How do you recognise an expert angler? Fly fishing experts seem to be instantly recognisable. They wear baseball caps, beards and a lot of accoutrements dangling from their chests, as this collection of American experts shows. The UK has its own collection of beardy fly fishing experts too, mostly men of course, but a few women too (they are typically beardless).
These experts almost all have their own websites on which they publish articles that show off their expertise, videos that record copious catching of fish, and most important, inventories of fishing tackle for sale. They will generally advertise their expert guiding services to the non-expert. At one time guides were called ghillies and were to be found only in Scotland, their role to help the well-to-do holiday angler catch a salmon. Now guides, following the model of America, where they have been popular for a long time, have proliferated. Coarse fishing and sea fishing have their own experts too but fewer of them — fishermen with plenty of cash to spend on guides are more common amongst fly anglers.
You may ask what constitutes an expert. Some may have formal casting qualifications but aside from those the only requirement is for experts to show themselves to be prolific fish catchers, hence the action packed videos. Now of course this is not necessarily a reliable indication of expertise. To catch a lot of fish you need to fish where there are a lot of fish. Expert articles and videos tend to concentrate on methods and minutiae of fly patterns in the case of fly fishing, float shapes and shotting in coarse fishing, and fancy rigs in sea angling. Since all of these are innumerable the advice of an expert boils down to opinion or habit much of the time.
That’s not to say that there is no such thing as an expert angler. Too many dismiss the value of genuine experts nowadays, as we saw during the pandemic. Only the very foolish would subscribe to the view of Michael Gove who declared we’ve had enough of experts. Presumably he is happy to consult a plumber when he has toothache. The trick of course is to select the real experts from the glib, the boastful and the fanciful. I’m happy to seek out the guidance of more experienced anglers than myself, especially when faced with an unfamiliar water, but I’ve often found their advice falls short, or at least poorly translates into practice. In nearly all cases the best experience is that which you gain yourself.
Nothing wrong with watching our online experts displaying their skills if you like it; you never know, you might pick up a useful wrinkle. I don’t mind viewing a bit of rod-bending action myself although the boredom threshold is quickly reached. So in the interests of public service, I would like to offer the Secret Angler’s definitive guidance on how to catch fish.
- Fish where there are plenty of fish.
- Don’t scare them off before you’ve begun.
- Learn to cast well enough to put tackle near the fish and not, for example, in a tree.
- Offer them something, fly or bait, that they are likely to want to eat.
- Hook and land fish and release.
Alas, I am unable to offer a guiding service. But you don’t really need one, do you?
The Secret Angler 