Tom Bird was the Guest Speaker on 7th February 2019. Tom is a member of the England Squad and the Five Nations Team and is a Ranger and Fishery Guide at Draycote Water.

Tom’s passion is fishing the dry fly on still waters and he has gained considerable experience and respect for his demonstrable skill at this aspect of fly fishing and also based on the Dry Fly Fishing Master Classes he has given at Draycote.

The first half of Tom’s presentation included all aspects of dry fly tactics on still [...]

Clive Collier was once again the Guest Speaker at the Christmas Special evening. The main focus of his presentation was grayling flies particularly in the context of the Hanak European Grayling Festival held on the River Dee in November of 2018. Clive demonstrated the use of Edgebrite in the tying of a grayling hare’s ear pattern with which he has had success. He also tied a Perdigon pattern which has been successful on the welsh River Dee at Llangollen followed by a Squirmy Wormy pattern tied to international rules.

Clive [...]

Chris Skillen returned as a Guest Speaker following on from his previous presentation in November 2017.

The theme for the evening was fly tying techniques and their demonstration on specific fly patterns – particularly detached body daddy, crippled midge (loop hackle and parachute) and deer hair sedge.

Chris showed a range of deer hair skins to illustrate the variety of deer hair that exists and some of the particular fly tying properties associated with them. He then demonstrated a technique for tying the detached body for the daddy using deer hair [...]