Questions, plainly answered

A rod of about 8½ to 9 feet rated for a 4 or 5 weight line, a simple reel, a matching floating line, two or three tapered leaders of 9 feet ending in 5X, a spool each of 5X and 6X tippet, forceps, nippers, a rubber-mesh net and a small box of flies. Polarised glasses and a hat with a brim protect your eyes and let you see into the water.

Everything else can wait until you know what you actually miss. Permission to fish, and whatever licence your country requires, come before any of it.

Six patterns will cover most of a season: an Adams and an Elk Hair Caddis for the surface, a Klinkhåmer for fish taking emergers, a Pheasant Tail and a Hare’s Ear for nymphing, and a Partridge & Orange for everything in between. Carry each in two sizes, 14 and 16, and add size 18 as you gain confidence.

The fly box has recipes and notes for all of them.

Match it to the fly rather than the fish. Divide the hook size by three to get a starting X size: a size 12 goes on 4X, a size 16 on 5X, a size 20 on 6X or 7X. Then go one size stronger if the water is coloured or the fish are large, since a quick fight is kinder than a long one.

The table on the leaders and knots page gives diameters in millimetres for every X size.

Yes. A level length of fine nylon cannot carry the energy of the cast and lands in a heap. A taper from a thick butt to a fine tippet unrolls the way the fly line does and puts the fly down last and gently. Buy knotless tapered leaders to begin with, and add fresh tippet as the fine end is used up, so the leader itself lasts for weeks.

Upstream for dry flies and nymphs, as a rule. Trout face the current, so approaching from below keeps you in their blind zone, and a fly cast upstream drifts back naturally. Downstream and across is right for swinging wet flies and for water you cannot reach any other way, but you must stay much further from the fish.

In rough order of likelihood: the fly is dragging, perhaps too slightly for you to see; it is too big; the tippet is too thick for the size of fly; or the fish is eating something just under the surface, not on it. Change your position to get a better drift before you change the fly. If you do change, go smaller first, then lower in the water with an emerger.

Less than the phrase suggests. Get the size right, then the outline as the fish sees it from below, then roughly how dark or light the natural is. Exact colour and species come a distant fourth. Catch an insect in your hand or hat, lay your fly beside it, and choose the one that is the same length.

The hatch chart shows what to expect each month, and the game on this site is a painless way to learn which fly copies which insect.

It follows the water temperature. In early spring and late autumn the middle of the day, roughly eleven until three. In late spring, all day. In high summer, the first hours after dawn and the last hour of light, with the afternoon given over to rest. In winter, for grayling, the two warmest hours.

From directly downstream, moving slowly and keeping low, often within six or seven metres. From the side you need three times that, and from upstream you will be seen long before you are in range. Heavy footfalls travel through the bank, and a shadow or a flash of rod varnish across the water ends matters at once.

A few, mostly when the line goes slack. Keep steady pressure and the difference is small. In exchange the hook comes out of a fish in a second, usually without lifting it from the water, and comes out of a net, a jacket or a finger just as easily. We think it the best bargain in fishing.

We treat 18°C (64°F) as the point to fish only in the cool of early morning, and 20°C (68°F) as the point to stop. Warm water holds less oxygen, and a fish that has been played hard may not recover even when it swims away strongly. Grayling are less tolerant still. A stream thermometer weighs almost nothing; carry one from June to September.

Aim for no time at all: unhook it in the net, in the water. If you lift it for a photograph, keep it to a few seconds and no more than ten, hold it low over the water, and have the camera ready first. In freezing air or on a hot day, do not lift it at all.

Do not dig for it. Cut the tippet as close to the mouth as you can and release the fish. A small barbless hook left in place gives a fish a far better chance than a minute of probing among the gills with forceps. Then ask why it happened: usually a late strike on a nymph, or too long a pause.

Not to save anything; the tools and materials see to that. It is worth it because you will understand why a fly works, you can tie the exact size and weight your river needs, and a winter evening at the vice is the next best thing to fishing. Begin with the Pheasant Tail Nymph, the Zebra Midge and the F-Fly, which between them need five materials.

The larger the number, the smaller the hook. A size 10 is big, for a mayfly or a hopper; a 14 or 16 is the everyday trout size; an 18 to 22 is small, for midges and tiny olives. Only even numbers are in common use. Shank length and wire thickness vary by the style of hook, so a “long shank” 12 is longer than a standard 12.

On many rivers, yes: grayling are often classed with coarse fish and have a different season from trout. But the rules differ between countries, regions and individual fisheries, and some waters close entirely. Check before you go. Any trout caught out of season must go straight back, and from late autumn you should avoid shallow gravel where trout may be spawning.

Assume you are not until you have found out. Almost all river fishing belongs to somebody: a club, an estate, a hotel, a local association. Ask at the nearest tackle shop or look for the association’s notice board by the bridge. Most countries also require a national or regional rod licence on top of permission from the owner. Day tickets for club water are often very modest and come with a map and the rules.

It is right in outline for temperate rivers of the northern hemisphere and wrong in detail for every individual one. Treat the months as likelihoods. Altitude, latitude, spring-fed or rain-fed water and the weather of the particular year all shift things by a week or three. Keep a diary for two seasons and you will have a better chart for your own water than anybody can print.