casting, which simply describes the journey from beginner to expert caster. You just stop when you reach the level required, although ongoing practise is always needed.
Assuming you can visit, I will be happy to individually teach you all you need to know about fly casting, and provide superb equipment. It’s a very relaxed atmosphere and the cost, sensible.
Matt Hall offered to teach me the basics of tying flies in two lessons. Then he proved it by tying a 10 Pheasant Tail Nymph, followed by a similar one with a dubbing body and a hackle. Both good caricatures of insect life in its fishy world.
This finally resulted in me being able to tie my own fly selection. The secret being to apply just the right amount of wax to the silk and the number of turns used for the fly. Some fly tying is done with passion and details from life, mine is done with simplicity and fish approval in mind.
There is a drawing of my fly tying set up, together with descriptions of Matt’s lessons and shopping lists for the tools and materials, which a stockist will recognise.
I then carried them in an upright brief-case and, when working away, practised fly tying whenever possible. Don’t worry about your dexterity, you can do it and I am eternally grateful to Matt for showing us how.
Interestingly, there is a fly tying book about Fifty Flies, giving us fly fishers a large choice, but the list of my own flies for the UK is much shorter. The designs are simple because tactical fly fishing is the focus, which the fish and fly fisher seem to welcome. Perhaps Fifty Flies is a better overseas fly list?
Writing to Eric Horsfall Turner, the secretary of The British Casting Association (BCA) about double haul, produced the most encouraging reply. He expected that adding the world recognised technique to my stillwater fly casting would produce a dramatic 30 percent increase in casting distance.
This involved the line holding hand hauling down about 2ft against the rod hand pushing and pulling, then rising up again as the line extends in each direction. Then once the rhythm is grasped, haul down and release at the bottom, to see the line shoot out energetically.
It took much practice to achieve the required timing and movements, so I could easily imagine the fly fisherman avoiding double haul completely, in spite of missing-out on potential sport.
With this in mind I have developed a simple method to overcome the complexities, which is fully described in Chapter 6. Additionally the instructions are filmed in my DVD (see menu), Single Handed Distance Fly Casting and these should not be missed by the fly fishing enthusiast.
Incidentally, most modern carbon fibre rods and WF plastic covered lines are suitable to learn double haul with.
Having refined my double haul, I entered the BCA Skish Trout Distance event with other beginners and was placed 19th out of 21, casting 33.2yds. With better equipment I won it the next year with 42.1yds, in poor conditions.
After that I only had time to try once more and set the record for T38 Trout Distance of 71.3yds, and felt honoured to be recorded in the BCA fly fishing book, alongside many famous professional names.
However, it is important to realise that double haul has the same name for a short dry fly cast or a distance competition cast, both with the line casting faster and therefore, with more energy.
This all started with the friendly challenge from Ray: ”Hi Mike, I suppose you caught your limit on your sinker, but you wouldn’t find it so easy if you used a floater like us.”
To accommodate my daily report I developed (see chapter 12) ‘the one size fits all solution’ of casting downwind from a boat: a full WF#7F line; a 24’ x 7lb BS leader with three 3mm diameter goldhead Camouflage Nymphs of my tying in its bottom half. Using this I could retrieve the flies parallel to the surface at the depth of the day, simply by varying the sinking time of the nymphs. Another fly fisher would find a shorter cast; a shorter leader; possibly a sinking polyleader and two flies with a 2mm goldhead tying more manageable.
The result of this story was that by keeping my flies at the depth of the insect life being consumed in this watery world, my daily fishing time halved. Perhaps more remarkably, I also caught a (witnessed) six trout limit in three consecutive casts, 3, 2 and 1. Enough said – please read and try it!
Having developed my method of fly fishing nymphs deeply with a floating line, I reported daily and published monthly to help other fly fishers on 900 acre Hanningfield.
Then I also noticed some people, particularly beginners, were using fish finders, so I decided to try one when a friend gave up as a sea angler.
Using it daily for several weeks I found it distracting and was no help at all, particularly when I regularly caught trout on my Camouflage Nymph flies first cast, with nothing showing on the screen.
This is an interesting read about the trout’s world, particularly with hardly any coarse fish present to confuse the issue!
Having started fly fishing with split cane rods, I have seen all the modern developments. Then, when working in industry and teaching at weekends, if I could get suitable carbon fibre blanks from around the world, I would make a few copies of my teaching rods to help clients with casting problems.
But the picture of the test rig I developed has real significance, considering the blank’s deflection under load and its shape of bend, in relation to its intended purpose. This information which I became good at, and the results, were written up for the benefit of angler clients.
When the time came for me to start my fly fishing business full time, I was lucky to find a UK maker of carbon rods for coarse fishing, who was not using his equipment for trout rods much.
So the agreement we came to was: he would supply batches of basic blanks; I would select and precision grind these in my workshop; return them for a beautiful factory controlled brown epoxy finish.
I then made the cork handles, assembled kits of parts and my friend Vic Gibson whipped and varnished them, turning them into Grand Prix Rods which became well known for suiting individual casting needs.
After 16 years in full time business and 45 different rod models later, I retired at 74 having enjoyed the development process almost as much as my fly fishing.
But my lasting memories are the precision grinding, which allowed pairs of rods to be sold years apart, together with clients’ fly fishing holiday stories, having travelled the world.
Reading the best fly fishing books gives the impression that fly fishing for salmon is the most difficult branch of our sport. Well, I certainly thought so too, until I retired and fished the whole of the River Ettrick regularly for three years and I love telling the story!
The river fished best in the autumn and whenever rain raised the Selkirk river gauge to above 1’ 8”, which caused salmon to run the river. This angler would then be there to meet them. And difficult to catch? – they were not, once the river’s fly fishing was understood.
This is all recorded in chapter 15 of my book for the benefit of anglers attempting to catch this most exciting fish, hopefully tying their own patterns. The accurate stories show that the recorded history of salmon fishing needs amendment and that the best fly fishing books only focus on parts of a salmon river system. Please don’t miss out on the whole fly fishing story, including a plausible theory of why salmon take a fly – you will be surprised.
The old BCA seemed to fade away into history in the late 1990’s, possibly due to its focus on elite casters. It then reappeared in 2003 as The BFCC and, without investment or facilities, would have followed the BCA. to the same fateful history.
However, we got together, bought some equipment, moved to the comfortable Brentwood Centre and prospered.
The only change since, caused by the Council’s cafe closure, has been to rugby and cricket clubs where we have been able to make our visitors very welcome.
There is much good fly fishing work for the BFCC to do, which will need more publicity such as with my fly fishing book, so please let your friends know about the best value day out in fishing.
This includes: fly casting tuition for beginners to experts; tackle advice; age related casting competitions in AFTM and International Line category divisions; waistcoat distance casting badges; casting techniques; sensibly written rules; lots of company and chat. There is also much in common with fly tying and The Fly Dresser’ Guild.
In other words, just what I needed at various stages of my fly fishing career!
The growing annual calendar of events appears in www.thebfcc.co.uk and you can contact Tracy if you would like to attend one: tracyjthomas17@gmail.com (it’s tracyjthomas17)
For extra reading my home country favourites, due to the ‘wildness’ of the fishing, are: New Angles On Salmon Fishing by Philip Green (a Scottish Dee fly fisherman); Fishing The Wilder Shores by Sidney Spencer (fly fishing in Scotland and Ireland); Torridge Fishery by Lindsay Gray (stories from a Devon river fly fishing hotel).
To add a world dimension to fly fishing stories and history, I read the following: John Gierach’s Trout Bum; Roderick Haig Brown; Jin Ure, Tom Rosenbauer; Tomas Mcguane (The Longest Silence) and the Orvis Guide. Followed by watching the film: A River Runs Through It, by Norman Mcclean and starring fly fisherman, Robert Redford.
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