Advice on buying fishing tackle

We are often asked for advice on buying fly fishing equipment. The best piece of advice we can offer beginners is to see – and use - our equipment before making your purchase.

Time after time we see well-meaning parents, or keen beginners, come to a lesson with totally unsuitable - and often very expensive - tackle.

As fly fishing instructors we probably subject tackle to more use in a month than the average angler does in a year. We have experience of good and bad tackle: accessories that simply fall apart; poorly constructed reels that can trap expensive fly lines between cage and spool; waders and jackets with design problems that will send you home shivering and wet, and rods that qualify for the description "carpet beaters" as well as others that merit the accolade "world beaters".

We would be happy to recommend complete outfits as well as single pieces of equipment that in our experience are robust, backed up by good after-sales service, and offer genuine value for money.

Equipment for Westcountry rivers

When you purchase a set of suitable equipment please ask the dealer to bear the following suggestions in mind:

If you intend to fish mainly on small Westcountry rivers for wild brown trout we recommend a rod between 7 and 8 feet, AFTM rated 3, 4 or 5. If you intend to fish mainly on small stocked stillwaters or reservoirs, a 9 foot rod rated AFTM 5, 6 or 7 would be more suitable. 

You will also need a suitable reel, weight forward (WF) or double taper (DT) floating fly line, backing, braided loop and tapered leader(s). Ask the dealer to load the reel with the backing and fly line, and join the braided loop to the end of the fly line. 

You will also need some tippet material (e.g. about 3lb (or 7X) breaking strain for river work and at least 6lb b.s. for small stillwaters), scissors or nail clippers, net, fly floatant, a fly box and a few flies suitable for wild brown trout and stocked rainbows.

We encourage "catch and release". Therefore a pair of forceps is essential.

You may want to buy a fly vest to keep all this stuff in.

We recommend you buy chest waders if you intend to fish on a river

Finally, and most importantly, wear some form of eye protection

Some thoughts on buying a fly rod

If you are a beginner:

Don't buy a rod without trying it first

Try several rods before making your first purchase

Don't be tempted by low-budget beginners outfits; learning to cast a fly is difficult enough without having to cope with poor tackle

Beginners deserve the best rods; more experienced casters can often adapt their casting to cope with poor rods

When testing a rod, don't just find out how far it will throw the fly line

Just because a rod can cast a fly line 'a country mile' that doesn't mean it will be a useful fishing rod

Most of the fishing on small west country rivers requires casts of 20 to 30 feet, therefore you should test how the rod performs with less than 30 feet of fly line beyond the tip

The fly line is just as important - if not more so - than the rod. Avoid combining an expensive rod with a cheap line.

This paragraph - from the American rod maker Tom Morgan - sums up what we look for in a fly fishing rod:
"What makes a great trout rod? Most importantly, it has to become what I call a "thought rod." When you are fishing with it, you almost forget that you have a rod in your hand. It becomes an extension of your physical body, and, almost always, you think where you want the fly to go, and, as if by magic, the fly appears there. This fluid action comes because the rod is wonderfully smooth, bends sufficiently to communicate with the angler how it's working, and has an inherent delicacy. And, it does this at the normal distances that you fish for trout."Tom Morgan (2002)
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