2wheels1rod

The Pandora's Box Of Fly Fishing - It's On My Desk!

There's a box that sits on my desk. It gets added to throughout the year - samples from suppliers, new products to try, bits and pieces that people think I might like. Most of it gets field-tested, noted down, and either ordered or quietly forgotten about. Towards the end of last season, a packet of tapered leaders landed in that box. I'll be honest - I nearly didn't bother. Leaders are leaders, aren't they? I've got a drawer full of them. But I was heading out to the river, I needed a fresh one, and these were right there.

Size matters. Just not in the way most fly anglers think.

We have an informal family motto which is: " si unus es habiturus, magnus es" which translates to: "if you're going to have one, get a big un" We're not that grand really, but the saying is often quoted when buying chocolate, beer and cars. The above motto was brought to mind just recently when chatting with the guys who tie for us, we were discussing flies to catch those hungry early-season fish - something with a little movement in it was the obvious choice, but I wanted to do something a little bit different, so we decided to take an early-season staple pattern and microize it.

Early-Season Fly Power - Generating Electricity on the River

Firstly, I'd like to thank all of you who 've put your trust in us over the last week and supported us with our 'non-fly related' emails - our River Fly Anglers Almanac - both Jack and I really appreciate it - thank you. As I write this, we've actually got sunshine here in North Yorkshire. Which makes today's email all the more apt, as it's all about a specific nymph pattern which I turn to as my "if all else fails" banker pattern when the trout season first starts - and it virtually always works!

If You're Craving Perfect Presentation - Try One Of These!

As the opening of the new trout season draws ever closer, my thoughts turn away from Grayling and are redirected towards those beautiful wild trout of the Yorkshire Derwent - and the 'tackle tart' within me reaches for the glossy catalogues which drop through the letterbox on a daily bases, in the hunt for even more gear to hide from my wife - you'd be amazed at how many order we deliver to work addresses!

A Very Special Early Season Nymph - It's All About The Javi

Morning, As we hurtle, or should that be dawdle, towards the beginning of the river season (it's only a matter of a few weeks away now), the rivers will generally be a little higher than average and the flow often much stronger, you're going to need something a little heavier if you want to target those early-season Trout in these conditions.

It's a Spider - A Bosnian Spider

There's a particular moment in late February (about now) when you start checking the weather forecast obsessively. Not for today, but for a few weeks' time! You're looking for that first properly mild spell. The one that might just wake up the olives. The one that gets the trout thinking about moving up from their winter lies. And if you fish in any UK rivers - the Derwent, the Wharfe, the Eden, any of those moorland-fed rivers that run cold - you already have a good idea of what you'll be fishing with when that moment arrives.

"We all need help now and then" - Paul Whitehouse

Those are Paul Whitehouse's words, not mine — though I wish I'd said them first. Paul wrote the foreword to our new River Fly Anglers Almanac, and in it he describes something I suspect every one of us has done ... You arrive at an unfamiliar river. Fish are rising. You can't quite work out what they're taking so you bung on an Adams, a Klinkhammer, something black, maybe even a daddy, and hope for the best. If nothing's rising? A bead headed GRHE. Can't decide? Klink and Dink it. He calls it "chuck it and chance it." And honestly? I've been doing exactly that for longer than I care to admit.

It's 142 pages. A foreword by Paul Whitehouse. There's no more chucking it and chancing it!

Paul Whitehouse, who you'll know from Gone Fishing, has kindly written the foreword to our NEW River Fly Anglers Almanac - which we're launching today. In it, he describes arriving at a new river and going through what I suspect is a fairly universal process. Paul's version of a 'new river' is probably a little more upmarket than mine, which is usually the next beat upstream from the one I usually fish.

Your Opening Day Confidence Fly - It's Smashing It Over In The USA

As we're nearing the middle of February, it's time we had a word about trout. I know, I know - we've been banging on about grayling for weeks now. And rightly so, because grayling season's been good so far (when we could actually get on the wter). But, the trout season opens in just a few weeks, and if you're anything like me, you're already lying awake at night thinking about that first cast of the season.

Every Great Fly Has an Origin Story … This One’s Weird

Let me tell you about Jim Estes. Back in the late 90s, Jim walked into a dollar store (the American equivalent of our pound shops) in Bryson City, North Carolina, probably looking for cleaning supplies like the rest of us. But Jim wasn't like the rest of us, he was the sort of bloke who looked at a microfiber mop pad and thought, "that'll catch fish."

Pink Squirrels - They never forget where their nuts are buried

There's a fly pattern over in the USA which works wonders for virtually all fish that swim in rivers, over the pond it's become a bit of a closely guarded secret in the guiding community, think of it as their equivalent of our Red-Neck PTN! As our reach into the USA is pretty limited, I thought it was safe to make it more popular over here, whilst still keeping it secret over in the US.

Storm Chandra Has Just Done Us A Favour

Storm Chandra has just done what every grayling angler secretly loves - turned our rivers into chocolate, scattered the fair-weather anglers, and set the table for some of the most productive fishing of the entire winter.

Innovative Scuds

The Bacchus Bug Selection

Barbless. Clothing