Guides

Playbooks, reference, and reading for the pub.

Featured this month

Chalkstreams

Crystal water, educated trout, and the hundred-year argument between Halford and Skues that nobody has won yet.

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Venues9

Small Stillwaters

Five to fifteen acres of honest water — find the feeding depth, then stay in it.

Venues

Find the feeding depth, then stay in it

The Big Water

Grafham, Rutland, Blagdon — where the wind decides everything and the boat angler who reads it properly catches fish.

Venues

Wind is king — fish where wind meets structure

Chalkstreams

Crystal water, educated trout, and the hundred-year argument between Halford and Skues that nobody has won yet.

Venues

Upstream, zero drag, twenty-foot leaders

Irish Loughs

Corrib, Mask, Derg — the wet-fly drift, the dap, and the particular joy of a wild trout in the wave.

Venues

Wet-fly team on the drift. Lift, don't strip.

Scottish Lochs & Rivers

Big lochs that fish like seas, hill lochs the size of a field, and freestone rivers full of wild browns that don't read magazines.

Venues

Big lochs: wet-fly team. Hill lochs: stealth. Rivers: dry fly.

Connemara

Atlantic Ireland at its wildest — brown trout on the loughs and silver sea trout that, unlike their British cousins, oblige in daylight.

Venues

Sea trout on loughs: DAYTIME. On rivers: night.

The Pyrenees

Wild brown trout from snowmelt torrents to gin-clear foothill rivers — French parcours in summer, Spanish trophy water in autumn.

Venues

French parcours no-kill. Spanish trophy autumn.

Alpine Streams

Cold, fast, and stonefly-rich — the mountain streams where the trout diet is seventy per cent aquatic insects and the Euro nymph was born.

Venues

EPT dominance: 70% of diet. Euro nymph, heavy point.

Irish Salmon Rivers

The Moy for value, the Blackwater for low water, and Galway Weir for the kind of drama that ruins you for ordinary fishing.

Venues

Moy for value. Blackwater for low water. Galway for drama.

Species7

Atlantic Salmon

A fish that does not feed, yet takes a fly. The swing, the take, and the discipline to do neither too much nor too little.

Species

Cast 45° across. Don't strike — lift to 11 o'clock.

Salmon: The Long Decline

From Victorian excess to Megan Boyd's minimalism to the conservation crisis that now defines the pursuit.

Species

Victorian excess → Boyd minimalism → modern tubes

Grayling

The fish that saves winter — rising to tiny dries in December while everything else sleeps.

Species

Delayed strike. Count "one", then lift.

Marble Trout

The Soča's ancient predator — a trout that looks like it was painted by someone who'd never seen one and had to guess.

Species

Streamers for big fish. Euro nymph for numbers.

Coarse Fish on the Fly

Chub, perch, carp, pike — the same entomology, closer water, and fights that make you reconsider your tackle.

Species

Same entomology, closer water, harder fighters.

Barbel on the Fly

Sight-fishing on crystal Spanish rivers — a foam beetle upstream of a tailing fish, and then the kind of run that tests your backing knot.

Species

Foam beetle ahead of tailing fish. 5wt for haasi.

Mullet on the Fly

Harbours, estuaries, and tidal flats — three species that will humble your five-weight and your self-regard in equal measure.

Species

Dead-drift bloodworm. Strip-strike, never lift.

Methods3

Every Method, and Why

Dry fly to Spey casting — every technique exists because the fish demanded it. Here's when each one earns its keep.

Methods

Dry fly, nymphing, wet fly, streamer, Spey

Euro Nymphing

The method that quietly won everything — Czech short-range, French long-range, and the sighter rig that bridges them.

Methods

Czech: short range. French: long range. Sighter: everything.

North Country Spiders

Three soft-hackle flies, a short line, and four hundred years of Yorkshire common sense.

Methods

March Brown, Waterhen Bloa, Partridge & Orange

Reference9

Buzzers, Midges & Diptera

The insect nobody romanticises and every stillwater trout eats — 40–60% of a reservoir trout's diet, year-round, plus the crane flies and hawthorn flies that start a riot when the wind blows.

Reference

Black sz 16 from 4°C. Olive sz 12 from 8°C. Daddy longlegs Aug–Oct. Change depth, not fly.

Caddis: The Architects of the River

They build houses out of silk, stones, and sticks — then abandon them to rise through the water column in a bubble of gas. The insect that makes the evening rise worth waiting for.

Reference

Grannom Apr–May 8–12°C. Evening sedges Jun–Sep. Ascending pupa: the key moment.

Mayflies: The Oldest Flies on Earth

350 million years old, cannot eat, moult after growing wings — the insect that invented dry fly fishing and still runs every river.

Reference

LDO from 5°C. March Brown from 8°C. BWO evening spinner. Green Drake: Duffer's Fortnight.

Dragons & Damsels

Jet propulsion, sperm wars, and the most useful nymph in the box — everything an angler should know about dragonflies and damselflies.

Reference

Damsel nymph: May–Sep, margins, slow strip. Dragonfly: crawls, doesn't swim.

Where the Trout Go When It Warms Up

The invisible architecture of a summer lake — thermoclines, oxygen squeezes, and why the best fish are twenty feet down.

Reference

16–19°C surface: fish 10–25 ft. 19°C+: dawn/dusk only.

The Fly Box

Every pattern that earns its place — searchable by species, season, and water type.

Reference

Searchable fly box with retailer links

What's Hatching

The insects that run the show — what appears when, and why you should care.

Reference

March olive → May mayfly → July sedge → Sept spinner

The Fishing Year

When everything happens — the species in form, the windows that matter, the quiet months that aren't as quiet as you'd think.

Reference

Spring trout → summer sea trout → autumn salmon → winter grayling

The Hatch on Big Water

Buzzers, daphnia clouds, damsel migrations — what the trout are actually eating on reservoirs, and why changing depth matters more than changing fly.

Reference

Buzzers: 60% of diet. Change depth before fly.

Local Guides1

Trout Near London

Stillwaters within an hour, wild trout on the Wandle in your lunch break — closer than you think.

Local Guides

Walthamstow 20min. Wandle: free wild trout in Merton.