Fly fishing: what to learn, and in what order

15 steps, 50 pages, and no account to make. Every step below links to pages that already exist on FishingHQ — this is the ORDER to read them in, which is the thing nobody tells you when you start.

Nothing here records what you have read, and nothing asks you to sign in. Come back to this page and pick up wherever you like.

The steps

1. Step 1 of 15

   What fly fishing is

   • Fly fishing — start here

     Casting a nearly weightless artificial using the weight of the line itself — a solution to a specific problem that became a tradition of its own.

   • Why fly tackle is built the way it is

     Every unusual feature of a fly outfit follows from one inversion: the line is the weight, so the rod, the reel and the line ratings all exist to serve a heavy line and a weightless hook.

   • Fly rods

     A rod designed to load against the weight of a line rather than a lure, and rated by the line class it is built for.

2. Step 2 of 15

   Casting mechanics

   • How fly casting works — start here

     The rod is a spring loaded by the line's mass; the loop is the evidence that the load was applied and released properly.

   • The double haul, and casting a fly in wind

     The technique that decides whether coastal fly fishing is possible at all in the conditions it is usually done in — and the one that beginners are told about long before they are shown why it works.

   • Spey and two-handed casting concepts

     A family of casts that change direction using the water's grip on the line instead of a back cast, developed for big rivers with no room behind the angler.

3. Step 3 of 15

   Presentation and drag

   • Presentation and drag — start here

     A drifting fly must travel at exactly the speed of the water carrying it. Everything a fly angler does on the water is in service of that.

   • Mending line, and what it is for

     A mend repositions the line on the water so the current stops dragging the fly. It is the technique that makes a dead drift possible, and it is what separates casting from fishing.

4. Step 4 of 15

   Fly lines, weights and tapers

   • Fly line weights, tapers and what they do — start here

     The number is a mass, measured over a defined length, and the taper is how that mass is distributed. Between them they decide what size of fly can be delivered and how far.

   • Floating, sinking and intermediate fly lines

     Density decides depth, and depth decides whether the fly is where the fish are. It is the single most consequential line choice and the one beginners change last.

   • Fly lines

     The casting weight, moved out of the lure and into the line — and the component that decides both how a fly is delivered and how deep it fishes.

5. Step 5 of 15

   Leaders and tippet

   • Leaders and tippet in fly fishing — start here

     The leader transfers the energy of a thick line down to something a fly can be tied to. Its length and taper are a presentation decision, not a formality.

   • Tippet size, and when to go finer

     Finer tippet buys better presentation and costs breaking strain and fish-welfare margin. The decision is a trade, and it is usually made in the wrong direction.

   • Fly leaders and tippet

     The tapered link between a thick fly line and an almost weightless fly — and the component that decides whether a cast turns over or lands in a heap.

6. Step 6 of 15

   Fly knots and connections

   • Loop-to-loop connection — start here

     Not a knot at all but a way of joining two looped ends — and the fastest reliable connection there is, provided it is made the right way round.

   • Double surgeon's knot

     The line-to-line join that does not care whether the two lines match. Four operations, tied in seconds with cold hands, and the standard answer where a blood knot's diameter limit bites.

   • Non-slip loop knot

     A fixed loop tied at the lure or fly so the connection cannot pull tight against the eye. It is a presentation decision rather than a strength one: the loop restores movement a tight knot kills.

   • Blood knot

     The traditional join between two lines of similar diameter — neat, slim, and unforgiving of a large difference in thickness.

   • Nail knot

     The join between a fly line's plastic coating and a nylon leader or backing — two materials that will not knot to each other. It works by wrapping rather than by knotting, and it is why a fly line has ends at all.

7. Step 7 of 15

   Fly types and what each imitates

   • The four fly types, and what each imitates — start here

     Dry, wet, nymph and streamer describe where in the water a fly works and what it pretends to be — and in salt water the same four categories imitate crustaceans and baitfish instead of insects.

   • Choosing a fly size, and what the numbers mean

     Fly size is hook size, the scale runs backwards, and it is not standardised between patterns or manufacturers. Size matters more than colour and is chosen from what the fish are eating.

   • Dry flies

     Flies that float in or on the surface film, imitating adult or emerging insects — the most visual fly fishing and the one where drift beats pattern.

   • Wet flies

     Soft-hackled flies fished under the surface on a swing, imitating drowned insects and emergers — the oldest fly fishing method there is.

8. Step 8 of 15

   Entomology and prey imitation

   • The insects fly fishing imitates — start here

     Four groups of insect account for most of what a river trout eats, and knowing their life stages tells you what depth to fish at more reliably than any fly box does.

   • Matching the hatch: what it means and when it is wrong

     Identify what the fish are eating and offer something that behaves like it. The idea is sound, the phrase is over-extended, and it is wrong whenever nothing is hatching.

   • Aquatic insect larvae as prey

     The larval stages of midges, mayflies, caddisflies, stoneflies and their relatives — the foundation of the diet of most freshwater fish for most of their lives.

   • How fish detect prey

     Sight, the lateral line, smell, taste and hearing — and which one dominates decides what you should be manipulating.

9. Step 9 of 15

   River fly fishing

   • Reading a river for fish — start here

     A river is a repeating sequence of the same few features, and each one holds fish for a different reason. Learning the sequence means arriving at an unfamiliar river already knowing where to look.

   • Dry fly fishing

     Presenting a floating artificial to a fish feeding at the surface, so that it drifts exactly as a natural insect would.

   • Chalk streams

     Rivers fed by groundwater filtering through chalk — exceptionally clear, thermally stable, and globally rare.

   • Spate rivers

     Rain-fed rivers on hard impermeable rock that rise and fall within hours — the water most migratory salmonid fishing in the world happens in, and a fishery organised entirely around a flood cycle.

10. Step 10 of 15

    Stillwater fly fishing

    • Stillwater fly fishing — start here

      Fly fishing without current, where the angler supplies every movement and the problem becomes finding fish rather than presenting to them.

    • Reservoir fishing and depth

      A deep engineered water hides its features under the surface and stratifies in summer, which turns 'where are the fish' into a vertical question before it is a horizontal one.

    • Lowland stillwaters

      Enclosed bodies of standing fresh water — lakes, ponds, reservoirs and worked-out gravel pits — where everything is decided by depth, weed and temperature.

11. Step 11 of 15

    Estuary and brackish

    • Estuary fishing: tide, salinity and the moving front — start here

      An estuary is a salinity gradient that moves with every tide, and the fish move with it — which is why the same spot fishes like three different places over a tidal cycle.

    • Fly fishing for bass in surf, estuary and over rock

      One species and three genuinely different fisheries. Surf, estuary and rock demand different lines, different retrieves and different reading, and the fish behaves differently in each.

    • Estuary

      Where a river meets the sea: brackish, turbid, enormously productive, and governed by a tide that reverses the current twice a day.

12. Step 12 of 15

    Coastal and saltwater fly

    • Saltwater fly fishing: what changes — start here

      The casting is the same and almost nothing else is: heavier and more aggressive lines, shorter and stronger leaders, a reel that has to work, flies that imitate baitfish and crustaceans, and salt that destroys whatever is not rinsed.

    • Coastal fly fishing: the safety problem you bring with you

      The coastal fly angler stands in the water, on unstable ground, facing away from the sea, with loose line round their legs and their attention on a fish. No other shore discipline combines those four things.

    • What a saltwater fly imitates

      There are no insects in the sea. A saltwater fly imitates a baitfish, a shrimp or a crab, and the three behave so differently that choosing between them is a decision about movement rather than about colour.

    • Saltwater fly fishing

      Fly fishing adapted to the sea: heavier lines, corrosion-proof tackle, fish that run rather than fight, and wind as the permanent constraint.

13. Step 13 of 15

    Casting in wind

    • Casting into wind — start here

      Wind does not defeat a cast by being strong; it defeats it by exposing a slow, wide loop. The fix is line speed and loop shape, and the second fix is standing somewhere else.

    • The double haul, and casting a fly in wind

      The technique that decides whether coastal fly fishing is possible at all in the conditions it is usually done in — and the one that beginners are told about long before they are shown why it works.

14. Step 14 of 15

    Salt, corrosion and tackle care

    • What salt water does to fly tackle — start here

      A trout reel stores line and a saltwater reel fights fish, which is why the drag is sealed — and why the single habit that decides how long an outfit lasts takes two minutes at the end of a session.

    • Salt, corrosion and what it does to tackle

      The constraint that shapes every piece of sea tackle: salt water attacks metal continuously, and the failures it causes arrive without warning at load.

15. Step 15 of 15

    What takes a fly, fresh and salt

    • Brown trout — start here

      A single, extraordinarily plastic species that appears as a tiny hill-stream fish, a deep-bodied loch trout and a silver sea-run migrant — all the same animal.

    • Atlantic salmon

      An anadromous salmonid that migrates from its natal river to the North Atlantic and returns to spawn — and a species in serious, well-documented decline.

    • Grayling

      A salmonid with a sail for a dorsal fin that feeds hard through the winter — which makes it the game angler's season when the trout season has closed.

    • European sea bass

      A fast, predatory inshore fish that hunts in broken water and surf, and one of the most closely managed recreational species in European seas.

    • Where fly fishing goes beyond trout

      Fly fishing is a casting system, not a water type or a species. Anything that eats something a fly can imitate can be caught on one, and most of them are not trout.

The other paths

• Sea fishing

  20 steps.

• Freshwater fishing

  18 steps.

• Spearfishing

  19 steps.

• Kayak fishing

  16 steps.