Fly Fishing- One spot or walk the river..?

Gerry.L

Ok a quick question

When ye lot are fishing on a river do you have a few of your favourite spots that you fish for hours at a time or do you walk up and down the lenght of the river taking a couple of casts every 20/30 yards..???

Personally I have 3 or 4 spots on each river and Id never think to try anywhere else. But this year Im planing on changing that and making a point of not staying in any one spot longer than say half an hour. Whether Im catching or not.

Just want to get some opinions or views from a few other people.


BTW: Im talking about river fishing for brownies here from March onwards really.

fontanalis

Aren't Brown Trout very territorial? I think you'd be best looking for the fishiest places and chancing your arm, unless there's a hatch with some activity.

bitemybanger

Staying in one spot is for stockie bashing.
When I'm on the river I will start with a very short cast and gradually lenghten it as I cover the water and casting to likely spots where trout will hold and casting above rising fish when dry fly fishing.

smokiebeverage

I like to pick a stretch of river each trip, somewhere from 1/2 mile to a mile and work it slowly. Trout do tend to sit alright but there are many places they sit in and there are many fish (hopefully!) so exploring can help. Anyway IMHO you never really get to know a river unless you explore. I've spent the past two years fishing 12miles of water and I don't think I've seen all of it yet. Depending on conditions some of the water is unreachable, so even the same stretch changes during the season. God I can't wait for the season to start now!

Gerry.L

smokiebeverage wrote: »

I've spent the past two years fishing 12miles of water

12 miles :eek: :eek: I know I said I was going to start walking along the river but that takes the biscuit altogether

okedoke

smokiebeverage wrote: »

God I can't wait for the season to start now!

only 19 days to go now...and the weather seems to be warming up

Evac105

I cycle to the river (the Dodder in my case) and then walk it while flyfishing, rarely stopping for more then 30 minutes at any particular spot. That said, one of my main reasons for fishing is the exercise it I get from it so I have a secondary motivation at play in my habit

coolwings

For trouting I drive or walk to roughly where I want to fish, and fish the nice places each side for about 1/2 mile, about a mile overall.

SeaFields

When I was starting out an old fly anglers told me "one step, one cast" and "you cant catch any trout with your flies in the air" - a reference to the amount of back casts I was doing.

For brownies I fish the spots I know are likely to produce fairly intensively but always on the move albeit slowly.

For sea trout I tend to stay in the same spot and move every 15 mins or so that that would be fishing pools mainly.

Zzippy

For brown trout I'll fish a few pools that I know best, if its water I haven't fished before I'll fish the "fishiest" looking water, based on experience. Always moving, cover the water thoroughy then move on. No point flogging the water.
Much the same for salmon, unless its a holding lie where I know fish are resting, I may change flies a couple of times and fish it a bit harder, but usually I'll walk a few miles of river and cover most pools where I think fish will hold. Once fished the Finn from 4.30am to 11pm and must have covered 7-8 miles of water in the day in total.
For sea trout, I prefer to fish night time, so I'll concentrate on one or two pools and fish them hard. Sea trout fishing at night the fish can come on very suddenly, so you could fish a pool for an hour for nothing then have 5 fish in 5 casts. So you could have moved on too soon, thinking there was nothing there...