Botham on the Fly - Chalk Stream Fishing

" While Eric and I get competitive, fortunately Jerry our guide, is more interested in the fish's behavior than our's. Working out what their feeding on and how we should present the fly."

" This is what I call intermediate water, it's not easy. Generally what happens because it's more complicated. They normally got some near sufficient experience under their belt before they actually tackle on the choke strings because the strange thing they're worried about is the trees. And what you have to do is to really tighten up that casting, to get to cope with the trees and that is always a problem that's what puts the fear that's what puts most people off choke stream fishing is actually the trees not the fishing. Ward croft is the depth of a fish; how deep it is in the water. So therefore, I tend to use obviously a heavier flow if they're deep like we've we're here. The type of rows, the shape of rows, the way the fish moves, if a fish comes up vertically then they're going to take a drive fly. If they're taking subsurface so actually you see the dorsal fin or maybe the tail come out, they're taking emerging flies and actually the fish is taking it on the downward part not the upward track. And that took me about three years of fairly intensive study to notice, the mouth it was opening on the way down not on the way up. The fish tell me what I want to know and fly fishing is awful lot of observation."

" This, this gray stuff on here Is called CDC Okay and that's the initials for Cul De Canard in French. It's a preening gland feather of ducks believe it or not. But it floats very well that's the whole secret of it, okay? All right won’t go into that rut So that's a version I'd go Or plan two would be the clink kind of version which is this style And the insect, is stuck in the water at that angle so therefore that's what that's feeding on so we copy that why I've used in CDC's or these clink hammers."

" Thanks to French ducks and Jerry's wisdom, we fished out the last hour of the day and managed to land a couple of grayling."