Flies

Cover spring to autumn risers on any freestone stream.

Upstream to a rising fish, exact imitation, drag-free drift — the chalk-stream equation that sounds simple and reliably isn't. Pale watery through the summer, large dark olive in spring, and infinite patience throughout.

July and August evenings on the Kennet, Test and Itchen, when the sedge hatch begins and fish that have refused everything all day appear at the surface of every pool. The G&H Sedge was designed for exactly this moment.

When the chalk stream looks completely dead and nothing is hatching, a terrestrial can change everything. Hawthorn in April, flying ants on a hot July afternoon, crane fly from August — one or another is always falling.

When they're bulging, not breaking — fish just under the top.

The fish are doing something — a barely-perceptible sip, a bulge with no obvious ring — and the dry fly is being refused. They are in the film. An emerger or spent spinner, presented without drag, is what is needed.

Two nymphs and a soft hackle that cover most subsurface trout fishing.

Sawyer's method: find a fish, cast upstream, let the nymph drift toward it, then raise the rod at the right moment. Watch the fish, not the leader. The take registers as a change in posture, not a visible twitch.