The first draft of Volume 1, “Fishing the Film” in our book series entitled Fly Fishing has been submitted to the editor for his comments. Fishing the film deals with all aspects of this feeding zone, both above and below, as well as in, the surface film. Fishing the film is not always what it seems, as the story below so clearly documents. The parenthetical phrase in italics just under the title of the story lists the tactics illustrated in the story

Dry Enough, Indeed
(Across Stream, Up and Across Stream, a Switch Cast, a Angled Pile Cast, the Reach Mend, and the Greased Leader Tactic)

Angler’s the world over consider them hallowed waters because it was here that the written world of fly fishing began. Most of the early trout tactics were codified on these waters, and it was here that Fredrick Halford plied the dry while his gentlemanly rival, G.E.M. Skues taunted him by taking trout on the nymph. It is on rivers like the Test, the Itchen, the Kennet, and other chalk streams in the south of England, where the foundation stones for fishing the film were laid.

And so it was with great delight that Jason and I were sharing a day with our great friend, John Goddard, on his beat on the Test. Jason and I had some video work to do on “Where the Trout Are,” produced in cooperation with the Federation of Fly Fishers, and so John was fishing and we were shooting and trading the rod. We could see John upstream fishing away as we slowly made our way along. Video work is tedious and takes about ten times as long to shoot one fish being caught as it actually would take to catch it, if one were fishing without the need to please the camera.

On one corner, I spotted a trout working across stream in an eddy formed where the currents pushed against the bank and slid out along the trunk of a downed tree. It was an awkward spot because it was overhung by trees and closed in behind with brush and high vegetation. A roll cast across stream was immediately met with a skating fly. The currents were stronger than they looked. Time for consultation. We talked about the situation, pointed out the currents and how the line should best fall, where the fly had to ride, and of course, how in the blazes were we going to get the line to do that, given the trees and brush all around us. We decided on a Switch Cast. The Switch would give extra line speed to be certain the Angled Pile Cast would flip over properly and dump a pile of slack out there just above the slowly rotating, reverse currents. As the line flipped over at the tip, I reached the rod out as far as I could toward the middle of the stream, trying to get that shallow downstream angle that we both agreed was necessary. It took four or five tries to get the line on exactly the right current tongue, but suddenly there was the fly doing precisely what we had hoped. Up came the 18-inch brown and ate it with aplomb. We were elated. It was a much Jason’s fish as mine.

We worked upstream toward John, and came to a long straight stretch of water in an open meadow where fish were rising with regularity. Cast after cast was rejected, or didn’t even get so much as a nod. The elation we had felt over solving the puzzle of the fish in the corner began to deflate. John was a hundred yards away, and as we watched we saw him land a nice fish. He released it, straightened, rubbed his fingers along the leader, made a cast, and was fast to another. By the time we had walked up to where he was, he had landed that one and hooked a third.

“What the heck are you using, John,” I called out as we got close.

“An emerger just under the film,” came his distracted reply.

Jason and I looked at each other. John had told us this was dry-fly-only water. “An emerger under the film,” I said a bit in disbelief, “I thought this was dry-fly-only”?

“It’s dry enough for me,” he chuckled.

We’d been had! John was fishing an emerger just under the film with the Greased Leader tactic, playing Skues to my Halford.

“Dry enough, indeed,” was all I could manage to mumble back.

The brown from the corner, taken on a real dry fly