A landing net is very useful when it comes to landing fish. If possible, I always carry a landing net with me when I go fly-fishing. If you buy a landing net, make sure it’s big enough to fit the size and kind of fish you’re going to target. There’s nothing more annoying than trying to land a big fish with a tiny net.

A Quality Landing Net

How to Land a Fish with a Landing Net

When it comes to getting a fish into a landing net, there are two main considerations. First, you want the fish to be reasonably tired. Second, and much more importantly, you must always net a fish from in front.

Never try to scoop up a fish from behind. Why not? Well, when you get close to a fish with a landing net, the fish will sense the presence of the net. It will get a fright and involuntarily thrash its tail and surge forward in an attempt to flee.

Obviously, if you are coming from behind the fish and it rushes forward, the fish is simply not going to end up in the net. But if you are coming from in front, the fish’s frightened reaction will in fact propel it directly into the net!

Landing a Fish without a Net

If you don’t have a landing net, it’s still perfectly possible to land a trout (or any fish for that matter). Over the years I have landed many trout and several very large salmon without a net.

The secret to landing a fish without a net is to find a piece of the shoreline or bank that is suitable for beaching the fish.

What makes a piece of bank suitable for beaching fish? Well, the bank should be nice and flat, and – if possible – it should consist of small pebbles or sand. In other words, you’re looking for a little beach at the side of the river or lake you’re fishing on.

Landing a slippery, thrashing fish on a steep piece of bank or a bank made up of big rocks or stones is always difficult.

Once you have identified the place where you are going to beach the fish, play it until it is tired and then slowly pull the fish into the shallow water. Hold it there until it falls over on its side.

Once on its side, the fish is effectively trapped and you can slide it up the little beach either by hand or by pulling on the line (as long as you are sure the fish isn’t heavier than the breaking-strain of the line).

The best way to get a fish to slide up a beach is to grab it just above its tail and push it from behind. If you do this, any tail flapping that the fish attempts will be absorbed by your hand and wrist and won’t result in the fish moving or flopping around too much.

If you don’t control the fish once it’s out of the water, it could easily flip back in and get away! Obviously, the more careful you are, the less chance there is that something will go wrong during the process of beaching a trout.

How to Land and Release a Trout

It’s quite common in the U.S. to ‘land’ and release a trout without its ever actually touching land or leaving the water. The trout, when tired, is reeled in close, whether you’re standing in the water, or in a boat or raft or canoe.

You then run your thumb and forefinger down the trace to the eye of the hook, and lift with a bit of a twist – and the trout is released.

If the trout is removed from the water, it should be returned to the water just as quickly as possible, and if necessary, held gently underwater facing upstream. Do not push the trout back and forth through the water – it needs water flowing over and through its gills in just one direction.

Trout are quite fragile and can be easily injured if handled; your hands should touch the trout only underwater if at all possible.

When fly fishing, just because a fish takes an artificial fly, it doesn’t mean the fish is automatically attached to the end of the fisherman’s line! The fisherman has to ‘strike’ so that the hook of the fly lodges firmly in the cartilage on the edge of the fish’s mouth.

Fly Fishing Strike

A fly fishing strike is achieved by making a swift, smooth, upward lift with the rod – not so much a ‘jerk’ as a quick movement up or to the side – a movement that tightens the line between you and the fish.

To strike well you have to be firm but not too firm. If you jerk the rod upward too aggressively, you run the risk of busting the trace or straightening the hook out.

Generally trout flies are tied onto smallish, good-quality hooks that have very sharp points. Thus it doesn’t take much pressure at all to get such a hook to lodge in a trout’s mouth.

Imagine the speed and power you would use to lift up an axe before you swipe it down to chop a log of wood. That is easily enough speed and power for a successful fly fishing strike.

(Note: in the U.S. the word ‘strike’ often refers to the trout instead of the angler: the trout struck my fly or I had a strike on my Elk Hair Caddis fly.)

What to Do After a Fly Fishing Strike

Once you have struck and set the hook, keep the line taut!

There’s no use whacking at the fish and then letting the line go slack. If you do this, the fly will very likely fall out of the fish’s mouth.

If you get a fish to rise and you strike at it successfully, your line will be taut and your rod will be bent over. You will feel the weight of the fish on the end of the line.

From then on, you must make sure at all times until the fish is in your net or on the bank that the line is taut. This will ensure that the hook stays set into the fish’s mouth for the duration of the fight.This is especially true if you are fishing with a fly that has a barbless hook.

Trout Behavior after a Fly Fishing Strike

Another important point to note is that generally trout will make their most powerful runs just after they have been hooked.

So once you have struck and hooked the fish, you have to be immediately prepared for it to make a searing run down the river or out into the lake.

Jumping Trout

You also have to be prepared for the fish to jump clean out of the water as it tries to throw the hook from its mouth!

Some trout will jump as much as five or six times in the fight; some species of trout are more likely than others to leap clear of the water. Steelhead trout for instance are notorious jumpers!

Because trout usually go berserk just after they’ve been hooked, it is crucial to get rid of any slack line as fast as possible after you’ve connected successfully with a fish.

Managing Spare Line after a Strike

You may have made a longish cast initially, but by the time the trout took your fly, you might have had only a small length of line out and a big pile of slack line looped at your feet.

If this is the case, you need to get this spare line either onto the spool of your reel, or out through your rod and taut against the weight of the fish.

To do this, you either hold the fish in one position, using one hand to hold the taut line against the rod’s handle and the other hand to wind the slack line through your fingers and onto the reel, or you let the fish gradually take up the slack line when it makes a run. Particularly with larger fish, it is better to fight the fish ‘on the reel’ rather than with spare line at your feet.

Striking is a crucial aspects of fly-fishing. If you don’t react properly after a fish has taken your fly, you probably won’t end up taking him home for dinner!

With a few exceptions, dry flies imitate insects that have fallen onto the water by mistake. The essential thing about such insects is that they are trapped on the water’s surface: they cannot and do not move much on the water.

They drift helplessly in the current until they either drown and sink, or get snapped up by a trout!

Therefore, to successfully fish with a dry fly, you have to allow it to move with the river’s current like a doomed natural insect. And this in turn means that most dry fly fishing in rivers is done by casting the fly directly upstream and letting it drift back toward you in the current.

In lakes, the same concept applies: you cast the dry fly out onto the water and you don’t try to move it. You simply wait for the trout to come to the fly and – hopefully – take it.

Some terrestrial insects end up on the water by design rather than by error. Female mayflies, for example, alight on the water’s surface in order to lay their eggs. Even so, once they are on the water depositing eggs, mayflies still drift with the current like a trapped beetle or cicada.

A Caddis Fly

Female caddis flies also deliberately descend onto the surface of the water to lay eggs.

However, unlike the mayfly, the female caddis fly doesn’t sit on the water and drift with the current.

Instead, she skims across the surface of the water, like a cormorant flying across the sea,

all the while dropping her eggs into the moving stream. And because the female caddis fly skims on the water’s surface like this, she is still an easy meal for a trout prepared to stick its snout up out of the water.

This scenario gives rise to the only form of river dry fly fishing I know where the dry fly is not fished on a dead downstream drift in the current.

When trout are rising to skimming caddis flies, you tie on a special cone-shaped adult caddis imitation, which is made of deer or elk hair.

The design of this fly is such that it skims nicely over the water’s surface.

You then cast this fly out across the river at a right-angle to the bank and allow it to drift down and in toward the bank.

Caddis Dry Fly

As the current takes hold of the fly line, the fly begins to skim across the surface of the river – just like the real thing.

Then, wham! It’s only a matter of time before one of the rising trout mistakes your artificial fly for a real insect.

Summary: in nearly all dry fly fishing cases, dry flies are fished in the ‘dead-drift’ style – because this is the only way to correctly imitate a stranded terrestrial insect floating along in the current. One of the rare few times this rule does not apply is when using a caddis dry fly, which skims across the surface of the water.

There is an art to playing a fish on a fly rod. Once you have set the hook into the fish’s mouth by striking, you have effectively begun to play the fish. The first thing after striking and hooking is to get rid of any slack line you have between the reel and the bottom ferrule of the rod.

Get Rid of any Slack Line

Often the best way to do this is to hold the rod in one hand, the slack line in the other, and slowly walk backward and away from the fish, while at the same time feeding the slack line up into the ferrules of the rod with your free hand until all the slack line is running taut through the rod. Then you can begin to retrieve line directly onto the reel.

You want to get rid of slack line because it can easily get tangled or cause you to lose the fish. If there’s a tangle of slack line between your reel and the bottom ferrule of your rod, and the trout makes a decent run, the tangle is very likely to get pulled up against the ferrule and stop any more line moving up the rod – and 90 percent of the time, this will cause an immediate bust-off, especially if the fish is a large one with plenty of grunt!

Playing a Fish On the Reel

Once you have got rid of slack line, you are playing the fish ‘on the reel’. In other words, the fly line is running straight off the reel, up along the rod, and out toward the fish.

Playing a Fish

The whole system is taut like a guy-rope on a tent. If the fish wants to run, you can let it do so, knowing that there’s little chance of a tangle clogging up the system. And when you decide to bring the fish back in toward you again, all you need to do is pull back with the rod to drag the fish in, and then wind line directly onto the reel to keep things nice and taut.

Always play a fish on the reel if you can. Your reel is your insurance policy. For the most part, you just wind line onto it to retrieve the fish. But if the fish decides to make a strong run downstream, your reel will quickly give you all that line back without any tangles or hiccups.

The Purpose of Playing a Fish

The basic purpose of ‘playing’ a fish is to tire it out so it is easier to land. So when playing a fish, you have to let it run out a bit, and then pull it back in toward you. Repeating this process a few times will use up a lot of the fish’s energy and it will be no problem to scoop it up in your net.

If you don’t tire the fish out properly, it will go crazy when you try to net or beach it, and if this happens you will very likely lose the fish. However, you should not play a fish to the point where it completely expires or is close to expiring.

Once you can see that the fish is fairly tired, get in and net it as soon as possible. A fish that is dead or exhausted when you land it cannot be released and won’t taste any good either, because the flesh of a fish played until it dies will have become flooded by the acids in its own system.

A ‘hatch’ in fly fishing means what happens when large numbers of the same kind of insect emerge all at once from the water or – in the case of beetles – the ground beneath the wild shrubs lining the river bank or lake edge.

When I encounter a hatch of a specific kind of insect, I immediately try to find a fly in my box that will suitably imitate the hatching insects.

A May Fly

Mayfly and caddis fly hatches are common events on any river. At certain times of the year beetles and cicadas hatch in big numbers, as well.

Whenever there’s a hatch on, you can be sure that the trout will start feeding exclusively on whatever insect it is that’s emerging.

It is wise to try to ‘match the hatch’ in such a situation.

With that in mind, you should try to find out which hatches are likely to occur in the area you are planning to fish. That way you can cover your bases before you arrive at the river.

One river I know on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island is well-known for regular hatches of a particular species of large, near-black mayfly.

Whenever I fish this river I make sure beforehand that my fly box is well-stocked with big dark dry flies tied especially to imitate this mayfly species. There is always a strong chance that a hatch of these mayflies will occur at some stage while I’m on the river, and I know full well that if such a hatch does take place I won’t catch a single trout unless I have exactly the right imitation in my box.

But there are also those days and weeks when nothing much hatches at all. At times such as this, and if the sun is shining on the water, I will invariably opt for a general dry fly such as the Stimulator, Molefly or Royal Wulff.

Stimulator Dry Fly

This is because when no hatch is on, the trout will not be concentrating on one specific food source. Instead, they will be on the lookout for all sorts of different feeding opportunities, both on the surface and below it.

At times like these, it’s vital to catch the eye of the trout and provoke him into rising to your fly, and the best way to do that is to use a dry fly pattern with plenty of stimulating colours in it!

The ultimate goal when stalking trout is to get yourself into a position from which you can see as much water as possible while all the while making sure that you do not create any unnatural movement or colour on the bank which might scare the trout.

Here are 5 general rules about how to conduct yourself while stalking trout:

Rule one: The first rule for stalking trout is to wear dull-coloured clothing. Browns, greys and greens are good because they match the colours generally found on the banks of rivers and lakes. Bright clothes are to be avoided at all costs.

Rule two : The second rule for stalking trout is this: always move as slowly as possible. One of the things that will reveal your presence on the bank most obviously is movement.

Trout are extremely sensitive to movement. Apart from the natural swaying of trees in the wind, and the natural movement of birds and other wildlife, trout are used to everything on the bank being totally motionless. So as soon as the trout detects some kind of unnatural movement, it suspects that danger has arrived.

Therefore, whether you are walking alongside a river or skirting around the edge of a lake, you must always make sure that you slow your pace down as much as you can. But don’t just slow your walking speed down – slow every movement down!

Any fast or jerky movement you make could potentially give the game away. Thus if you need to reach up to adjust the position of your hat on your head, for example, do it as slowly as you can!

Rule three: Always seek cover. When you are fishing, you should be constantly on the lookout for natural objects on the bank to hide behind. Trees and large bushes provide excellent cover, as do big rocks. Once you have found cover, you can relax a bit, safe in the knowledge that any trout nearby is less likely to see you.

Keep Yourself Concealed When Stalking Trout

If there is a big clump of vegetation on the bank at the bottom end of a good pool in the river, get in behind it and stay there for a few minutes watching the water through the leaves and branches.

You may well see a fish rise in the water ahead of you! Or you may detect the presence of a trout in some other way. The important thing is that if you are hiding behind a clump of vegetation, you are far more likely to see a trout before it sees you.

It’s worth noting that you don’t necessarily have to be behind an object of cover for it to assist you. If you are wearing good camouflage clothing that matches up with the colour of the vegetation on the river bank, then you will get almost as much cover by sitting in front of a clump of vegetation as you would by sitting behind it.

I can remember once fishing a small stream in New Zealand where there were lots of wild rose bushes lining the bank. At the tail of one very good pool there was a large group of these roses. I got in behind them and then crept through until I was lying on the ground in front of them.

Admittedly I got a few scratches in the process and my rod got caught up a couple of times, but I ended up with a great view of the pool and some excellent cover right behind me!

Also note that shade provides good cover to the fly-angler. If you are standing in a shady area created by a stand of trees or a high bank beside the river, it will be much harder for the trout to see you, especially if there is sunlight on the water itself.

Rule four: When/if there is no cover, keep your body as close to the ground as possible and stay back from the water. The higher your body is in the air, the more likely it is that a fish will see you.

Unless you have gotten yourself nicely concealed behind a tree or a rock, you must crouch down as much as possible when you are moving along the bank.

It is also a good idea to stay as far back from the bank as possible if you do not have adequate cover. The farther you are from the bank, the harder it is for trout to see you!

Rule five: When you see a fish, stop and watch him for a while. Don’t rush in!

This is very important. Once you have located a fish in the river or lake, you must analyse the situation before you start to cast to the fish.

You may need to put on a different fly. The trout may be drifting around the pool in the river, or back and forth along the section of the lake shore where you’ve been stalking, thus making it necessary for you to wait until the fish is in exactly the right position.

If you immediately start casting, and the fish isn’t in the right spot, you will likely make a blunder and scare the fish.

In short, it is of utmost importance, once you have spotted a fish, to take things slowly and think about tactics.

One of the skills you will gradually develop while learning to fly-fish is the ability to stalk and ‘spot’ trout – that is, to creep up and see the trout lying in the river ahead of you before it sees you!

It’s quite simple: if you are good at spotting trout, you will catch more fish more often. Although spotting trout can be very difficult, there is one piece of equipment that makes it much easier: fly fishing glasses with polarized lenses.

Fly Fishing Glasses

Sunglasses with polarized lenses have the remarkable effect of cutting the glare off the surface of water. Glare is caused by light refracting off the water’s surface and into your eyes. Take away the glare and seeing into the water suddenly becomes far easier.

People trying polarized fly fishing glasses for the first time are often amazed at how much more they can see below the surface of the water with these special glasses on!

Polarized Glasses Effect. Click on Image to View Full-size.

These days, very good-quality polarized glasses are readily available at reasonable prices. They are a must-have item if you are serious about learning to cast a fly to a trout you have spotted.

Of course, lure fishermen who go out at night or very early in the morning will not have so much of a need for special fly fishing glasses. But anyone fishing in either lakes or rivers during the day would be mad to omit to wear polarized glasses.

Benefits of Polarized Lenses

These days the lenses of polarized fly-fishing glasses often come in a lurid orange or yellow-green colour. This helps to brighten things up, and makes spotting on dull days, with lots of cloud cover, more productive. Their bright lenses make polarized fishing glasses very good eyewear for driving too.

Modern polarized lenses usually have a high UV-protection rating as well, thus making them valuable for health as well as fishing-catching reasons.

Another feature of modern polarized sunglasses is that they are now available in fashionable designs and are extremely comfortable to wear. In the past, most fly-fishermen on the river (me included) had uncomfortable polarized glasses which were quickly consigned to the glove box of the car as soon as the day’s fishing was over!

Smith Optics has a comfortable range of polarized fishing glasses, two of which are shown below:

"Guides Choice" and "Maverick" from Smith’s Crystal Series

Remember the first rule of spotting trout is to wear polarized sunglasses. This should be compulsory! Without fly fishing glasses, the glare on the water’s surface will prevent your vision from penetrating much below the surface and you’ll hardly see anything in the water at all.

There’s a huge variety of fly rods on the market today, and they differ in many more ways than by price! Fly rod weight, length, shape and action are four key aspects that may be different among fly rods. Understanding what these descriptions mean and how they affect a rod’s performance is the first step in selecting the best fly rod for your level of skill and fishing conditions.

Most people realize fly rods are measured by their length in feet and inches, but they’re also measured by their ‘weight’. A 3-weight fly rod is very light, while a 9-weight fly rod is much heavier.

But, be careful! Fly rod “weight” doesn’t mean its actual weight in grams or ounces!

The weight of a fly rod is determined by the weight of the fly line it can comfortably cast. For example, it is almost impossible to cast a heavy 10-weight fly line with a 3-weight rod. But a good quality 3-weight rod will perform beautifully with a 3-weight line. Similarly, a 10-weight rod will not cast well with a 3-weight line. This is because the 3-weight line is not heavy enough to load up the 10-weight rod and produce the rod’s correct casting action.

When purchasing a fly-fishing outfit, it is absolutely crucial to make sure the rod will perform properly when casting the fly line spooled on the reel. However, this does not always mean that there has to be an exact match between line weight and rod weight.

A very high-quality 5-weight fly rod, for example, will easily handle a 6-weight fly line. Of course, it will cast a matching 5-weight line with perfect ease as well! But many expert anglers now prefer to use an outfit featuring a fly line that is one weight category heavier than the rod.

When you choose a fly line that is one category heavier than the fly rod weight, the basic result is that the slightly heavier fly line loads the rod up a little more – and thus produces the rod’s strongest possible action. This combination of the rod’s maximum action plus heavier line means that the fly line shoots forward through the air with greater speed and accuracy than a slightly lighter fly line would.

Why are There Different Fly Rod Weights?

Very Small Fly Fishing Stream!

If you are fishing on a delicate small stream, you don’t want to be casting with an 8 or 9 weight rod! What you want in this situation is a 4 or 5 weight rod. Rods come in different weights because people fly-fish in a great variety of different places and conditions.

Generally, people use heavy rods in big heavy water or in water where long huge casts are required. In small streams or in places where small casts are the norm, people will opt for much lighter rods.

Important point: Fly rod weights are not related to fish weight! You don’t need a heavy rod to catch a big fish! I know lots of fly-fishermen here in New Zealand who use light 4 or 5 weight rods and regularly land trout weighing over 10 pounds.

Which Fly Rod Weight is Best for Beginners?

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 focusing 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.

A very common situation in fly-fishing is this: you’re on a river and you’ve spotted a trout feeding in a pool. He’s obviously rising to something on the surface. You’ve snuck up behind him and have managed to present a dry fly to him several times, but each time he has inspected but refused your offering.

How many times should you cast a fly to him before changing to a new fly?

Three Tries before Changing Flies

In my opinion it is unwise to continue to cast a fly if the fish has already ignored your fly two or three times. I firmly believe that, in general, if a fish really likes the look of your fly, he will take it the very first time he sees it.

If the fish doesn’t take your fly on the first few presentations and yet you keep on trying, you run a serious risk of scaring the fish. Wild trout are extremely easy to frighten.

The moment a trout thinks something is wrong, he’ll become impossible to catch. And one good way I’ve found to scare a fish is to cast a fly that’s been rejected at him too many times.

Trout aren’t stupid. If the exact same fly keeps on floating down the pool over and over again, it’s quite clear that something unnatural is happening.

So, if the fish rejects your fly once, try again. If he rejects it twice, try one more time. If there’s a third rejection, stop casting. Get your line in, and give the fish a break. Retreat to a safe position where you can’t be seen, and think about which fly is going to work in the situation.

How to Choose an Alternative Fly

Dad's Favourite

Trout will usually reject your fly when they are in fact feeding on something very small and particular. So you’ll probably need to use something smaller and more delicate. I find size 14 mayfly imitations such as the Dad’s Favourite or the Greenwell’s Glory can work very well on ‘choosy’ trout.

In many areas, though, particularly the Western U.S., the trout you’re watching could be feeding on something as small as midges – perhaps size 20 or even smaller.

Another tactic I sometimes use is to put myself in the position of a trout. Having had my dry fly rejected by a fish that is obviously rising, I retreat 30 or 40 yards downstream and walk out into the current a little. Then I crouch down and study the water’s surface carefully.

I find that this will invariably reveal exactly what it is on the water’s surface that the trout are rising to. Often, as I said, it will be something very small and very particular.

Note that what I’ve said here also applies to nymph fishing. If a trout has a look at your nymph but refuses to take it, don’t bother casting a fly you’ve already tried again. Change to a different nymph pattern right away.

Some fly-fishermen carry a very small dip net or screen to identify the insects present, and then choose and cast a fly that closely resembles the natural insects in the water.

One of the very basic rules of fly-casting is called the ‘one o’clock’ rule. To understand this rule, you have to imagine that you are standing beside a giant clock while you are casting!

Have a look at the diagram below of a person casting a fly:

As you can see, the caster’s feet are at 6 o’clock, and her head is at 12 o’clock. When she holds the rod out in front of her (position #1) it matches up with about 9 o’clock.

The One O'Clock Rule

When she casts, she flicks the rod up and back, so that the line extends out behind her (position #2). This up-and-back flick is called the ‘back-cast’.

As soon as the line has fully extended on the back-cast (position #2), the caster then flicks the rod forward into position #1 again, so that the line and the fly are carried forward into the air in front of the angler.

The crucial thing to notice is that when she flicks the rod up and back to perform the back-cast, the caster does not let the rod go past the point of 1 o’clock. If she did, the line would flop to the ground behind her and the cast would be unsuccessful.

So, the one o’clock rule stipulates that on your back-casts, you should never let your rod go past the hour of 1 on the ‘casting clock’!

An Important Casting Tip for the Beginner:

At this point, I want to give you what will probably be the single most important piece of fly-fishing advice you ever receive. Are you ready?

NEVER TRY TO CAST TOO FAR!!

I cannot emphasise this point too strongly. Big long casts are usually unnecessary. You need big long casts in order to catch trout in a VERY limited range of fly-fishing situations.

As you get more and more experienced with fly-fishing, you will begin to see the truth of what I am saying: 90 percent of the fish you catch will be no more than about 12 – 14 yards (10 – 12 metres) in front of you when you hook them – and many will be only six or seven yards away from you when they grab your fly.

This applies to both river and still water fly-fishing. The art of stalking trout allows the angler to get very close to the quarry, thus making huge long casts almost totally unnecessary.

This is good news indeed for the beginner fly-angler. It means that learning to cast won’t be as hard as you thought it would be.

To become a successful beginner fly-fisherman, all you really need to do is learn how to cast a fly 10 – 14 yards (8 – 12 metres) in front of you with a good degree of accuracy. And this is actually not such a difficult thing to do! But as soon as you start trying to send your fly out 20 or 25 yards, you will instantly run into endless frustrating tangles.

So, what are the key basic points about fly-casting?

1. Don’t try to cast too far.
2. Don’t let the rod go past ‘1 o’clock’ on the back-cast.
3. Increase line length gradually, not all at once.
4. Let the rod do the work.

How to Practise Casting

I also want to stress that you need to practise. If you are a beginner, you really must get out once a day for half an hour – or as often as you can – and practise casting with your fly rod.

If you practise a lot between fishing trips, you will really notice the difference it makes when you actually get out there on the river or lake!

Go to a park or a swimming pool and pretend in your mind that you’re on the river. Put a stick on the grass 6 or 8 yards in front of you and imagine that it’s a fish. Both you and the fish are facing directly upstream.

Now, try to land the end of your fly line about 15 inches behind the stick, and imagine your trace extending out over the fish so that the fly settles about 8 feet in front of it.

Once you have done this successfully, retreat a few yards and practise with a bit more line. But don’t go too far back! Always remember that a cast of 10-12 yards is usually more than enough.

Another thing to do is practise casting on your knees – and on one knee. When you are fishing you will have to get yourself into all sorts of different positions in order to make a cast to a fish!