Thursday 18th April

Very windy night but has eased a lot over the last hour or so. Because the direction is more SW then Curley's is actually reasonably sheltered and more than fishable especially on the pontoons along the roadside.  More and more fish having a look around the surface but the majority still deeper.

Fishing technique
I mentioned previously about Terry Phillip's priorities for fishing and in his opinion the most important aspect being Presentation but what is this??
It is basically how the fly is seen by the fish and this starts with both the cast itself and then the movement in the water.

• Firstly casting, plenty of time I see casts that land really heavy on the water creating a disturbance, some even land the line on the water only to be ripped it off again into another cast!!  We sometimes forget that fish are wild animals and just because we can't always see them, then somehow they can't see or feel our presence.  How stealthy would you have to be to get close to a wild rabbit in a field before it fled?  Why should a fish be any differant and yet we think that we can just chuck the line and fly out any old how and still expect to catch fish? One of the advantages of stillwater fishing is that there is a much greater tolerance of disturbance as the fish get "used " to it happening but the more wary a fish is in certain conditions, bright light, calm, clear water, the less tolerant they become and can be spooked very easily. 
• How the fish see the fly is also critically important to successful fishing. we must alter the presenation of the fly to suit conditions and the flies we are using.  How many of us just have one "default" leader set up that we use in all conditions? For those of you at Terry's presentation he showed us a number of his default leader set-ups and one was 20 ft long!! Why? Well a number of reasons:    

1. Stealth - keep the flies away from the fly line and have a greater distance between droppers 
2. Natural movement - the nearer the flies are to the fly line the more their movement is influenced by the movement of this heavier line. If we want to fool fish into thinking that what we are offering is "real" then we MUST make it move as the fish would expect that insect to move!!! 
3. Depth - the longer the leader the deeper we can fish with a floater   

So generally we need to be better casters, more thoughtful and avoid same old, same old. Start to think like a trout more! Imagine a trout swimming 20 ft away from a pontoon - what do you think it wants? and more importantly what would frighten it or make it move away? 

Comments more than welcome...............