Experience

The best teacher - time on the water

Lubin Pfeiffer

Many things can be taught in fishing. It’s always been said that engaging with likeminded anglers is extraordinarily helpful. Getting lessons from those that teach fishing, whether it be casting or fishing based tuition, fly or knot tying, rigging and the many other areas, it is a great way to further your fishing knowledge and ability. While this is the key to a successful foundation of a good angler, I’d like to take a deeper look into how experience ties all these things together. The old saying of practice makes perfect could not be more true when it comes to regular captures on the water. Whilst I fish many methods I want to take a look here at what makes a great fly angler. Experience and time ion the water is always the answer, so let’s look at ways you can hugely increase your fly angling ability without always needing to get taught more.

Getting started

Tuition will fast track your learning, but remember not to take on too much before you master what you already know

Before we look at anything else, as a beginner fly angler, you’re going to have to consume as much as possible with what’s available to you, which these days is a huge amount. There are magazines, YouTube channels, many forms of social media, guides, and casting instructors to name but a few. These will all help you get a good foundation to work with.

I’ve found with my fishing that once I’ve learned a particular technique, rather than learning anything else straight away I’d rather go to the river or lake and use that technique constantly until I’ve mastered that one aspect. I remember the first time I got shown how to swing a wet line with streamers attached in New Zealand. After that day, I spent the entire trip and most of the next one just swinging a wet line and fishing downstream. Looking back on it now, there would’ve been plenty of fish that I didn’t catch because of this, but the ability to fish a wet line with streamers has been firmly implanted in my brain forever. Fishing downstream like that actually involves a fair bit of rod work, such as the angle you stop the rod to get the right swing, where and when to start stripping the flies and what length of line is most effective depending on what part of the river you are fishing. To try to explain all of those things to someone without them going and experiencing how that looks and feels over a range of different scenarios is impossible.

I went through the same process for fishing tiny dries on a long progressive leader, it wasn’t until I dedicated almost a whole summer of practice doing the same thing over and over, learning when to do what and why that it all made sense. I often explain to people that I’m guiding that the way I’m showing you to do it is just a foundation and once you have