Fly Fishing Virgin Scores at Dever Springs Trout Fishery

My brother asked me to give a fly casting lesson to Jim, a business colleague, who had just retired, as a thank you present.  When Jim mentioned he lived near the famous Dever Springs Trout Fishery and as I had not fished there for many years I thought we should give it a try. 

 

 

Well it rained all day, but Dever is very well equipped, with a lovely lodge which was helpful. So we did the health and safety topics and the explanation of why it is called fly fishing in the dry out of the rain.  Jim explained to me he had tried teaching himself to cast a fly and had given up.  He also told me that the main outcome he wanted from the day was to learn to cast and that if he caught a fish that would be a bonus.  So we started on the grass, then graduated to the lake but with a piece of fluff on instead of a fly and went through all the basics. Fortunately, Jim was a quick learner and by listening, asking and then copying he was soon casting far enough to cover fish.  So we switched to a real fly and started fishing and the rain kept coming down. Jim hooked and lost a couple and finally failure could not cope with persistance and he landed his first rainbow trout weighing in at just over 4lb.

 

 

As you can see Jim was over the moon with his catch.  We fished on and Jim had a couple of other fish on but they got away.  Other anglers had caught a lot of fish earlier in the day obviously all the "easy" ones, so the fishing got harder and the rain wetter so we called it a day.