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1. Flyfishing
   1. Flyfishing
   2. Coarse

To be more precise this should be entitled ‘Fly fishing around Europe with a Greys Streamflex XF2 and no fly line!' I spent much of last summer travelling around Europe, staying longer in some regions than others, when the fishing was most fascinating. The highlight was an August week in Slovenia with Team Australia, just before the World championships in neighbouring Italy. The fishing, the scenery and the company just could'nt be beaten. With one rod, the XF2 Streamflex 11' #3 (ok, there was a spare three weight in the tube, just in case, but it never saw light) and rather than a fly line, a leader-to-hand rig, which effectively has rendered fly line obsolete for river nymph and dry fly fishing. The leader-to-hand was loaded on my favourite reel, a Hardy Marksman #3/4.

As you might have picked up from my writing elsewhere, the incredible performance of the modern high modulus carbon fibre rod, particularly in lengths of 10' - 11', has represented the pinnacle of all tackle design, and has actually outstripped fly line development. It remains to be seen if SINTRIX will lift this development still further, as it has done with the heavier line weighted rods.

Modern fly lines are excellent, of course, for conventional fly presentation, but the leader-to-hand has yielded utterly unparalleled presentation for nymph, and particularly dry fly, on the river. With conventional fly line, good presentation, with control of a fly can be achieved only out to 10 metres, and ranges of from six to 10 metres are ideal. Control rapidly and seriously falls away beyond that range. The problem is that the density of even a #2 or #3 weight floating line is such that the line rests on the surface (and sags between rod tip and water) and thus interacts with the surface currents, resulting very quickly in loss of control and/or contact with the fly, and the inevitable drag in a dry fly drift.

The very light weight of long rods like the above-mentioned XF2 Streamflex, coupled with an action that is easily loaded, has allowed us to explore beyond the possibilities of conventional fly lines, which are lagging behind in the realms of the archaic AFTM weighting system. Now we can use appropriately designed leaders, without any fly line at all, casting these in the conventional manner, and find that we can have astonishingly delicate presentation, with control beyond the old 10 metre range, and for longer in each drift. I was entirely comfortable during my continental travels with my l-to-h rig and the Streamflex on rivers ranging from the upper Moselle to the north-west of the Alps, to the Austrian, Italian and Slovenian rivers on the south-east slopes. A range of rivers of very different nature, albeit draining the same massif; but in all cases, with either nymph or dry fly, the same outfit prevailed, and this included all the requirements for my time with Team Australia, other than streamer fishing.

It is strangely comforting to be able to rely on the same approach for all one's fly fishing needs. I should explain that most of this involves, nymph, spider or dry fly, and further, that 90% is on rivers (of all types) for Trout and Grayling; but I do fish still waters and even here one is finding superior presentation using l-to-h, particularly dry fly. Some aspects of our sport are very important to me, and one of these is to be able to approach a new water and go through that analytical phase in the knowledge that whatever I find there, my approach with the tackle that I have come to trust because of its incredible versatility, is very likely to be effective and efficient.

There was a moment on Sava Bohinjka, north-west Slovenia; a magnificent, alpine river running off the Triglav National Park on its steep fall to the great Sava. I was with Rob Staples, Manager of Team Australia, while the rest of the boys were on a training session further downstream. At the end of August, following the heavy heat of the southern European summer, the river was very low, and clear. The Trout were feeding for only short periods at the beginning and, particularly, the end of the day, while the grayling were at their most enigmatic and elusive. We were a long way upstream, close to overwhelming, ice-scarred Triglav. Indeed, following the summer's heat, there was very little ice left on the high Alpine peaks. The river's pace here was verging on the pathetic, a mere whisper flow of the normal 'substance' of Sava Bohinjka. There was almost nowhere that the river bed could not be seen, with utter, crystalline clarity, or where the fish scythed away across the feeble current if the approach was just a little too clumsy. We concentrated on the shadow water, the broken; skeletal riffles that headed the long glides, and the turquoise pools and holes that beckoned us, because these places, surely, were sanctuary for the enormous populations of trout and grayling for which this river is so justifiably famous.

So here we were, in this moment at the end of summer, in this place which is simply paradise for a fly fisher; but in oppressively hot, low conditions in late afternoon, while Team Captain, Peter Dixon, had asked me to demonstrate how I would go about catching Trout and Grayling in such a hostile river state. Having reduced the confusion of choices (which is part of the great fly fishing secret) to the long Streamflex and leader-to-hand, I elected for a CdC plume tip (a generic upwing pattern) on a size 19. Even though there were very few fish actually rising, experience has shown that Trout and Grayling lying in such shallow water, whether nymph feeding, or not feeding at all, will often not pass by the opportunity of a dun. I think this is because of the vulnerability of same; their helpless state on the surface as they dry their wings prior to taking flight. The search was on, with Rob as my companion as we ventured into the extreme upper Sava Bohinjka, searching for shadows, and deeper holes among the crystal clarity of the feeble flow off the summer Triglav.

Even on very healthy rivers, with strong populations of Trout and Grayling, as the Slovenian rivers, in such conditions the fish will always be challenging. A hurried movement, a glint of flash, even the touchdown of a light-weight fly line can spook the fish. This can be observed by seeing Trout dashing off for cover, or the 'shrugging' of Grayling as they drop into the river stones and just stop feeding. And here is just one of the many areas in which l-to-h excels, because it yields comparatively disturbance-free presentation. There is so little mass in the entire rig, that touchdown is incredibly gentle; inaudible and usually invisible. All that we see out there - or more importantly that the fish see - is the dry fly (or the tiny plop on the surface if using nymph): there is absolutely nothing to alert the fish, and this really makes a vast difference, as so it proved that day on Sava Bohinjka. In the first likely looking area under the tree overhang on the far bank, a rainbow flipped out of nowhere (it is also incredible how fish can materialise out of the nothingness of utterly clear water) to snatch away the plume tip. And later, on finding a lovely scoop three metres long in mid river, which must have had a depth approaching two metres, and perhaps in excess of 20 Trout and Grayling in residence, I managed six fish before leaving it to explore elsewhere, and I don't think the remaining fish were particularly spooked! In all the time I spent there, the only disturbance was from hooked fish, which were all steered away from the holding area into the surrounding shallows.

Finally, Rob and I retreated to find the rest of the team downstream, and I felt a sense of wonder. We both agreed that in such conditions as those, the l-to-h is so elegantly effective; frankly unbeaten by any other approach. I should explain that while l-to-h stems from a technique referred to as French nymphing, these are absolutely NOT the same technique. French leader was designed for presenting tiny nymphs to spooky fish in low, clear rivers, and is in itself a far more refined and delicate approach compared with Polish rolled nymph or Czech nymph, which it has effectively replaced. The latterly famous French leaders consisted of long, knotted tapers, up to nine metres in length and recently improved (slightly) by being knotless. Actually, these are rather crude and good only for nymph fishing. Dry fly presentation with these leaders is poorer even than with conventional fly lines, except for very short range. I discovered this as far back as 2008, when the French leader was becoming more popular with international competitors, particularly in Europe. And this was the time when, frustrated by its shortcomings I sought to improve the whole approach. Right up to that time we were focused on the Hends Cameo leaders that were designed for nymph presentation. They were passable for their function, but only on very long, soft rods. I was much more interested in dry fly, which I perceived as the pinnacle of the sport, in a presentation sense. There was no alternative other than to design my own presentation leader-to-hand rig. Working with the Hends 10' #3, then the ever-improving Streamflex 10' models, finally came the breakthrough with the Streamflex XF2 11' #3 - in my view the best river nymph and dry fly rod ever produced. From the moment I started using a prototype of this rod, I understood that this was the fundamental tool we had needed in order to develop this new technique on rivers. Finally, abandoning the limited, commercially-available long leaders, I worked out my own, based primarily on dry fly presentation, and therefore conventional overhead (or side) casting. What I discovered, fortuitously and auspiciously, was unsurpassed presentation, for both nymph and (especially) dry fly, way beyond the 'fly line limit' of 10 metres, with astonishing 10-15 metre drag-free drifts - simply the most elegant presentation I had ever experienced.

If you wish to learn about the presentation possibilities described here you might be interested to learn that two master class days are being organised next spring on the River Eden (Appleby waters), and further that there is a weeklong trip to the San River, Poland, next September, which will feature both master class sessions and guided fishing sessions on this, the best mixed Trout and Grayling fishery in Europe. Contact me for details.

Of course, you can learn it all by your own practice, though it helps considerably to be shown along the way. To really engage this approach, you will, however, need an appropriate leader-to-hand, the construction of which I have described in articles in Fly Fishing and Fly Tying magazine and my Fishing on the Frontier series in Fish & Fly. The materials consist of 12 metres of 0.47 mm Greys Greylon (copolymer), connected (well drawn down two turn Water knot) to a 3.5m (12') section of Hardy Tapered Copolymer Leader (tapering from 0.5mm down to 0.25 mm). There is also a braided nylon monofilament section between leader and tippet. The two best rods worth considering, in my opinion (having used everything that is available in this category), are the Streamflex XF2 11' #3 and the XF2+ #3. The former is simply unbeatable in terms of control for dry fly, nymph and spider on the river (even with conventional fly line), while the latter is rather more versatile as a pack or travel rod.

Jeremy Lucas is an APGAI Instructor and member of the Hardy & Greys Game Academy. Jeremy is one of the most capped England Internationals and has multi caps in all levels and disciplines.

Readers in the UK can buy the Hardy products mentioned in this article online from Hardyfishing.com - click here to shop online.