Surf Fly fishing a small How To:

Surf Fly fishing a small How To:

Fishing with a fly rod in the UK is hard work i have a done quite a bit of this in the past the first thing is location if you are not going to use a boat which is a fine way to practice this aspect of the sport, then you need the right sort of beach what you really want are features that will cause the fish to run in close these include deep runs and sand bars with deep drop offs these create nice channels that the bass and other predators run along feeding on the sandeals and other small fish.

The trick is to find a beach from which you can either wade to within reach of the fish so long and shallow allowing you to get out to where it starts to drop off or my preference steep and deep with bars running close in also its worth noting beach coves between rock faces these are good places to pick up pollock.

For tackle i favor a 8-9 weight rod with a real that takes a full length sinking or sinktip weight forward fly line with 50m of backing i prefer a shooting head arrangement with solid nylon backing but its personal thing you go with what ever gives you the distance.

This is attached to a tapered leader i like lengths of 7 - 10 ft and point strengths of 10lbs, I tend to tie flys with a lot of white marabou and sparkle over leaded bodies but there are loads of good patterns out there and i use a mixture of my own patterns and over the counter patterns.

I cast across and out starting at the far and and working my way to the right i start with a cast out to just beyond the third breaker and a sharp jerky retrieve and then move further out generally by wading till i reach my maximum depth but it has to be said quite often the fish are in the first couple of breakers esp. if there has been a storm and the beach is deep.

The leaded fly i find kicks up sand of the bottom making it look lke a sandeal moving through the sand the sparkle and white body prove to be killers.

Its important to learn how to beach a decent fish as well and to use the action of the waves to your advantage to sweep the fish into the beachtiming it with your own efforts.

Anyway ill try to dig some pictures out and post them .

PS:. I always carry a small spinning rod as well and some spoons an a few plus i have found there are days where the fish just wont have the fly and its worth a parting shot with the spoons or a rappala. Not very pure but there you have it the sins of a practical angler.