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How to fish them.

We would rather explain the drift than claim a fly catches fish on its own. These are the things that actually change a day on the water.

Technique

• Reading the water: seams, drift lines and where fish actually holdThe company is named after this. It is also the one skill that improves a day's fishing more than any fly in the box.
• Euro nymphing, explained without the jargonA competition technique that became the standard way to fish fast water. The idea underneath it is simple.
• Dry fly fishing: the basics that actually matterWatching a fish come up and take is the reason most people take up fly fishing. It also punishes sloppiness more than any other method.
• Fishing streamers for bigger fishThe method that finds the fish that stopped eating insects.

Choosing flies

• What to put in your first fly boxSix patterns cover almost everything. The rest of the catalogue is refinement.
• Matching the hatch without an entomology degreeThree decisions, in a fixed order. Latin optional.
• Trout flies through the seasonA hatch chart is local. This is the logic behind one, which travels.

Reference

• Fly hook sizes explainedThe numbering is counter-intuitive, inconsistent between makers, and worth ten minutes of your life.
• Leaders and tippet: the X system, simplyThe connection between your fly line and your fly does more for presentation than the fly does.
• A plain-English fly fishing glossaryThe vocabulary is the barrier far more often than the casting is.

Care

• How to look after flies so they lastMost flies are not lost to fish. They are lost to being put away wet.
• Barbless hooks and releasing fish wellA released fish that dies an hour later counts as a killed fish. Most of the damage is done by handling, not by the hook.