It was recently my pleasure to set up fly fishing on the river Test and Dever for several members of the Spanish International Fly Fishing Team and one member of the English squad.
We were fishing for grayling and rather than fish as well, I took along my camera and guided for the visitors on some of my local beats of the rivers Test and Dever.
They were all expert fly fishermen and I learned an awful lot. To me traditional upstream fly fishing on these chalkstreams is my usual technique. However, these gentlemen took this a step further and introduced me to technical fly fishing.
With over fifty grayling in a four hour session to his name, I could not help but listen, ask questions and soak up all the information I could.
For example, they all used automatic reels with 10 4 weight rods, rather than my 8 foot 4 weight. They also fished small nymphs beneath a small dry. One angler coiled a 3 inch piece of florescent orange monofilament around a pencil held it in stream. This created a spiral of mono that was tied into the leader and greased as a bite indicator. It worked superbly showing the most delicate of grayling bite.
I will shortly be submitting a complete article about this day to the Fish and Fly website.
