I'm sitting here watching a re-run of the great rod race.

And more dangeroulsy thinking.

Is it possible to catch every specices of freshwater fish in the UK on the fly?

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"The quarry is not the point of the chase, but merely its pretext, and the chase, purportedly a means to an end, is actually the end itself."Pascal 1961

It might be hard to catch a Stone loach(pussy beardie) on the fly,

Jim

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The Fishermans Friend is the Flirty Fly,Fickle Food for Fleeting Fish.

On the fly yes.

But not fly tackle - when fishing with mates with a pint bet. I've been known to count catches of bullheads and stone loach in my landing net.

I think you are right though - lets say all species that are fished for.

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"The quarry is not the point of the chase, but merely its pretext, and the chase, purportedly a means to an end, is actually the end itself."Pascal 1961

I think an eel would be a bit tricky, would be a great challange to try for all the species.

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It is in truth not glory,nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting,but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with his life.(Declaration of Arbroath, 1320)

I saw an angler catch an eel in the mouth whilst night flyfishing for seatrout.

Jim

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The Fishermans Friend is the Flirty Fly,Fickle Food for Fleeting Fish.

I think skateboard dave would have as good an idea about this as anyone, he seems to be blooomin consistant with more fly caught UK species to his name than anyone else i can think of! I thought i'd done well to manage 14, but i think he's doubled that this year alone

Hopefully he'll enlighten the thread


Cheers,


Graham

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www.wildflies.com

I was on an evening sessionon Loch Leven my boat partner put on one of those flies with a built in light (remember those?) last thing in the evening and caught an eel about 3lbs. Quite a scrap it was too.

Cheers Graham, not quite doubled your score. I've had 26 species from the UK this year but only 22 were freshwater species, 23 if you count shad?
I've never had a salmon, sea trout, eel, catfish, loach, bullhead, ruffe, char or powan ("3lb Jims" favorite!).
Most of my "missing" species are regularly caught on fly with the exception of eels, catfish and loach.
I've heard of eels even being caught on mayfly spinners but not regularly. Last year Steve Cullen hooked and lost one he'd sighted in a trout fishery ...sight fishing for eels can't happen too often!
Catfish and loach though?
Maybe a big popper at night would temp a catfish but who is gonna go out trying? I've caught them on surface fished live gudgeon, so I know they come up to the top...that popper could do it.
Loach though...tiny heavy flies (26/28s)...micro Czech style, I'm not going out trying, I'll wait and see if I fluke one sometime.
Dee

Once hooked an eel between 3-4lb fair and square on a black cat double in the National final at Loch Leven.

Yes it is, well nearly so.

Of British freshwater fish I have taken on the fly, not all deliberately, I list the following:

Rudd, roach, bream, carp, chub, grayling, brown trout, seatrout, rainbow trout, brook trout, bullhead, gudgeon, barbel, dace, pike, perch, salmon, zander.

No I have never caught an eel.

And on top of that I have caught some 40 odd species of African salt and freshwater fish on the fly. And might I say that both American large and small mouth bass are suckers with the fly rod. There are occasions when they are incredibly easy to catch with the fly, so much so that fly fishing is often classified as unfair practice and is banned in most competitions.