Tips from Competition Fishing for Pleasure Anglers

A year ago myself and a friend were taking the long drive home after fishing a river. I cannot recall the conversation leading up to it but my friend pulled out his mobile phone and played a video released during COVID on Howard Croston’s YouTube channel. Howard filmed a number of videos during this time in which he detailed methods and kit he uses in competition. Although I’d watched a couple previously and taken the odd tip I hadn’t fully delved deep into the content. Realizing there were many areas within my angling that needed improvement I promised myself that when I returned home I would rewatch them with a more discerning eye. From there I began to investigate the world of competitive angling, not as a competitor myself but as a pleasure anger looking to make improvements. Through this exercise I came up with many tips from competition fishing for pleasure anglers, which I’ll outline below.

What is competitive Fly Fishing

Competitive angling revolves around trying to catch as many fish above a specified length (or not, depending on the rules) within a set time frame. For the purpose of this blog we will focus on FIPS Mouche (Fédération Internationale de Peche Sportive Mouche), which is the French based governing body who oversee the World Fly Fishing Championships. Like all competitions there are rules in place, here are a few examples from FIPS:

1. Total leader and tippet length no more than 2x the rod length
2. Fish have to be 20cm or greater in length to count
3. Max bead size is 4mm
4. A minimum distance of 50cm between flies

These limitations drive a lot of innovation which filter down to the pleasure angler. This is just like how technological developments from Formula 1 eventually find their way into passenger cars. 

Speed and efficiency are key to high end competitive fly fishing. How you set up your kit and the kit you use can massively increase or decrease your effectiveness, time management and overall catch rate.

1) Luggage

• Most competitors use a chest pack, chest box or a vest. Unlike a sling pack/rucksack where the user has to slide the unit across the body/take off to access pockets the aforementioned luggage styles ensure all pockets are accessible without having to consume valuable time and energy to access. In contrast to hip packs they also allow you to wade deeper. 
• Spend time looking at ways to remove tangle points. Glue gaps in zips close and avoid having too many items dangling off your pack waiting to ensnare tippet/leaders. Only carry what you need for a session.  

• You’re less likely to drink water if the process to locate your water bottle is an arduous tasks involving removing a rucksack or swinging a sling pack back and forth. Consider investing in a hydration pack which makes sipping water throughout your session a breeze.
• If you’re familiar with the venue preloading something like the Fly Patch with patterns you know work can save time by having your most used patterns to hand without needing to open and enter pockets to retrieve fly boxes.

2) Kit 

• If you’re not fishing torrent water consider using a net with a micro mesh. They are kinder to fish (they eliminate splitting of fins) and if you’re nymphing they stop flies falling through the mesh after unhooking. This is something which often leads to tangles.  

• Carry two rods. A recent session saw me catch most of my fish on dry dropper but I added a number of quality fish by deploying my nymph set up in a couple of pockets where dry dropper would have failed.

3) Flies

My fly box went from a “that’ll do” scenario to one that has been tied/bought with a purpose and with simplicity in mind. As most competitors note, presentation before pattern. 

• Use flies with CDC. Australian anglers Tom Jarman highlighted that in addition to having high buoyancy, CDC as a material collapses out of the way easily when inhaled by a fish. This leads to better hook holds when compared to heavily hackled flies like stimulators. 
• Tie nymphs on dry fly hooks. Here in the UK our fish are of a modest size. A tip I picked up from listening to a podcast with Aussie competitor Erhan Cinar is to use dry fly hooks because smaller fish have less weight behind them to help set the hook. So, finer gauge hooks aid better penetration. I now tie most of my flies with Fulling Mill Tactical Dry Fly hooks.   

• Have a small number of patterns but in a wide range of sizes. Base dry fly patterns on what hatches are encountered which in my case are upwings, gnats and caddis. There is also the addition of seasonal fare such as mayfly.
• My nymph selection is influenced by Devin Olsen and based upon body profile, which in turn affects sink rate. I have perdigons when I need to get down quickly, a standard pheasant tail nymph for most situations and CDC hackled red tags where I want to slow the sink rate. That said I will cycle between different types in all water flows if I feel a change of pattern is needed. Bead wise I use 2mm, 2.4mm, 2.8mm, 3.2mm, 3.8mm which covers most conditions I encounter. 

If you want to learn from Devin Olsen, check out the recent Euro Dry Dropper video we released with him on our YouTube channel.

4) Customizing your kit

You may have spent a healthy sum on that lovely Fishpond bag, but being willing to make alterations is sometimes necessary to tailor your set up for your individual needs. For example, I took the leaf out of a Pocket Box and glued it to the inner side of the lid of another Pocket Box which doubled the capacity for nymphs. On top of this I glued a Fly Patch which holds my dry flies. I massively increased my fly capacity without increasing the footprint significantly. This is attached to my old William Joseph Confluence pack with velcro strips. These were glued to both the underside of the box and the outside of the pack.  

5) Methods

Ivo Balinov competes for Canada and also runs Smart Angling Inc, which an online business selling specialist products and tutorial videos. He said that competition angling introduces you to methods that rarely get any mainstream exposure. One example is the Spanish Dry Fly method detailed here. 

6) Fish slower 

This time last year I was very much in the ‘fish quick’ camp. I would fish as much water through as quickly as possible thinking that the more water I fished the more I would catch. Once I was familiar with a water I’d make a beeline for areas that had been productive in the past. I’d either lightly fishing the ‘in between water’ or ignored it all together. 

In competitive fly angling the angler is allocated either by draw or otherwise a section of water to fish. Therefore being able to adapt to the conditions as opposed to finding the right conditions for the method/set up you have on is key to having success. 

By fishing more methodically in a smaller area, often using different methods, changing nymphs according to the best sink rate you need you begin to develop an enhanced appreciation of the pros and cons of different methods in the different water types you sometimes find in one pool.

Furthermore, fishing doesn’t just have to start downstream and finish upstream. For some pools I might zig zag or double back etc to methodically dissect and work a pool or run.   

7) Study the greats

The internet as we all know is a universe of information and this is no different for fly fishing. Much of what I have learnt has come from online sources, paid online tutorials/presentations and even asking competitive fly anglers questions via social media. 

Our YouTube Channel has videos from some of the best competition anglers in the game, such as this tutorial with Howard Croston:

One tip is to research well known competition anglers and watch YouTube content of them. Given that many of these anglers hail from continental Europe. YouTube’s translator function—although not perfect—can help when watching videos where these anglers are speaking their native language. 

8) Enter competitions 

This is something I’ve yet to do at the time of writing but it is my logical progression as there is only so far you can get fishing alone. As I’ve experienced in the past on occasion, there is no substitution for being around anglers better than yourself. 

9) Fish Responsibly

It must be noted that as your catch rate increases so does your level of responsibility to the river. Once you find that you’re becoming very efficient perhaps think about taking measures to ensure you’re not overly pressuring pools. Fish new water each time, maybe occasionally returning to areas where you’ve had good success at a later date. In the end you will learn more by challenging yourself by fishing less productive water you’ve not fished prior or only lightly fished in the past.

Summary

If you want to improve as an angler and catch more fish implementing competition derived methods, set ups, kit and approaches are the best way to achieve that goal. The journey of self improvement is just as much fun as the result. For example, landing several fish on a new method you’ve learnt or returning to a river after analyzing your last session and performing much better the next time.

Tim is a frequent contributor to our blog, and has produced some excellent pieces. Check out some of his other articles here.

As someone once said “it’s good to have an end to journey towards but in the end it’s the journey that matters.”

Tight lines.

Tim James

Tim is a London based fly angler of thirteen years who fishes for a wide variety of species from carp in London docks, mullet on the coast to casting dry flies to trout on the Derbyshire Wye. I enjoy the process of trying to catch different species on a fly rod, a by-product of which is that my missions often take me to some amazing places. Because I like to fish at last twice a week I also search out local venues to fish, most of which are off the beaten track as far as fly fishing goes.

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