This is Hugo. He’s 8 years old. I admit, he’s been learning from a truly great fisherman (me!!), but it seems he has a natural talent for catching salmon.
I took him along to a spey-casting course earlier this summer, and have kitted him out with my own baby spey-casting rod, the Hardy Demon 12-foot 7#, with a Rio Outbound AFS line. Other than that, he’s just like any other angler… just younger!
Hugo’s previously caught seatrout up to 7lbs, but he had them on a spinner. In fact, he never got the chance to land the big one himself as, believe it or not, his Dad took the rod from him for fear of it pulling him in!!! (That’s fighting talk in my book!!)
Anyway, that’s another story. This is one that Hugo did land himself, and you can see the action unfold in this series of pictures.
He had almost caught one a few weeks previous to this session, but it dropped off at the bank due to a dodgy line/knot (?). One way or another, that was my fault not his, so I clearly felt like I owed him a fish. When the opportunity came up to go and have another try, Hugo didn’t need asking twice.
He caught this grilse where the river split into two sections, enabling us to wade out onto a nice bit of beach – perfect underfoot, and not too deep. Congrats to Hugo for catching a salmon on a fly at such a young age. When I was that old, I hardly knew one end of a fly rod from the other!
About Andy Blyth
