back home I fish the aire and wharfe and I find I can just about cover the whole width of the river from a single spot fan casting, them move up or down stream.
having recently moved to uni in edinburgh Ive started fishing the tweed. I find this mighty river somewhat wider, deeper and faster than those back home. Subsequently by carrying on as I would have done back home I would miss half the water atleast!!!

how do you guys fish it? moving up/down stream, moving towards the far bank or long casts?

hpoe this doesnt sound like a stupid question...

Look for activity, failing that fish the fishy looking bits of water.
Reading the water is very important. It separates the men from the boys.
If that does not work either:-
Change technique
Fish the unfishy bits of water.
Sit,wait,walk,watch and try again.
Try powerbait
Go home and start practicing golf

I love going to unknown rivers or stretches of river i have never been and reading the water. Its one of the fishing skills that you can never/will never be good enough at IMO.

thanks buzz, it alll looked fishy to me!

Reading the water is very important.
Look for activity, failing that fish the fishy looking bits of water.
Sit,wait,walk,watch and try again.
All good bits of advice. Try to break the river into three sections ie bank closest to you, middle, far bank and fish what you can propperly, dries nymphs and bugs will all work but thats where water craft and reading the water come into play.

Gibby, you beat me to it. In helping newcomers to the Eden, here at Penrith, my philosophy has always been that we learn to fish and read the water most quickly on little rivers. So, divide the water on the big river before you into a series of little rivers, running in parallel Cheers TC
PS That doesn't answer all the possible questions that might arise, but it is a fair start.

i reckon you mean how do you cover/reach all the water, for salmon on the bigger rivers a double handed rod is more common, for trout i try to use exactly the same casts with a trout rod.

yeh thats what I mean, thanks zoomer - do you mean you try to keep the distance you cast constant vand just wade into position so you can reach further accross the river?

Er...not really but sometimes you just have to, these rivers tend to have trees or high banks preventing that long back cast that you need to reach across, hence the invention of the spey cast, the other problem for the trout fisher is that when you can cast over its too far off to mend and the line is at the mercy of the current, hence 16 foot rods i guess,
extreme measures for extreme currents, beef up the tackle and spey cast, risk drowning and wade deep, fish both banks or get one of those loop 5 weight baby shooting heads and a little 5 weght double hander, de rigour in Norway

how much do those double handed 5# cost???? id get one if I had the money
I think a double hander is too far, for me anyway. theres bound to be some decent techniques for long casts on fast deep rivers??? i bet riverphish knows a few for using his short rods.

Hi' Jonnie, I presume you are interested, mainly, in trout fishing. If that is so, you will do better on the shalllower stretches of big rivers, by which I mean the bits you can fish by wading. I fish mainly dry fly on the Eden, and on a big, wide riffle or flat, I start by covering the water upstream of me with casts of a workable length. If I wish to cover more water, I either work up the river, or move across and fish up the next parallel patch, and so on. So long as you aren't in anybody's way, and you have double-bank access, on some parts of the Eden, a 440 yards beat would have as much fishable water as a mile of one of the tributaries. My mate and I fish in line across the wider bits, sharing the width of the river. We fish to a rise or we 'fish the water' and bring trout up to the fly. Cheers TC