Great news! You can now listen to our interview with Brian Chan on a biologist’s point of view on fly fishing trout. We interviewed Brian this week and the show was a huge hit. A lot of listeners sent in their questions, but since the show was only about 90 minutes, Brian wasn’t able to answer everything. Well, don’t worry because we’ve scheduled a part two of the interview and we will try to fit in all your questions.

A fisheries biologist is well-versed with the ways of the trout and how and where to catch them. Brian spent his career managing recreational trout fisheries, worked on habitat protection and management plans for various lakes.

He said that trout are usually present in eutrophic lakes. These are lakes that are shallow and us and usually have intermittent or no inlets or outlets, which means that they have low flushing rates. The soils and geology around it make them nutrient-rich so that they grow insects for fish.

Brian talked about several other topics including alkaline and acidic lakes, spring and winter turnovers, thermocline, the main food sources for trout, and a lot of other stuff.

Visit www.AskAboutFlyFishing.com and register free to receive advance notification of Ask About Fy fishing‘s upcoming Internet radio shows and to receive a special free guide on improving your fly casting. Ask About Fly Fishing – Internet Radio produces two 90-minute shows every month on the different areas concerning fly fishing. Its program host, D. Roger Maves interviews different top-rated fly fishers from different parts of the world. Listeners from around the world can listen to the show live at their website at AskAboutFlyFishing.com or by phone.

Listen to the show now and be surprised at how much scientific knowledge you will get from Brian. Enjoy!

A Fishing Library is something that every fly fisherman should have!

At this time of year, in particular, we find ourselves spending more time thinking about fishing than we do actually fishing. This includes reading up on fishing, which is a hobby that never seems to grow old.

My fishing library is not as grand as its name suggests: it isn’t a whole room crammed with interesting and old books, rather it is a couple of bookshelves which contains back issues of T&S and a small selection of trusted fishing guides and books that have been given to me over the years.

There is also one section that is one of my favourite bits to dip into, which is a wooden “magazine holder” crammed full with bits of paper collected at game fairs and on fishing days. Some of these are sheets of A4 with biro scrawled onto them at the bankside with a “fly recipe” or design hastily applied.

Most of these bits of paper rarely see the light of day, but when they do, bring with them fresh hope of days to be enjoyed in the future.

One such piece of paper, which I am yet to track down tells of my first ever day spent Czech nymphing – I know it is in there somewhere, and when I find it I will produce that article I’ve been planning for more than a year now!

In any case, before I start rattling off my favourite titles from my fishing library, feel free to leave your own comments with your favourite ‘wouldn’t-be-without’ fly fishing titles below, to help us kick-start this website’s relaunch…

Go on, tell us what’s in your fishing library?

Sydney's Centennial Park

Sydney’s Centennial Park is one of the finest bits of green space in any of the World’s capitals that I had the pleasure of visiting in 2007 – and now, fly-fishermen in the city are being allowed to fish for the giant carp contained within the park’s eleven ornamental ponds, according to News.com.au.

The park, in line with many in municipal locations, had rules banning all fishing, but, owing to the nature of the carp – “They root around in the muddy bottom, stirring up sediment and making the water look like muck, and eat juvenile native fish and native aquatic plants,” said Park Trust director Ian Innes – and the relative expense of electrical fishing and other ordinary culling measures, they felt recreational fishing could help ‘kill two birds with one stone’ in this instance, so lifted the ban for members of the Sydney Fly Rodders Club.

Paul Cooper, of the club, has literally filled his boots, catching an Australian record carp weighing in at a whopping 11.4kg (that’s 25lb in old money, or thereabouts!).

This seems like an incredibly sensible approach to this issue: how refreshing!

The report explains how, in 1980, only 9% of fish consumed came from aquaculture – now it is 46%.

However, the report also pointed out that this form of fish farming has been “accused of polluting the sea bed and spreading disease.” Something about which many interested in wild salmon fishing – and the many related industries – have great concerns.

Anglers spend many thousands of pounds on access to salmon runs, which provides jobs for ghillies who in turn work on habitat preservation and maintaining river banks: access which is often enjoyed by walkers and tourists to Salmon rivers.

Further, angling, in particular fly fishing, is a sport which sustains many small and medium sized businesses up and down the country through tackle shops, magazines, tutorial courses and a host of other related products and services.

While aquaculture might be worth hundreds of millions of pounds, the size and scale of salmon and sea trout angling in the UK mustn’t be underestimated: The Environment agency of England and Wales figures show that over 4 million people went fishing in 2005. Those figures do not include Scotland. If we said that, in the course of an entire year, those anglers spent on average, at least £100 on their sport (a small amount considering tackle, transport, accommodation, fishery fees, rod licence and more) then one can see that angling easily outstrips Scottish Aquaculture in terms of spend, yet we fishermen can often feel our needs are an afterthought.

However, there aren’t many press releases which explain how far angling goes to contribute to a better economy for a great many more businesses than aquaculture. This is something which may be worthy of redress.

This summer has quite possibly been the worst I’ve ever experienced in terms of rain, and that, coupled with moving (and renovating) a house has severely cut down my bank time to absolue zero.

Obviously, we fish in water, so rain isn’t a massive problem, indeed, a lot of the elder guys I learned fishing from used to swear by a river in speight. The only problem, I find, is when the river is in speight and its still raining. I don’t enjoy coming home soaked to the skin and freezing cold.

So now the nights are drawing in, and the house only has a couple of curtain rails to fit up, I’ll have a bit more time to spend lazing away those cold dark evenings, now the clocks have gone back, sharing stories about fly fishing.

I might even get out for a bit of grayling fishing every week or so on some of the fine rivers of Northern England. January sees the start of the salmon season for those keen hardy anglers – I’m yet to make my mind up whether or not I can legitimately ever class myself in that select bunch – and we might get out for a go at those early springers.March, however, is usually much more comfortable for fishing.

I may even get to a small stillwater or two to cast a line at some wintering rainbows.

If and when I do, I promise I’ll report back.

In the mean time, I’m going to try to share fly-tying tips, techniques and tricks as well as more general fishing tales from the past (I do have quite a lot of photographs kicking about too to help the stories along).

Oh, and at some point I’ll be changing the appearence of this website to stop it looking quite so futuristic and robotic and to allow for more liberal use of those photographs.

See you next time.

Tight lines.

In actual fact, as I have neither the permission to fish the stretch of river I was on, nor a UK rod licence (having only just returned to the country!) I could not have fished the water even if I did. However, watching the fish rising in their hundreds was great, but I couldn’t quite get over the pangs and became all-too-aware of the feeling that I would dearly have loved to have been fishing – and not just a spectator.

So let us know – what’s the best (worst!) thing you’ve seen when you didn’t have your fly rod???