Quest for a Salmon

The journey to Monmouth started in a Landrover Discovery; fitting start for a Salmon trip I reckoned. We got to the river and wandered up and down the beat (read swim if you’re a coarse fisherman) to have a look and find out how it was fishing. The weather was glorious, which in turn, made the river look spectacular.We made our way back to the discovery in order to get tackled up with chest waders and salmon rods.

One of the ‘beats’ where we fished

For the mornings fishing I was going to be shadowing my friend, whose guest I was, as this was the first time I’d ever been salmon fishing.

Into the water and the first lesson started with safe wading and how to find your path with a wading staff. Needless to say, I ended up being the pathfinder while my friend fished.

Learning to cast a fly is tricky business

As I said previously, this was the first time I’d ever been salmon fishing and was anticipating a level of skill and technique needed that I could only begin to wonder about. This was soon dispelled as the first spey cast went sailing across the water. It was as simple as lift, sweep & flick, then forward cast. Couldn’t wait to have a go as it looked quite easy!!!!

The mornings session was fishless, at least on the end of the hook but up and down the river large salmon were crashing around, often leaping clear of the water. Even though we blanked, for me it was a good learning curve as I saw how to fly fish a river, again something I’d never done before.

A quick lunch at the lodge, couple of glasses of wine on a hot sunny day, bit of banter, then it was off to the other beat we were fishing in the afternoon and, more importantly, my chance to have a go!!!!!

As a bit of background, I’ve been fly-fishing since last years FM Fish-In (approx 15 months) and can cast a line fairly well, have caught my fair share of fish, and would consider myself an able fly fisherman. With this in mind, I was a bit apprehensive about casting with a double-handed rod, but not completely overwhelmed.

Starting to come together

First cast to master was the simple overhead cast, just picking the line up and casting it forward again. Took a while to get used to this, mainly because of the weight of the whole outfit. I’m used to a rod weighing no more than 4 ounces and here I was casting with one weighing 4 times that. Took a while to get the timing and loading of the rod, but after half a dozen casts, I’d got the measure of it. Then, to complicate things, I had to do the same cast, but with my left hand up, or at the top of the rod. This was faster to learn which apparently is normal.

My instructor was very pleased with my progress so we then went on to shooting some line with right hand and left hand up and I quickly got the hang of that so the next stage was a single spey cast.

This was completely different to any cast I’d done before and took me a long time to learn. The problem was with the sweep of the line, as you have to let if land on the water again to generate drag to enable the rod to load. Eventually I got the hang of this, though became a tired but happy fisher.

The day ended with no fish, but I didn’t care much as I’d learned more in a day than I could have ever taught myself.

Sunday saw us further upstream fishing for trout on the fly. Back to familiar tackle and casting. Some simple instruction on where to cast and how to let the fly move with the current and I was away.

The second ‘beat’ of the weekend

Had a good day and ended up with 4 small brown trout and 3 grayling. Nothing huge but I was very pleased as this was another first.

A brilliant weekend and my intro to salmon fishing has definitely triggered something in me that’s made me want to have another go.

Adrian