2wheels1rod

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.

I hope Oliver Kite Would Approve?

I was rifling through my fishing book collection back in September, looking for some inspiration for the coming Grayling season - specifically the "Nymph Fishing Techniques" section (yes, they're categorised, don't judge me) - when I stumbled across an old copy of Oliver Kite's "Nymph Fishing in Practice".

There's something quite ironic about a fly pattern which was so effective that it almost wrote itself out of existence.

I know it's Saturday, and I don't want to interrupt your Cornflakes, but I wanted to give you a heads-up on a fly pattern which we've had loads of feedback on over the last couple of weeks (especially from Stillwater anglers - which really took us by surprise). I've also used them both with great success over the last few days on my local beck here in North Yorkshire, they are ...

If you want to get ahead, get a hat.

It's still a little chilly (and damp) out there, I'm hoping this email will give you a niec warm feeling. But first ... I'd like to thank all of you who bought one of our Hoodies (or Sweatshirts) earlier this month (they're available here) - it really does mean a lot to us, especially at this time of year. You know the old saying: "If you want to get ahead, get a hat" Well, I've always thought it was decent advice. Though I suspect whoever coined it wasn't thinking about the temperatures we experience when fishing up here in North Yorkshire.

Innovative Scuds

The Bacchus Bug Selection

Barbless. Clothing