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Essential Skills with Oliver Edwards

Reviewed by Terry Lawton

Oliver Edwards has recently produced two essential skills videos, one on Czech nymphing and the other on Upstream Nymphing and North Country spiders. Both are aimed at the reasonably knowledgeable angler/fly tier, neither is a beginner's video.

Czech nymphing is very disappointing in that there is only about 12 minutes of actual fishing. The rest of the video - about an hour - is on the importance of bug hunting to identify food forms that the fish are likely to be feeding on and then tying suitable imitations. This is a very good fly tying video!

I will certainly go and by myself some self-adhesive lead as Oliver Edwards make it look so easy to use. Also, I wish I could dub bodies as well as he does. For the Czech nymph that he ties, he uses a strip of material cut from a genuine Czech surgical glove for the shellback. He ties four flies: the Czech nymph, a Rhyacophilia larva, Hydrophysche larva and a cased caddis which has three layers of lead underbody to ensure that it fishes right on the bottom. He produces some nifty legs for the Hydrophysche larva by stripping fibres from a golden pheasant tail feather so that they come off with a nicely curled end.

When all the flies are tied, we move off to the banks of the river Ure in North Yorkshire and have a look at the water from a bridge. Edwards then shows you how to make-up the correct leader for Czech nymphing, what flies to use and where on the leader they go. And then he starts fishing. And that's about it. Yes he catches a fish or two and makes a very good point about handling them carefully with COLD and wet hands. There is a good computer graphic showing how the flies swim through the water.

Having watched one of Oliver Edward's Czech nymphing demonstrations at the Chatsworth Angling Fair which was much more extensive than the first video, I found the section in the second video, on fishing North Country Spiders of most interest, as this a technique - or essential skill - that was entirely new to me.
The Upstream Nymphing and North Country spiders video follows the same format and starts of with a section on bug hunting. All though it is repetitive for anyone who buys both of these videos, it is done very well and you can see the nymphs very clearly and find out how to identify them. Edwards then moves on to tying suitable imitations. I took a particular liking to his Baetis nymph and intend to tie some myself.

Edwards is good at showing how to vary the tension of the tying thread at different stages and how to splay and lock-in place the tails of a nymph. He explains clearly what he is doing as he goes along and why he does what he does. He makes applying dubbing to the thread look SO easy. It makes you sick. I will also be using Flexibody which looks to be an excellent product. I also like the legs on his stonefly nymph.

This video is the longer of the two - at 96 minutes - and there is about 36 minutes of actual fishing.

The best moment in the Upstream Nymphing section was when Oliver Edwards hooked and, almost immediately, lost a bigger fish than the ones he had been catching. I really felt for him then! He covers this important technique at a good pace which does not allow for the subtleties of the technique. Again, fishing spiders gives a good introduction to what is another subtle technique. Anyone who watches this can wade into a north country river or stream and starting fishing with a team of spiders without making a complete idiot of themselves.

Both videos come as a good package. There is plenty of useful information on the cassette box inlay card and there is a booklet with each video with the dressings of all the flies that he ties.

Future titles in the series include Search and Sight Fishing, Mayfly Time on a Chalk Stream, Fishing The Deep Diving Shrimp and Chalk Stream Entomology and Fishing The Dry Fly on a Chalk Stream. We hope to be reviewing these in due course.

The videos cost £18.99 plus £1.75 postage and packing (UK rate). Two or more videos are supplied post free. You can order either or both videos at http://www.essential-skills.tv