Ten ways to catch more salmon

WHEN WE GET OUT OF LOCKDOWN AND BACK ON TO THE RIVERS, HERE ARE TEN WAYS TO GET YOUR ROD BENDING AGAIN TO A SALMON.

Try something different. (Strip your fly back fast, and/or radically change fly size even using a much bigger fly, change lines, change rods, change pools.)

Stalk your fish (keep a low profile, tread carefully).

Fish the best bits fast – and cover the water including mutliple pools (a walk or car ride away) if you have that option.

Take a break (just stop fishing, talk to a friend in the fishing hut, have a brew or go back to your digs and shower and change). Because when you restart you’ll be a different fisher with a different atttitude and that’s when you catch fish.

Try a fast sinking line in deep pools, even in low water conditions. Might be a time to try that bigger fly stripped back past the noses of fish. Or give the normally surface-fished Sunray Shadow a swim through deeper, fish-holding water.

In pools with a slow-flow, cast 90 degrees directly across, and ‘mend’ the line downstream to fish the fly from the off.

Never, ever give up (or lose the chance to have a go, even making a few casts while eating a lunchtime sandwich – if the spirit moves you then fish and that’s when you’ll catch one).

Fishing – and life – present us with chances and opportunities. They don’t often come along but recognise and take them when they do. It might be a cloud passing across the sun on a bright day or the sudden availability of a good pool in a fishing rotation. Or a last period of stable water level before a big flood. Just do it.

Fish hard when the weather goes weird. It’s often the best time.

When you see fish running through your beat (be it moving into the tail of your pool or the one below), intercept them. Even if it means jumping into the car and heading a quarter of a mile upstream!

So tight lines when we get going again – and don’t choke on that lunchtime sandwich when a fish takes!

If you enjoyed this:

My salmon fishing book, How To Catch More Salmon, is published in the UK and US by White Owl Books, an imprint of Pen and Sword Books Ltd, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, UK.

It is availabel via Amazon and also on the Sportfish website and at Anglebooks.com.

And finally: I have an article published in the forthcoming issue of Fly Culture Magazine (Spring Issue, out 22/03/2021 you can order Pete Tyjas's fabulous-looking magazine via flyculturemag.com LINK HERE.