Whether you are fishing a stream or a lake, there is without doubt a certain kind of ‘behaviour’ that you have to adopt if you want to catch fish.

What I’m talking about is the need to ‘stalk’ trout. Remember that trout are extremely shy and get ‘spooked’ by even the slightest unnatural movement on the river bank or lake shore.

Stalking Trout

When you are out fly-fishing on a river or a lake, you have to behave like a hunter! You have to make all your movements very slow, stealthy and deliberate. You have to hide behind trees and rocks as much as you can. You have to crouch down, close to the ground. And you have to be able to sit or stand perfectly still for long periods of time.

When stalking trout, it’s helpful to have some information about how they can detect you through their eyes and through their sense of smell.

How Far Can Trout See?

Here is a diagram that illustrates the trout’s field of vision.

A Trout's Field of Vision. Click on image to view full-size.

As you can see, the trout has quite an extensive field of vision, but there are areas where he has no vision at all. We can think of these as the trout’s ‘blind spots’.

You’ll notice that trout have a major blind spot directly to the rear of their bodies. This means that when stalking trout, you should – if it’s at all possible – approach trout from behind. In a river, this means approaching each trout from a position directly downstream of where it is lying.

But when you’re fishing a lake, it may not be possible to get yourself behind the trout all the time. Thus on a lake it is even more vital that you keep your body low down at all times while stalking trout.

From the diagram, you should also be able to gain the impression that the farther away from a trout you are, the less likely it is that he will see you.

This is because the trout’s field of vision conforms basically to the shape of an inverted cone, especially above the surface of the water. This is why it is important to stay as far back from the water as you can, and keep a low profile if you haven’t got cover.

This is particularly true with lake fishing. Trout in lakes end up facing in all different directions as they cruise around looking for food. Even if a trout is swimming straight toward you on the bank, you won’t fall into its field of vision unless you are either too close to the water’s edge, or standing up too tall.

Trout can Hear, too !

You also need to be aware that trout have an extremely acute ability to hear things underwater. By ‘hear’ I mean that trout pick up vibrations. Trout have vibration receptors on their bodies, which they use to locate food at night or when the water is discoloured. But trout also use their vibration receptors for identifying danger.

If you walk through a stream too quickly and thus disturb rocks and stones on the streambed, you will create vibrations in the water that any trout in the vicinity will immediately detect.

Similarly, if you drop something like a fly box onto the bottom of your boat, vibrations will radiate out into the lake around you, potentially scaring all the fish. So at all times you have to be careful not to create vibrations in the water you are fishing.

If the trout sees or hears you at any point, it’s all over! You won’t catch him! Trout are extremely timid and will adopt evasive behaviour at the smallest hint that danger is present.

But if you can creep up on the trout and cast a fly to him without revealing your presence on the bank, you may well have him in your landing net within a matter of minutes!

Looking for trout in a river or lake is called ‘spotting’. Spotting trout is great because it enables you to cast to a fish and then watch to see if he takes your fly or ignores or refuses it. If you know where the fish is before you start casting, then naturally you are able to make your cast very accurate indeed.

Spotting trout in a lake is a very different ball game from spotting trout in rivers. River trout move from side to side to grab their food – but otherwise they can breathe simply by lying in more or less one position in the current.

But trout in lakes really do have to be constantly moving around at a steady pace in order to stay alive!

Trout Swimming above Weed Line

Spotting Lake Trout on the Move

Lake trout are never really stationary -they’re always onthe move!

So the main thing you are looking for when spotting trout in a lake is movement. But movement of what? Well, again, just as with spotting trout in a river, you are looking for the shape of a fish. But in a lake, it’s far more likely that you will be able to see the whole of the fish, clearly. In a river, it is more the suggestion of the shape of a fish that you are seeking.

But things are still tricky with spotting trout on a lake! You may be sitting well back from the edge of the water, and thus a large 8 pound fish cruising six yards out from the shoreline may still appear from your position to be really quite small! So you have to watch him like a hawk to keep him in sight.

You may be holed up behind a bush, and thus even though you can see the trout clearly in the water in front of you, the bush’s leaves and branches may allow you only a limited window of vision, so that you get only a fleeting glance of the fish as he swims past.

And sometimes trout in lakes swim along the bottom just above the weed line, making it very difficult to distinguish them from their surrounding environment.

The ideal scenario with still water spotting is this: there is little or no wind, so the surface of the lake or pond is not ruffled; there is plenty of sunlight on the water, so the shallows near the lake edge are well lit; trout are cruising around in the shal¬lows, seeking food. With light on shallow water and no ruffle on the surface, any trout in the vicinity should show up pretty clearly.

One of the things about trout that greatly assists the angler to spot them is that, unless trout are right on the bottom, on sunny days they cast dark shadows on the stones or gravel below them. This is particularly so in lakes.

Spotting Trout by Shadows

Often the arrival of a trout can be detected not so much by looking for the fish itself, but by looking for the dark fish-shaped shadow it casts below its body on the lakebed as it moves along.

Shadows Help with Spotting Trout

One other give-away to watch for is the feeding trout – you may notice a subtle silvery ‘flash’ in the water when a trout takes an insect and then turns round to resume the position where it was lying before moving up and forward to intercept an insect. Oftentimes you can spot a tiny glimmer of white as the trout opens and closes its mouth.

These are very subtle things to notice, to be sure, but they are detectable, and with practice you can become skilled at spotting these subtle underwater movements.

There are many tackle items fly-fishermen must carry with them in order to be able to fly fish at all. But in addition to items such as your fly fishing rod and a landing net, you’ll also want to carry some secondary tackle items that come in handy when you’re fly fishing on a regular basis.

Spare Rolls Of Trace

Although most experienced fly-fishermen spend good money on tapered traces, they also habitually carry with them a few spools of fine nylon trace. This is because, as the day goes on and many different flies are tried and changed on the end of the line, the original tapered trace gets shorter and shorter.

When this happens, extra trace can be tied onto the end of the main tapered trace using a special knot. This allows fly-fishermen to get considerably more life out of each expensive tapered trace they buy. A couple of 50-yard spools of fine nylon line with a breaking-strain of around 4 – 6 pounds (2 – 3 kgs) are ideal to have on hand in this scenario.

Spare Tapered Traces

It is also worth carrying a couple of spare tapered traces, just in case you get into a really nasty tangle that puts knots and kinks right through the whole length of your original trace. It’s also handy to carry several different sizes/lengths of tapered trace in your vest pocket, for the times you encounter bigger or smaller water, or bigger or smaller trout, than what you’d planned.

Dry Fly Floatant

After a while, even a very bushy dry fly will begin to sink under the surface of the river or lake you are fishing. Thus, before you start fishing with a dry fly, it’s important to apply some dry fly floatant. This is a kind of water-resistant oil or gel that prevents the fly from getting water-logged and sinking.

Dry fly floatant commonly comes in a small spray can, but is also available in a more basic form – similar to a tube of lip balm – which the angler dabs directly onto the fly with his fingers.

Dry Fly Floatant

I find that with spray cans a lot of waste occurs because most of the floatant shoots over the fly and disappears into the atmosphere. However, with the method of rubbing floatant directly onto the fly I seldom squeeze much more floatant than I need out of the tube.

In some areas, fly-fishermen can also purchase a small bottle of ‘fly dryer’ in powdered form – just add the fly to the little container, shake it, and the fly is dry!

Strike Indicators

Some fly-fishermen like to use a ‘strike indicator’ when fishing with a nymph. Nymphs are sinking flies – and they are very small. So if you are using a nymph, you cannot see it in the water once you have cast it upstream.

The problem with this is that if a fish takes your nymph, you may not realise until it’s too late and the fish has spat out the fly!

A strike indicator is a small piece of brightly coloured material (usually wool or foam) that you attach to your trace anywhere between 20 to 40 inches above the nymph itself.

The strike indicator floats along in the current at the same speed as your nymph, and if the nymph is taken by a fish, the indicator will quickly stop in the water or move sharply to one side – which indicates that you should strike!

Although not essential to fly-fishing, these secondary tackle items are extremely useful to have on hand in many situations. Carry them with you whenever you’re fly fishing to ensure lack of equipment doesn’t cost you time, frustration – or a fish!

Selecting the right fly rod will make learning to fly fish easier. It’s also likely to enhance the beginner’s enjoyment of fly-fishing. On the other hand, using the wrong rod to start out with can quickly crush a beginner’s enthusiasm and interest in fly fishing.

There’s a lot to consider when trying to choose the best fly rod for beginners. Fly rod length, weight and action must be correctly combined in a fly rod that’s suitable for a fly-fisherman who’s just starting out. The question of quality and brand and how much one should invest in a beginner’s fly rod must also be considered.

The Best Fly Rod Length for Beginners

I would recommend that the novice fly-fisher buy an 8 foot 6 inch or 9 foot carbon-fibre rod. A rod of about this length is perfectly suited to most situations and will allow a beginner to fish a wide variety of different kinds of water, which is exactly what a beginner should try to do while building up fly-fishing abilities and gaining experience.

Fly Rod Weight Recommendations for Beginners

As for weight, I think a 6 weight rod is perfect. Experts with a great deal of experience generally prefer to use a 4 or 5 weight rod, because such rods are so light in the hand and allow great finesse in casting. However, a beginner fly-fisher should be focussing more on mastering the basics and not so much on enjoying the sport’s finer points. A 6 weight outfit will be a bit more forgiv­ing – that is, it will mask a learner’s mistakes more readily than a lighter rod will.

But having said all that, the difference between a 5 and a 6 weight rod is in fact fairly minimal. Thus a novice who is really committed to developing into an expert angler might just as sensibly opt for a 5 weight rod instead of a 6 weight.

Fly Rod Action Guidelines for Beginners

I believe that a beginner fly angler should go for a medium action rod. Fast action rods are really for the expert who wants to make long casts without losing too much accuracy. Beginner anglers should concentrate on casting only short distances.

If you are a beginner and you try to cast big distances, you are bound to end up with nothing but frustrating tangles and false starts. A medium action rod is by far the best fly rod to learn on.

Choose the Best Fly Rod for Local Conditions

When deciding what sort of rod to buy, it’s very important to consider local conditions. It may well be that because of where you live you will be mostly doing a particular kind of fly-fishing that calls for a very heavy – or indeed very light – combination of rod and line. In this case, there may be no point in buy­ing a generic 5 or 6 weight outfit.

The obvious thing to do is to get in touch with other fly-fishermen in your area and find out what weight rod and line they normally use when they go out fishing. Buying something that is mark­edly different from what everyone else seems to be using is clearly a silly move.

The following table provides a brief summary of rod types and uses:

Click on Image to View Full Size.

How Much to Spend on a Beginner’s Fly Rod

Many beginners think they should spend as little as possible on their first fly rod. The argument is, they might not enjoy fly-fishing as much as they thought they would, so why buy the best fly rod out there?

The solution to this dilemma is to purchase a middle-of-the-range fly rod by a well known maker such as Penn, Fenwick or Scierra. Rods by these manufacturers are reasonably expensive but don’t cost the Earth – and they are certainly of solid good quality.

But the best thing about a middle-range rod is that, should you really enjoy fly-fishing and decide to upgrade to a top-flight rod, you will be able to sell your middle-range rod as a second-hand item far more readily than you would a cheap and nasty rod. Either that or you can keep hold of your first rod and use it as a back-up to your magnificent new G.Loomis or Sage rod.

It is possible – and indeed it is often a good idea – to use more than one fly when fly-fishing.

For example, you may be fishing a fairly large river on a day when there’s not a lot of sunlight hitting the water. You can see all sorts of likely spots, but you really don’t know if there are many fish around or not because the lack of sun is preventing you from seeing beneath the surface of the water.

You know that the water is quite deep, which would suggest that blind fishing with a nymph might be the best option, but you have also seen a couple of fish rise over on the far bank.

In this kind of situation, it would probably be wise to fish blind with a rig that incorporates both a nymph and a dry fly. A dry fly-nymph combination allows you to cover the likely bits of deep water with a nymph, but also feel assured that if the trout are keen to rise, you will be giving them that option too.

Fly Fishing with a Dry Fly-Nymph Combination

When you want to fish with a dry fly-nymph combination on a river, you need to take the following steps:

1. Tie the dry fly that you want to use onto the end of your trace, using the normal “half blood” or “blood knot.” You can learn how to tie a blood knot by clicking here.

2. Again using the blood knot, tie a length of nylon onto the bent section of the hook of your dry fly. This length of nylon should be somewhere between 20 inches and 1 yard long, depending on the depth of the water you’re fishing – the deeper the water, the longer the piece of nylon.

3. Now all you have to do is attach the nymph you want to use (again using the blood knot) to the loose end of the piece of nylon you’ve tied to the dry fly. The nymph and line it is attached to is called a ‘dropper’.

What you end up with should look like this:

Dry Fly-Nymph Combination. Click on Image to View Full-size.

Note how the nylon connecting the dry fly and nymph is blood knotted onto the hook of the dry fly right where it bends round between the barb and the shank. Here is a close-up of that blood knot:

Connection Between a Nymph Line and a Dry Fly

At the other end, of course, the nylon is tied onto the eye of the nymph in the normal manner.

Choosing Flies for Dry Fly-Nymph Combinations

When fishing with this particular rig, it is important to use a well-weighted nymph. This will ensure that when you shoot the rig out onto the water, the nymph flies through the air ahead of the dry fly – that is, the whole rig stays in the correct order – thus preventing the two flies getting tangled together.

It is also important to use a buoyant dry fly with a lot of hackle, such as a Molefly or an Adam’s Irresistible made with a deer hair body. This is because the nymph will be constantly pulling down on the dry fly as it bobs along in the current.

You need a lot of buoyancy in the dry fly to stop it from getting sucked under by the nymph.

An Alternative to Strike Indicators

One of the great advantages of fishing with this rig is that if the nymph gets nailed by a trout, the dry fly will stop and disappear under the surface all of a sudden, or get jerked sharply to one side.

In other words, the dry fly acts both as potential fish-catcher and as a strike indicator. To be honest, I don’t use strike indicators anymore. If I want to fish with a nymph in big water, I pretty much always opt for the dry fly/nymph combination rig I’ve just described.

Strike indicators are invariably of an unnaturally lurid pink or yellow colour, and I reckon they do more to scare or distract fish than help you catch them. A dry fly knotted in a third of the way up your trace is, in my opinion, a far better option.

Fly-fishing in rivers and streams is all about finding fish to cast at. When the trout are rising actively – in response to a mayfly or caddis hatch, for example – it is quite obvious where each fish is sitting within a given pool or riffle.

Caddis Fly Hatch

But at other times, when there is nothing hatching on the surface, it is not so easy to locate the quarry.

At times like this an angler needs to be able to ‘read the water’ – that is, to identify those parts of the river where a trout is likely to be lying.

Trout are Always Hungry!

Trout living in wild rivers throughout the world will usually rise enthusiastically to a well-presented dry fly, even if there’s no hatch on. Basically, trout are always hungry! This is especially so in fast-flowing rivers in the high country where the trout have to expend a lot of energy to hold their position in the current.

The fact that wild trout are usually so eager to take a dry fly is one of the things that makes fly-fishing in the high country so productive and exhilarating: once you have found a fish, you will more than likely get it to rise to a dry fly, even if you can clearly see that the fish is feeding below the surface.

Therefore, some ability to locate fish in the river is invaluable for anyone fishing a river or stream in the high country. And you simply cannot locate fish in the river unless you can first ‘read’ the river and isolate the likely spots.

Where to Spot Trout in a River

There are several different parts of a river that trout will habitually occupy: pools, riffles, pocket water, and water alongside a tussocky or undercut bank.

The basic concept to grasp is this: trout are lazy! It is in the trout’s nature to try to get access to as much food as possible while expending as little energy as possible. This means that areas of quieter water immediately adjacent to faster water are prime spots for feeding trout.

When fishing a wild river or stream, the experienced angler will be constantly on the lookout for patches of slower, slacker water located near or beside fast-moving water.

With experience comes the knowledge that river trout will most often be found feeding just at the point where fast and slow water meet.

Examples of Pocket Water

First and foremost, it is a river’s pools that provide the trout with the mixture of fast and slow-moving water that it seeks.

Riffles also provide trout with spectacular feeding opportunities, but only at certain times of the day.

‘Pocket water’ is favoured by trout as well – especially by large strong fish, late in the summer.

Grassy or undercut banks are another ‘hot spot’ because they offer both food and cover to the trout.

Once you have developed the ability to find this kind of spot in the river – the places where fast and slow water meet – you will start to catch more trout!

Fly line is a fundamental piece of specialised equipment for the fly angler. Fly line is made from special polymer materials and is much heavier than regular nylon fishing line.

Because of its weight, fly line ‘loads’ the fly rod during a cast. This means that the line makes the rod bend or flex in its middle section. This flexing means that by flicking the rod continuously backward and forward, the angler can gradually increase the amount of line being cast before finally laying the line down on the water.

Fly Line Configurations

An important factor to bear in mind is that usually the weight of a fly line is not spread evenly over its entire length. Some fly lines have more weight in the front half (the ‘weight-forward’ configuration) while other lines taper in both directions from a point somewhere near the middle (the ‘double-taper’ configuration). Still others have a lot of weight right at their very tip (the ‘shooting-tip’ configuration).

In fact, there is now a bewildering variety of different fly line weight configurations, all of them designed to suit a particular type of fly-fishing.

The schematic diagram below illustrates some of the more common styles:

Fly Line Configurations

The weight-forward style is favoured by anglers who want to be able to shoot the fly line forward through the air at maximum possible speed. Others prefer the double-taper style because it allows the angler to create a better roll in the line while casting. This is really a matter of preference, but it should be noted that a weight-forward line will afford stronger casts into a headwind.

Anglers who often fish in windy conditions on rivers where short, punchy casts are needed will generally opt for the weight-forward configuration, whereas people who fish mostly on lakes or in very still conditions will be more likely to use a double-taper line.

Fly Line Configuration for Beginners

Of course, it is possible to buy line where the weight is spread evenly throughout. For the complete beginner, such a line is probably the best bet, because fly line taper and weight do have a marked effect on fly-casting.

It is a good idea for novices to master the art of casting an untapered line with no special weight configuration before moving into something more specialised and complicated. If you can’t find a simple untapered line, perhaps the next best thing would be a double-tapered line. Weight-forward lines can be hard to manage unless your ability at casting is already quite advanced.

If you are fishing on a lake, you generally let your line sit in one position on the water after you have cast and wait for the fish to move to your fly. The exception to this rule is when you are lake fishing with a feathered lure, in which case you retrieve your fly by pulling the fly line in.

Rapid Moving Water

But in a river, once you have cast your line onto the water upstream, you have to react because the line immediately gets carried down with the current of the stream.

How do you deal with the fact that as soon as the line hits the water it starts getting carried down in the current toward you?

Well, you have to pull the slack fly line back through the ferrules of the rod and let it lie on the ground or in the water at your feet. You have to try to pull the fly line through your rod at the same speed as the water is carrying it toward you, otherwise you will end up with a big arc of line in the water going downstream behind you.

This is bad, because it creates drag on the fly and makes it hard to pick up the line off the water and start to false cast in preparation for shooting the fly upstream again.

The Problem of Drag

When you are fly-fishing on a river, you don’t want your fly to drag in or on the water. Successful river fishing requires you to make sure your fly is on a ‘dead drift’ as it comes back toward you in the current.

Drag will make your fly look seriously unnatural. An artificial fly on the water should float downstream as if it is not attached to your trace. ‘Drag’ means that the fly is obviously attached to your trace, and it drifts unnaturally, pulled through the water by the current’s drag on the trace.

Sometimes it isn’t possible to eliminate drag simply by pulling your fly line back through the rod at the same pace as the stream is flowing. This is because often you will be fishing a stretch of water where the current doesn’t flow at a uniform speed all the way across.

The current along the bank you are standing on might be very fast, and yet you may be trying to cast across toward the other bank where the water is moving more slowly. This means your fly line, once it hits the water, is going to be pulled downstream at different speeds. In such situations you have to use a technique called ‘mending’ to keep your fly from dragging.

Mending to Deal with Fly Line Drag

Mending involves moving your fly line while it is still sitting on the water. These movements are made by little flicks of the rod tip.

If, to continue using the example above, you are casting across fast water into slightly slower water, the part of your line that lands on the faster water will obviously be pulled downstream faster, and this in turn will drag on the section of your fly line that is on the slower water, thus destroying the natural-looking dead drift of your fly.

To combat this problem, after the line has hit the water, you have to flip the line that is in the fast water across toward the slower water. Flip the line quickly toward the slower water several times; not only will this put some forgiving slack loops in the line, but it will also, to some extent, get the line out of the faster water. And accordingly, your fly will have a greater chance of drifting without being subjected to drag.

Mending takes a bit of practice to master. What you need to remember is that the purpose of mending is two-fold. First, you are trying to create slack curves in your line, which act like shock absorbers to soak up any potential drag. Second, you are trying to flip your fly line out of faster water and into slow water, or vice versa, so that the whole of your line is moving at a more uniform speed.

Varying conditions are one of the difficulties that frustrate fly-anglers on a fairly regular basis. No two days on the river are alike. Weather and water conditions are constantly changing. And the positions in which the fish lie change all the time, too.

This means that to be a successful fly-fisherman, you need to be able to cast in different ways depending on the prevailing conditions.

One of the most frustrating things in fly-fishing is trying to cast a delicate dry fly to a rising fish you’ve spotted when there is a wind blowing straight at you from the direction in which you want to cast.

Without special tactics, casting into wind is virtually impossible: your fly and trace will simply get blown back toward you and will land on the water well behind the end of the fly line, instead of extending out as they would in windless conditions. Incredibly annoying!

A Solution for Casting into Wind

The solution that is most often suggested by casting experts is as follows: instead of hauling the line back so that it extends out in the air behind you horizontal to the ground (or water), you need to get your back-cast to extend much more vertically into the air.

If you can create this high, almost vertical back-cast, it is then possible to bring the fly line down onto the water at a much sharper angle. The result of this is that a very tight, fast loop develops in the line just before it hits the water, as seen in the drawing below:

Casting into Wind. Click on Image to View Full-Size.

Although the line and the trace will hit the water harder than usual, there’s a much stronger chance that the trace will extend out beyond the end of the fly line as it is supposed to do!

And it probably doesn’t matter much if the fly hits the water hard in windy conditions, because the inevitable chop on the surface of the water caused by the wind will disguise the disturbance the fly makes upon landing.

Choose a Quality Rod for Casting into Wind

Top-quality rods really come into their own in difficult casting situations! I believe that middle-range fly rods are perfectly adequate – and they are. However, top-quality fly rods will perform better in windy conditions.

One reason Sage and G.Loomis rods, for example, are so revered is that they will allow you to cast a fly successfully into a headwind in situations where a cheaper rod would either fail or require enormous effort on the angler’s part. If local conditions mean you’ll frequently be casting into wind, it may be worthwhile to invest in a top quality rod.

Some ability to locate fish in the water is invaluable for anyone fishing a river or stream. And you simply cannot locate fish in the river unless you can first ‘read’ the river and isolate the likely spots.

The basic concept to grasp is this: trout are lazy!

It is in the trout’s nature to try to get access to as much food as possible while expending as little energy as possible. This means that areas of quieter water immediately adjacent to faster water are prime spots for feeding trout.

When fishing a wild river or stream, the experienced angler will be constantly on the lookout for patches of slower, slacker water located near or beside fast-moving water. With experience comes the knowledge that river trout will most often be found feeding just at the point where fast and slow water meet.

Where to Find Trout in Fly Fishing Pools

First and foremost, it is a river’s pools that provide the trout with the mixture of fast and slow-moving water that it seeks. Most pools in a river or stream are fed by a ‘rapid’. A rapid is the fast, shallow, aerated (sometimes called ‘white’) water churning in at the head of the pool.

At many rapids a river drops a metre or so on its course towards the sea. Rapids flow over large weedy boulders and invariably contain a steady supply of mayfly, stonefly and caddis nymphs – especially when a hatch is pending.

Usually a rapid is funnelled by the geography of the riverbed into a narrow V-shape as it enters the head of the pool. The fast water running into a pool from the rapid creates a stretch of quieter water on either side of it. It is this quiet water that lends itself to being described as a ‘pool’.

Some rapids enter at a sharper angle, thus creating slack water on only one side of the pool. Either way, a well-defined pool is the river trout’s favourite feeding station.

Pools offer trout a concentrated supply of food directly contiguous to slower-moving water that doesn’t require much energy to occupy. Trout habitually sit in the quiet water, watching for insects as they come tumbling down in the fast water.

Trout often like to sit right in the ‘eye’ at the very head of a pool, but can also be found lying in the slacker water beside the current anywhere from about halfway up the pool.

The "Eye" of a River Pool

On a large river, it may take a fisherman up to an hour to fish through one good fly fishing pool, because there will simply be so much quieter water beside the main current where a trout may be lying.

In a nice pool on a small stream, with limited areas of quiet water beside the tumbling current, it will often be obvious at first glance whether a fish is present or not.

Important point! Trout often lie at the ‘tail’ of a pool. The tail is the name we use to describe the downstream end of the pool, which is just above the point where it turns into another rapid or some other feature of the river.

The water at the tail of a pool will often be quite shallow and slow-moving. Trout lie in the tail of a pool when insects are hatching out mid-way through the pool. When this happens there is no point in the fish staying up at the head of the pool. It must drop back to the tail in order to put itself in the path of drifting food items.

In summary, there are several different parts of a river that trout will habitually occupy: pools, riffles, pocket water, and water alongside a tussocky or undercut bank. Many river anglers tend to concentrate on fly fishing pools.