Videos: Paul Morgan Title Photo: Andrew Griffiths @Glassjet

1. Choice of equipment.

Choice of equipment Rods, reels, fly lines, fly floatants, clothes, glasses and other useful items.

It is a certainty that whatever length rod we choose as a dry fly rod there will come a time when we get a hankering for something a bit longer, or shorter, a bit faster, lighter whatever but the good news is that if golfers carry more than one golf club, anglers need more than one rod.

Most of my own fishing and guiding takes place on the Derbyshire Wye and a lovely tributary the Lathkill, and wading is not allowed.

Another river, the Derwent is a larger river and we do need to wade to get the best from it.

The small river sees me using my smaller bamboo rods, usually around 7ft and using a #3 or #4 line. Silk seems to bring the loading of such rods a little better and gives quicker contact when needed.

Silk hang straight and give fewer tangles and also give a very faint sense of smug ownership when needed. 

Like so many others, I carry a progressive action 9 ft carbon #5 as a back up and for clients, and sometimes over line it a little with a brightly coloured DT #6 for casting on grass and demonstrations. Sometimes I dig out a soft 9 ft #4 for my own use, and I still treasure  8,8 #4 but don’t use it much as  I should do.

For much of my own fishing a dry fly on the banks of the Wye, a longer rod of 10 or so gives me options in creating a drag free drift, holding line up over a fast tongue of current on the near side would be a perfect example.

A purpose built Euro Style nymph rod has found a place in the armoury, and Tenkara is a lot of fun when used appropriately...but not where monster fish lurk especially.

For the rest of the equipment, floating gels, pastes, sprays etc I suppose I use whatever needs field testing from the shop, the Dry Fly powders for CDC are essential, I fret a little bit about heath hazards, I know a really good pro who is allergic to it, but  not enough to stop using me using it .

2. Leader material, build up, length and knots.

A huge subject, but in essence I have fewer vegetation related issues with a leader a handles length shorter than the rod in use, and I contact a higher proportion of fish under bushes etc.

I find that length is useless or next door to useless when targeting fish at the tail of a pool from upstream of them, however, and often end up using a rod and a half length of leader  which comes out around fourteen / maybe 15 ft long.

 Across steam casting, the suppleness of a furled leader can give some advantage across multiple soft currents and is often a choice with a silk line.  

Many shop bought tapered leaders in mono are a bit thick in the butt for silk lines, so we have to trim down heavily , it is more satisfying to use a furled leader and a Castwell knot.

Tippet and leader materials usually a supple modern copolymer is used on the Tippett, I have used fluorocarbon on my midge patterns to some advantage but worry about busting off and it lasting for many many years.

I am using a length of Old Fashioned mono as part of my dry fly set up recently . It replaces the transition section on a knotless taper, extends it, and with an appropriate tippet, usually the thin stuff gives me a tuning knot, we can retie a section and by shortening it , we stiffen it , and then extend as appropriate.

I credit Ed Engle for this idea, I have never been averse to take advice from others!

Knots.

Hook knots are often The Knot, aka Davy, with extra turn

Some smaller flies fish well on a simple overhand loop, which is worth a couple of extra feet drag free drift, it’s a method which works but I am still not fully confident in it, for some reason.

If I use fluorocarbon the tucked blood knot is not to be trusted , but maybe the untucked is, use chap stick or gink to lubricate maybe.

Tippet to leader knots can be best when kept simple, and the three turns surgeon knot, or sometimes the figure of 8 meets most of my needs.

3. Approach and stealth.

A fair number of visitors use a  fishing day as a social occasion, but more serious anglers tend not to wear white shirts,  large reflective wristwatches or Panama Hats. 

If you come off the river feeling a bit disappointed with the number of fish seen, let alone captured , have a look at how pristine your clothes are.  The late Malcom Greenhough looked like he had been on a three day forest based military expedition after an afternoons fishing, but by gum, he had some good fishing!

I am currently working on the ability to cast while laying flat, and honing my ability to avoid cow pats and stinging nettles at the same time. A tube of anti inflammatory nettle relief is worth a place in the masses of kit we carry around. And a towel you no longer love.

I generally try to get to somewhere between One and a quarter rod lengths, up to twice that distance, from my intended target fish. Somewhere in that range is a Sweet spot for accurate casts with enough drag free drag to deceive a fish but not so far away that It’s hard to hook them.

Often a slightly across and downstream presentation is what I am most comfortable with, and some form of curve or reach cast presenting the fly first  is important. Probably crucial.

If we can stand or preferably kneel by the side of, if not in front of some backside structure it helps to break up our outline, and, every little helps.

4. Reading the water.

The river  Wye, where I fish most, is fast , with classic touches of fast water spilling into perfect trout pools, complete with back waters and eddies holding lots of shy fish. 

 What we learn about fishing on any trout stream we can pretty much apply to any  other trout stream ,in general.

Looking for the faster water and exploring the edges of the fastest water you can find with something which looks buggy is a great tactic in high summer, especially with some thing which looks like it has fallen in, beetles, would be an example. 

Don’t neglect the “ eyes “ of any natural or man made weir pools, thy often hold good fish, but not always facing the ‘ right way’ , 

If we decide to fish the smooth glides in the heart of a pool , we may have to change our leader length and maybe our fly. 

If we put our fishing head on, we could fish up a stretch of river, perhaps searching the fast water , turn round and extend the leader to perhaps a spinner pattern and go for a long downstream drift to targeted fish.

About the only thing I can generalise about is that the fish are usually in the most awkward spot s, just beyond the limits of our best drag free drift!

5. Casting ability which casts are essential.

I reckon the ability to kneel down and cast is an important skill as many others. A nice smooth loop implies skill, an Ariel Mend is usually important, but none are much good if the trout have shot off to a hidden hole before you execute the cast, no matter how nice a rod you own.

I am currently working on the ability to cast while laying flat, and honing my ability to avoid cow pats and stinging nettles at the same time. A tube of anti inflammatory nettle relief is worth a place in the masses of kit we carry around. And a towel you no longer love.

I generally try to get to somewhere between One and a quarter rod lengths, up to twice that distance, from my intended target fish. Somewhere in that range is a Sweet spot for accurate casts with enough drag free drag to deceive a fish but not so far away that It’s hard to hook them.

Often a slightly across and downstream presentation is what I am most comfortable with, and some form of curve or reach cast presenting the fly first  is important. Probably crucial.

All the casts we see demonstrated at fairs etc are of use , but not all of them, and not all the time. 

It’s as well to practice all the slack line casts you can learn, having learnt the basics. Reach , Puddle , all the slack line casts you can conjure and one or two you invent for yourself are sometimes the difference between catching and not catching.

My rule of thumb when with clients is to say that on an across stream presentation, if the fly line is downstream of the fly, then the fly is dragging or is about to and usually needs picking up.

There are a couple of styles of picking off the line without making a fuss, well worth learning!

It’s essential to have a floating leader , at least 80% of it, and the tippet to be sunk when dry fly fishing.

If the line / leader tears of the surface when lifting off at the end of a drift, something is wrong.

Line and leader dirty, clean and degrease, or a rushed pick up is a sign of casting technique not up to the mark. Start low, start slow, and the gentle but positive stop come when the fly leaves the water.

Sooner than we think!

That particular tip came to me courtesy of Phillip White, in fairness.

I find myself using the cast known as the Ariel Roll when fishing dry flys, effective at normal fishing range for sure, be aware it can lead to a severe casting fault when going for long distance casting, l muscle memory can cause “ creep” which causes all sorts of problems.

All the fancy casts in the world avail us little if we can’t hook the fish which takes our fly, and recently I went through a very lean spell, and partly caused by holding the rod too far away from my body on an upstream cast, and not striking down...

6. Entomology, what should we know.

Some disjointed thoughts!

Entomology. I am rubbish at entomology but I do know a couple of proper of real professionals  and they do me the courtesy of talking to me on occasion. 

It was Geirach  who pointed out that using shortened version of the proper Latin Names as a kind of in the know slang may just be a tiny bit pretentious, and may contribute to the impression of snootiness in the Fly Fishing community .

Entomology is science after all, and if an angler has the bandwidth to study the subject then that is fine. I take the view that others, better qualified than me have done the heavy lifting on the subject. 

Size , shape colour in the most general way is about my limit, but my own breakthrough moment  came to me with the realisation that if you know the difference between a Dun and A Spinner of most of the up-winged flies of interest ,then if it is not one then it will be or has been ,the other. 

With a dip net and a scoop net , we can make a lot of interesting little discoveries without being able to identify every one down to species levels.

Fish seem to know the difference, and as the rise form does differ, we can say yes, rise form and entomology does matter, if only at that fundamental level.

When it gets a bit tricky is the situation when more than one insect is busy at the same time, and it is acknowledged that fish can and do turn attention from one type to another. 

I suppose we study as much or as little as we feel inclined , 

I tell my clients that when OG the Cave Person fished with a fly rod for the first time, if Og saw fish were feeding on let’s say little black flies, then that’s what Og tied on as a pattern. Not necessarily aware of the Latin name...

We should try to learn something of our insects and carry some attempts at  a representation of them though , we are Fly anglers after all.

My most memorable dry nets have revolved around being baffled / not having a suitable pattern for some aspects of Midges , Caenis  and a couple of years ago I was utterly defeated by intense feeding on Thrips.

Knowing what they were, if only in general terms, at least gave me a starting point for the next time.

Don’t despair if first attempts at fly fishing seem to be fruitless,  when surrounded by rising and uncatchable fish , and don’t be in too much hurry to change flies. It may be we fish too big a fly, and or presentation is at fault in any case.

7. Rise forms Can they tell us something?

They certainly can ,  and  some anglers have the interpretation of a rise form to a fine art.

Many excellent guides to this subject have been written , and works by Clark, Jardine, Goddard cover it in much greater depth than I could achieve, and some fascinating work by Don Stazacker and Peter Hayes have have given us new and fascinating insights.

At a fundamental level, an unhurried  disturbance can tell us that the prey is dead drifting, and unlikely to be a fluttering upwinged Fly, about to take off...or a Sedge maybe.

It could be a spent spinner or perhaps a trapped midge and in Autumn if it happens in a column of leaves, it’s usually Aphids.

It’s interesting to see Grayling seeming to bite the edge of a drifting leaf, I reckon that’s very close to what they are doing, feeding on the marooned little greenfly. ps not always black...

It is a part of folklore that slashing sideways takes are associated with Sedge feeders, and that is true of course, but an important moment for me at least was one windy spring day on the Wye at Monsal Dale, that lovely stretch of day ticket water here in Derbyshire.

It was a real spring day with sunshine and then a scudding cloud in a slightly chilly breeze.

A good pod of fish were , for all the world feeding confidently on something midstream, then they switched off like a switch had been flipped.

They started again, only under the far bank with a different form of rise form.

It took a frustrating age to finally take a sample dip midstream, and to find the tiny hatching Sedge , more like a hatching apple pip in the net until it sprouted wings. A small hares ear Compara dun , no tail and very little wing solved it, in some desperation I have to say.

But the same fly was totally wrong under the far bank. 

It was to some slow dawning I realised that the change of pattern of rise form was to do with the change in the wind and the sunshine, it seems obvious now but it was a breakthrough for me, and the steady stream of black gnats was being pushed under the far bank when the chill wind blew, but hatching, and some egg laying Sedge activity bought them back again.

It was about then I reckoned I was fishing the right flies, but not necessarily in the right order! ( Eric Morecambe’s spirit was with me , I reckon, he used to fish the Wye.)

Could I add that if a fish rises and leaves no bubble behind, it means  that it did not take a fully floating fly. I know other thoughts are available, but as a rule of thumb it would be better to offer a floating nymph , maybe a parachute pattern on the crucial first few casts.

 Not a bad idea in any case, but it can be such a joy to have a conventional proper dry fly flowing down a seam of current towards a feeding fish it can sometimes detract a little from actually hooking a couple and not.

Let the rise form speak!

8. Fly selection, size, shape, materials, which flies are essential, favourite fly.
A daunting subject , without the luxury of the time and space of a comprehensive volume these thoughts can only be a light touch on what I use myself .
One of the great joys of dry fly fishing on rivers is realising we only actually need a handful of pattern types , to cover most situations.
It get more complicated than that if we need more than on size of course, and subtle variations of colour can hold the key to success, especially in certain books.

Selection

Basing fly selection on what we can actually find on the river is a good start, which sounds both crass and patronising admittedly.
It really is surprising how many anglers I guide who have never taken the time to have a look at what is around.

A fresh spider web is convenient, and any kind of dip or scoop net takes up little enough space.

I have been asked if it is necessary to start making out like a proper entomologist, or even to try to catch an airborne insect in a hat or something, and in truth it’s not strictly needed. We can make a seasonal guess and fish that with no real more effort than that.
If our presentation skills are up to it, we could take a fair guess at what to tie on as a prospecting fly just by season.

A Jingler in # 12 for the March Brown / Large dark olive is good in spring. We don’t get March Brown in any numbers on the waters I fish but it’s still a good mouthful to bring fish up.

A sedge fly can be useful way before the high season and Autumn if you have a Grannom hatch. If we see a sedge on the Derwent or the lower part of the Wye, and it is early season, chances are that something like an Elk Winged Caddis with a green bum will do the trick. Another fly an angler could have some success with for a fair portion of the season.
#14 and #16 works most of the time.
A Chocalate Drop sedge is a good darker pattern, later on.
The vaguely roof shaped wing is a profile I like a lot, not just for Sedge flys.
A Hair winged dun, as dressed by (Harrup)can be a sedge, a stonefly or , as the name suggests a sort of emerging Dun.
We can play with the colours of this pattern and as a search pattern it fills more than one outline.
#16 works pretty well, but #18 are a good back up size.

This pattern is good but there are times when a more distinct outline works better, and we soon get into the thing which causes confusion among many anglers, especially beginners.
An upwinged fly, drifting down river or across the surface of a like may well be imitated by a split winged traditional dry fly, or a sparkle dun trailing shuck compara dun with a frill of deer hair. ( another good pattern. The tradional Greenwells Dun dressed dry, or the low floating Compara dun may have a hundred years between them, but the original tyres of these flies could easily have been playing around with concepts of the same insect. I like to think each would acknowledge the others work,
Upwinged fly imitations should be carried in a range of colours and patterns, of a style that suits the anglers eyesight as much as anything, but I tend to favour low floating favourites like a small Thorax Dun in high summer, Try #18, #20, #22 if you can tie or buy them.

Long summer days and evenings are sometimes desperately difficult, but a fair sized Soldier Beetle

( Staziker ) or a recent Favourite a Flying beetle ( Ed Engle I think ) in #14 works for me, especially under vegetation, pretty much as you would expect.

In the evenings , some form of spinner is essential, traditional Lunns Particular #14 16 18 but try trimming the hackle and cranking the shank on spinner patterns, and if you tie your own, adding very long tails does no harm.

A diminutive Fly, The Iron Blue #18 is an essential fly, Several Midge patterns and Green fly patterns on #18 to as small as is humanly possible should be carried , but a Griffiths Gnat is a good one to have , #16 #18 if travelling light.
The straddle legged dry midge by Chauncey Lively is a nice pattern.
I like a small Humpy around #20 tied using CDC , with a proper little collar hackle is a tricky little tie, but well worthwhile.
A good Derbyshire Fly would be the Double Badger, especially on riffled water, #16 is good , especially if tied by an ancient Derbyshire angler , using a thread from the hem of a nuns nightgown.
A small pale yellow fly, sparsely dressed parachute style with a red silk head , about the only fly I claim as my own, is a good fly in September up to the end of the season. #18. I call it the Glymo.

Favourite fly

After a great deal of pondering, I am not sure I have one any longer . All of the patterns I have mentioned have been a favourite for a good spell, none work all the time in all conditions. But, Years ago I tied a parachute style Grey Duster, using the hackle stem as a post. , but pushed over to the tie down point. Taking the sparse dubbing round the shank a little made it even better, especially on the less fertile upland parts of a river.
Looking back , it may have predated the Klinkhammer and the Paraloop style of tying, but it could equally be that I am deluding myself. I stopped using it partly because emergent flies are not allowed on my favourite river and I decided it had stopped my development as an angler.

9. Presentation and drifts
The importance of presentation came to me in a half formed thought one afternoon on the Derbyshire Derwent. The other thought in my mind at the time was if I could find a pair of thigh boots that didn’t ship water at the same time as leaking on the other foot and sliding around on a treacherous river bed.
I had actually managed a couple of fish one something or other , whoever wet or dry is beyond memory now, so it was a bit of a joyful afternoon anyway.
They thought was, it was odd how my worst cast seemed to be the ones that actually rose a fish.
It wasn’t that often my line landed nice and straight , leader and line all in a neat line, but when it did, I either had an offer instantly , usually missing it, or not at all . When I made cast which landed other than straight, a seemingly messy sloppy mess drifting around it more often rose a fish!
The half formed thought then grew....what if I lengthened the leader and tried to make a sloppy cast deliberately?
Looking back of course the importance of controlled slack line casting ( and controlling it) has been a cornerstone of many how to do it Fishing Books, over centuries so I can hardly claim a fresh thought, but the next time I set up a float rod , or fished with a pal who was a keen float angler more likely the importance of a steady drift, not pulling across like a demented windscreen wiper became more applicable to my dry fly fishing.
I started reading books then , and magazines, and found some older ones made reference to a slack line cast, but fly fishing was more of a side interest for a while , my real breakthrough seemed to be reading a book I found in paperback form, one of those books longer than it was deep whatever that may be.
My quick search has just told me this would be around 1972 perhaps , but no mention of a soft cover so maybe memory plays false. I didn’t make much sense of the fly patterns, nothing like that was ever in the tackle shops I used to shop at, ammonia from the maggots, and the fog of cigarettes and a counter full of floats and swim feeders and short draw hooks to nylon, but some of the logic of trying to imitate what was around began to settle on my mind.
The book ? Swisher and Richards...Trout stream strategy...it bought together most of the strands in other books as I have no doubt most of the readers of this posts will know, so not all original, but they all seemed to chime with me at the time.
My favourite presentation would be from very slightly above a trout, using a reach cast, maybe with an extra bit of slack thrown in by dropping the rod tip a bit too soon, and remember to pick the rod again to take some drag off. We can a really cool drag free drift like this, hooking them is a different matter though!

We can fish most stream situations with upstream parachute cast, a cross stream reach and a dump or wriggle cast for true downstream stuff. All of which is probably well known enough but if I might add a couple of tweaks to any upstream presentation, based on many years of missing thousands of fish, for me , holding the rod a little closer to the body gives a little more elbow room to set up on the hook setting. Deciding if the hook stroke will be helped or hindered by which foot is advanced with a slightly downstream and downward rod movement. It might just look a wee bit pretentious to set up like a fencing instructor but if I don’t at least consider doing so then for me, it means I am not on my A game, and with the number of really good younger pro and semi pro anglers working the streams.....

The old advice I have pinched from the works of yesteryear , and one I often give to clients is to place a dry fly next to a drifting leaf and see just how long it takes for the paths to diverge...I wouldn’t say trout won’t take a skidding dry fly, of course they do ,sometimes but mostly they don’t, and then figure out what we need to do to achieve a nice smooth drag free drift.. sometimes just waggling the rod , or twisting the handle during the power stroke can give us all we need or maybe a longer leader helps .

About the only time I reckon on tempting a fish on a heavily dragging dry fly on stream is when giving a casting demonstration and pronouncing how fish will not take a dragging fly...only for one to chase down my bit of red wool when it looks like a speedboat!

10. Upstream or downstream?

There is a sort of meme in the river fly fishers world which seems to place the Rule of Upstream Only and with fully floating fly as the preserve of the most exclusive and socially superior type of fishing.
The water I fish mostly is often taken to be such a water , but that is actually a misconception.
The Derbyshire Wye controlled by Haddon estate, is a sort of club , but which is run with sort of benign dictatorship, no committee decisions, no petty rules imposed through envy, no having to book beats in advance etc.
The rules are , No wading, Dry Fly only in the trout season, catch and release, barbless hooks.
There is however another rule or rather , definition of a dry fly which states no emerging patterns, and this in practice means that a very useful fly , The Klinkhammer, is not allowed on the majority of the estate waters.
There are other problems in the world , but this special rule has triggered many a class struggle on the social media, with loud voices protesting against a rule , adding to it the rule they themselves have invented ie Upstream Only, on a water that they have personally never fished !
It is a slightly wicked thought to add ...and maybe never will..

There are some waters on which the rule of upstream only casting holds sway, and some which the convention is cast to rising fish only, and it is this some how British rule which seems to have lodged in the collective consciousness of the modern angler.

It is understandable I suppose, waters which are dry fly only tend not to be the rough and tumble freestone streams of the Pennines and further north . They are mainly in the south of England , and because of the proximity to London and big money they are never going to be £6 per day. It’s easy to see how these things have become linked.

The water I fish and guide on most is dry fly only, and no emergers, but there is no rule against an upstream or downstream presentation. There is a convention against allowing a dry fly to swing across a pool and dragging it back upstream.
All our members know the rules , and recent years has seen the number of unaccompanied day tickets cut down dramatically. We can and do take guests , but we do know that there is a difference between fishing properly and not doing so.

The short answer to the age old question of upstream or downstream is , for me , I personally am happy with whatever gives me the best presentation. Drag free, and with a proper fly , of course!

11. Fighting Fish
The only certain view I can proffer is that we have to hook them before the fight even starts, and if we do not set the hook properly the fight is going to be a short one!
If I may offer a view on a successful hook set, it would be to hold the rod a little closer to the body than we would do if nymph fishing in the Euro style.
This gives a very real advantage of line control for setting the hook to a dry fly take. If we don’t have some means of trapping our line against the rod handle (gently!) then a firm contact is difficult to achieve.
When we get towards late summer, we sometimes try to add a slight body weight shift to give a sort of double tap on the harder and toothy jaw of late season brown trout.
I do think the advice to beginners to Keep the rod up is a bit misleading, when I have a novice I try to take a few minutes to practice what to do if a hook set is successful, holding the rod upright puts an awful strain on the rod and give little control.
Around 30 degrees is best as others have often said.
I use bamboo rods when appropriate, and taking the entire rod behind the shoulder, often turning it upside down goes a long way to avoiding anything untoward to the rod or the result of the scrap.
It’s something I try to practice with my carbons too, the rods are very strong in use but they are a pretty thin hollow tube at the end of the day. An engineer once told me that you wouldn’t design a bridge to the bare minimum specs of tolerance they use on some rods..no redundancy for extreme events, and clamping down with a death grip on a fish with a vertical rod is probably the cause of many fine rods meeting an untimely end.

Ogden

Mr James Ogden was the son of an established tackle dealer in Matlock a few miles downstream of where the River Wye joins the Derwent .

He was an avid angler and great publicist and while he did not claim to have invented the floating fly to tempt trout, it seems he was a great pioneer of the method and was the first to use the term Dry Fly and use it in conjunction with a shorter rod and a fly line dressed to float , and to shoot.

He was asked to give a demonstration of this new fangled method

while staying at the Peacock Hotel , already an esteemed coaching and sporting inn.

Here are his own words, how the demonstration went.

The Peacock Fishing club have a celebration of Ogden Day, 5 th June.
Mr. Ogdens representative appears , in appropriate clothing off course , and has a few casts with a floating Mayfly to see if it could, just maybe , work. Sometimes it does , sometime the watery sprites decree otherwise, but a fair crowd turn up to witness the event, and to mock, it has to be said.
We don’t reenact falling in, at least not so far , and Ogden is sometimes Lady Ogden, but whatever the results, a celebration is held.
I usually mention the history of the Dry Fly when I give a demonstration, a local chap after all, and off course a crucial moment in a word wide sport we all know and love.

I tell my audience to keep the knowledge to themselves, lest the Southern Chalk stream crowd discover it, and claim it for themselves, we Derbyshire folk know different!

A little piece of History.
A few years ago a chap wandered into the shop and asked if an old wooden rod might have any value .
I told him that old rods were pretty common, and most car boot sales had a selection, and while were nice items, mostly they were too big to display at home, and too old to fish with.
They had to have a makers name to have anymore than a value of more than a few pounds, or have some peculiar history.
My Chap said that it did have a name, but it wasn’t one that he or anybody he knew had heard of , could he bring it in for me to look at?
A few weeks later, he bought it in and this is the tale he knew of it.
This was a rod from a defunct angling club, and one of his relatives had been secretary or some such committee member.
When the books of membership etc were passed from one committee to another included amongst the dusty records etc was a rod , which was held to have been important, and to be looked after.

The exact route of the rod is a little unclear, but it survived several generations of house moves, weddings , funerals, world wars , general strikes and depressions. How it wasn’t thrown away is a miracle, there must have been the trace of the legend clinging for it to avoid being cleared away by people being faced with the daunting task of house clearing.

The rod is Lance wood, spliced joint, full rattan handle and around 8 feet in length.
It feels light in the hand, and is surprisingly lively, and gives the feeling of control we look for in a dry fly rod.

The rings had rusted to little stubs , and a few modern rings had been whipped on but not varnished , to see if it would still throw a line. It does apparently and had a Brown trout of around a pound on its test run.

I told the owner that it outdoor be an important rod, but putting a value on it was difficult, but I would treat it with respect , and not simply shift it on .
A deal was struck, a Rod for a rod seemed about right, and it is now in my possession.
James Ogden set great store on his lancewood rods, but adopted the split cane methods of rod making in 1871, so the rod does predate that, it has been passed down other the years as a rod of importance in the Derbyshire angling world, and in the words of an Angling Auction house expert, It appears to be the very rod that James Ogden cast a Dry Mayfly with on the 5 th June 1865, and which created the first Dry Fly rule anywhere in the world.

Possibly the collectible of angling collectibles. ...

The Members of the Peacock club raise a toast to the rod on the re enactment days each year, and occasionally at the Members Christmas dinner, and it is intended for it to find a home at the Peacock Hotel at where it was held by James Ogden as he stepped out of the hotel, down the steps and straight into angling history.