Thanks to Iain for a great day on the Deveron, absolutely magic, and great pics too
What a river, Allan you are one lucky dude with that on your door stop ! This particular beat had it all, riffles, pocket water, glides and even Don like 'canal' bits (that were just as productive
).
'Nice' ! :
I didn't manage to match Iain's superb nymphing skills and big troot but we both a had great fun on the dry with plenty of sub-pounders and a couple of good ones on, then off. I believe Iain may now also be a paid up disciple of Mr. Wyatt ?
Iain's masterclass on nymphing comes to fruition:
Lessons learned:
1) French Nymphing is for poofters - my 8 " braided sighter was causing a helicopter hinge and casting was awful. We both switched to conventional nymph technique independently and at the same time ! Say's it all really. Not sure I can be arsed with all this. Fad. A Tenkara setup probably would have been more effective (and more fun !).
2) Don't do direct upstream nymphing ala Ollie Eds on the Deveron....in fact anywhere ! It is not the most productive method on wide-ish river - fine on a chalkstream. All I'll say is Iain has the correct technique nailed and spending 10 minutes on the bank watching him (whilst hypothermic) gave me much more useful things to think about with nymphing technique.
3) Floppy tipped Streamflex rods are crap at setting the hook for dries at any distance over 20 feet. I didn't convert nearly enough fish that hit my dry. We both were using 3 wt Streamflexes for dries and were both rueing leaving out luvely Orvis Helios and Access rods in the car.
4) The 'all in one' leader is not working for me. I will try Sandy's solution as that seemed logical ! A whole lotta hingeing going on today.
Cheers again Iain, magic day and a few wee bends in the rod to get things started !
Linz