The Tufton Arms Hotel in Appleby has always been one of my favourite places to visit but my stays there have never without incident. From being trapped in the hotel for 2 extra nights during the floods of 2015 to catching probably my biggest ever Brown Trout from a river, it always provides a story….

  I recently noticed that one of the pockets on my old fly fishing vest was coming apart and after around 10 years of hard fly fishing, the vest in general was looking a little shabby. In order to perpetuate the illusion of professionalism, I decided to finally ‘invest’ in a new one. Even though…

I caught this beautiful Wild Brown Trout on a nymph recently and when I was taking the trophy shot, I noticed that it had something else stuck to it. Occasionally, you’ll find leeches attached to fish in slow, silty water but this fish came from a strong, shallow riffle. Close inspection revealed that it was…

Along with Large Dark Olives, Grannom are one of those flies that can help really kick start the Trout season as they too can hatch in huge numbers.   The Grannom (pictured) is just one of around 100 species of Caddis flies (also referred to as sedges) that are found in the UK. In fairness,…

Without doubt the most rewarding part of what I do is helping flyfishers take their skills to the next level. A recent case was fly fishing novice, Jona. He was coming up to fish the river Dee for the first time with good friends Nev and Simon. However, Nev and Simon were already accomplished anglers…

We all have our favourite bits we like to fish. Places where we feel comfortable or where we’ve had success in the past. Whilst this is great if you only have limited time to spend on the water, it can make us a little lazy as fly fishers. There’s no need to explore or experiment…

Fridays urban adventure was followed on Saturday by a trip back onto the posh waters. The Derbyshire Wye was still high by its standards but was fining down nicely. It was again though, cold and windy which meant that we would be forced once more to focus on fishing a single nymph. We were rod…

My 2hour casting lesson made such impressive progress earlier that I decided to reward myself with a couple of hours fishing on the River Goyt. My first trip this year, at the end of Grayling season, was fruitless and the first hour of todays visit was exactly the same.   Although the river had dropped…

With the Dee and the Goyt still running very high, I headed back to the fast dropping River Wye in Derbyshire for a decent early season Brown Trout.   There’d been a huge drop in temperature since my last visit and the mild spring-like conditions that I enjoyed on Tuesday were replaced by a gnarly,…

I was heartbroken at having to leave the ski slopes early as the March snow was spectacular but I consoled myself with the knowledge that when I got back to the UK, the River Dee Trout season would be in full swing. On my return, I received another body blow as I learned that the…