From time to time an expression or word emerges that I think deserves to be in the angler’s dictionary.

During our hectic November two such words come to mind. the first — ‘gruntled’ — was from David, and the second — ‘lack of fishmanship’ was coined by Vanessa .

Both had success in the end — see below.

After a hard but enjoyable first up day learning the art of fly fishing, David was heard to reply to the question being posed to him next morning on the state of his health and wellbeing, that he was mildly ‘gruntled’ as distinct from being disgruntled.

In this shot I take it the mode had improved even more to the level of being pleasantly ‘gruntled’ at his first ever wild brown on the fly.

Although Ernst is a repeat Red Tagger who loves his fly fishing, he was very keen for his wife, Vanessa, to try it out as he thought they could enjoy the beautifull scenery and tranquility that goes with it.

To this end, Ernst planned a four day tour with Vanessa joining us as a beginner, on the last two days.

Vanessa got the hang of the casting quite quickly, but the trout where very unresponsive for the first day hence the introduction of the term ‘lack of fishmanship’.

However, day two on the river was a different matter and Vanessa soon got both the hang of the moving water techniques and the fell of the wild brown trout, with a couple of nice stream fish to hand and many more chances during the day.

Ernst was not to be denied his time in the sun, having set a new season high of 18 to hand (all released) on his opening day.

Having started with Tony’s lovely fish on his learning day (see below) November turned out to be our busiest yet, hence the delay in getting blog entries up — my apologies the the November ‘Taggers’ for the delay.

It was a great mixture, from single angler-learners for a day, to couples introducing partners to the art of the fly, to returning stream and rivers lovers. Coming soon are a few of the highlights I hope you enjoy.