We have a new venue for our meetings during winter 2019 and 2020. Most meetings start at 7:30 for an 8pm starts.
The meetings will be held at Ben Rhydding Golf Club. https://www.benrhyddinggolfclub.com/
Ben Rhydding Golf Club, High Wood, Ben Rhydding, Ilkley, LS29 8SB
Guest Speakers for this year will be as follows and as soon as we get a topic from the speakers we will update the information.
Tuesday – October 8th
Speaker : David Southall
Topic: Fly Fish Montanna
David is well known to the branch and has been a guest speaker before. He resides in Driffield and has the wonderful opportunities to fish the Yorkshire Chalk Streams.
David also writes various articles for Fly Fishing & Fly Tying as well for the Grayling Journal.
He recently journeyed back to Yellowstone and has agreed to share his experiences.
Tuesday – November 12th
Speaker : Oscar Boatfield
Topic : Different methods for different water types
Oscar has found happiness on a river bank for as long as he can remember.
He started fly fishing when he was 5 and has been an obsessive fly angler ever since. He does not come from a traditional country sporting family. He spent most of my time growing up in a small council house in Cambridgeshire which he shared with his 5 siblings and parents. There was very little money for anything, let alone going fishing. So his opportunities to fish were few and far between, mostly during the summer holidays when he would visit his grandparents in the Test Valley.
When he was 12 I found out about the England youth fly fishing team and quickly realised that this was the right direction for him to head in. He first qualified for the team when he was 15 and over the next few years was lucky enough to fish in 3 loch style internationals and 2 world championships.
During these competitions he grew significantly as angler, and was able to fish alongside and learn from many of the worlds best.
Since leaving the youth team he has spent his time as a professional guide working across the U.K. He has also co-authored an award winning book in modern nymphing techniques called “Nymphing The New Way”, spent a year fishing for sea trout in Denmark, started initiatives to get more people involved in fly fishing and promote the positive mental health benefits of the sport, and most recently started a business making and selling high quality fly fishing products.
Oscar loves rivers, particularly reading them. He believes that understanding a river and how it flows is one of the most important skills one can have as an angler. However those skills are useless if you cannot match the correct technique to the water style.
So join Oscar to find out how he approaches a river and learn the techniques that he uses to catch fish in all water types. These skills have been learned and refined over many years utilising knowledge from some of the worlds best anglers.
Oh, and Oscar has just migrated north to Yorkshire with his Australian partner.
Tuesday – December 10th : Christmas Meeting
Speaker : Jim Curry
Topic : Rumble in the Jungle
Jim is the Guideline Sales Agent for the UK and Ireland and runs the Yorkshire Fly Fishing School in Northern England, offering tuition on the stunning rivers and lakes of Yorkshire. Jim is also a trout and salmon instructor with over 20 years experience, and a senior assessor of AAPGAI instructors. Jim will be doing fly casting demonstrations throughout the Open Weekend and be on hand to answer your questions and can help with your casting faults.
Jim resides here in Ilkley.
Last year Jim journeyed to Bolivia to fish chasing Golden Dorado in the Amazon jungle. Should be very interesting.
Tuesday – January 14th
Speaker : Kenny Galt
Topic : The Grayling of the River Tweed: History, Biology and Angling
Kenny works on the River Tweed for the Tweed Foundation as their Trout & Grayling Biologist, a position he’s held since 2006. During his time with the Foundation a large proportion of Kenny’s work has centred around working with local Angling Associations to gather the information needed to manage the trout and Grayling fishery within the River Tweed
For anyone targeting Grayling this will be a must.
Tuesday – February 11th
Speaker : Mark Barrow
Topic : Beneath British Waters
Mark has been filming underwater for over 25 years and has a wealth of knowledge of filming in rivers and lakes too. In 2016, Beneath British Waters gained more popularity with anglers and more anglers wanting to know about life underwater and how particular fishery’s are from an underwater aspect.
Alan Gee joined Mark in 2016 to help with the filming and Alan has a wealth of knowledge of fishery’s and fish care and has planned a lot of dives for the two of them from his contacts with in the angling industry.
They also do have help from anglers too which are more than happy to help being involved in helping gain footage from the angling aspect. Mark has a passion for filming pike and is now starting to use his footage to promote the species along with studying the biology of pike and how they operate, along with various talks he does for fishing clubs and organisations new angles in filming are gaining the pair a lot of work.
It is worth noting that this is not a paid business and all the diving and filming is funded out of there own pockets. Future plans are in place to gain even more unique footage with more work being done along side more anglers giving a whole new perspective to what they do.
Tuesday : March 10th
Speaker : Paul Proctor
Topic : TBA