It’s been a long time since we’ve had reviews on Sexyloops, and I thought I’d do something about it. Through Essential Skills/DGP Productions, who also happens to have a Directory-listing with us, I got a complete set of Oliver Edwards' dvd-series, Essential Skills.

The series fall in 3 natural categories - "The Original Set", "The New Series" and "Essential Patterns".

"The Original Set":
- Fishing Dry Fly on a Chalk Stream and Mayfly Time on a Chalk Stream.
- Search and Sight Fishing and The Deep Diving Shrimp and Chalk Stream Entomology.
- Czech Nymphing and Upstream Nymphing and North Country Spiders.

"The New Series":
- Streamerfishing on Rivers.
- Wetfly Fishing on Rivers.
- Big Dry Flies for Fast Water.

Essential Patterns:
- Volume 1 - Quick Flies and Favourite Ties.
- Volume 2 - Woven Flies.

Starting today with "The original Series", I will review these 3 sets of dvd's.

Short description of "The Original Series".

In the first movie - Fishing Dry Fly on a Chalk Stream, we join Oliver Edwards as he prospects on a chalk stream with his two dun imitations, the ParaDun and the Footprint Dun. The film is divided into two main chapters - fishing and tying. Before getting to the fishing, Oliver gives a few pieces of good advice on leaders and leaders construction. After a good, instructive chapter on fishing the dries, Oliver shows how to tie them, in his usual, calm and brilliant way.

The second movie - Mayfly Time on a Chalk Stream, focuses, as the title gives away, on the mayfly fishing. Mayflies as in the Danicas, Vulgatas and Lineatas. Oliver fishes the Wiltshire Avon, where Frank Sawyer was riverkeeper, with his famous Mohican Mayfly. Oliver talkes about how the type of mayfly hatches affects the fishing and gets some nice fish. Of course, there's a chapter where Oliver ties the Mohican Mayfly - an updated version in relation to the one in his book, Flytyer's Masterclass.

The third - Search and Sight Fishing - focuses on sightfishing with nymphs. Oliver fishes The Upper Avon with Sawyer's Killer Bug a few hundred yards from where Sawyer was born. Here Oliver fishes both to sighted fish and search-fishes. For demonstrating the virtues and techniques of the Pheasant Tail, he fishes the wonderful little Lambourn - a gin, and I mean ginclear river.

The fourth movie - The Deep Diving Shrimp and Chalk Stream Entomology starts of with a crash course on flyfisherman's entomology using a kicksampling net. This is a great chapter and a wonderful introduction to enyomology. Oliver introduces us to mayfly-species, sedges, shrimps, sculpins etc. After a few words on leaderconstruction, Oliver hits a hatch-pool and shows how he uses his Deep Diving Shrimp to fish these hatch-pool.

The fifth movie - Czech Nymph and Upstream Nymphing - has a nice chapter on tying the Czech nymph, Oliver's own patterns imitating Rhyacophila larave and Hydrosyche larvae and the Cased Caddis. After the tying Oliver shows how to fish them Czech-style. The chapter in upstream nymphing contains a short section with entomology moving on to tying Oliver's imitations of the Baetis and Heptagenid nymphs. On the river, Oliver talks about reading the water, and after showing the leader makeup, he demonstrates classic upstream nymphing. Oliver is a Yorkshire-man, and as such he of course includes a chapter on tying the classic North Country wetfly, The Waterhen Bloa, and finishes off with a demonstration of how to fish these flies the classic way.

Looking at these 6 movies as a whole, they are in a word - amazing!!! Throughout the movies there's a red thread going from the tying to the fishing, and every time Oliver's arguments for his different tyings come to life in the fishing situations.

The technical quality is in my view un-surpassed. There's lots of real macro-footage of Oliver tying, and lighting, sound, manuscript etc. in very professionally done.

Oliver does really well on TV - it's almost like being there, and I can tell, because I've had the pleasure of tying with Oliver on 3 or 4 occasions. The insructions for each and every fly, each and every type of fishing, is done perfectly well and bears testament to the fact that Oliver has taught clincs for ages! You just can't aviod loving this man, and his tying.

These dvds include most of the patterns that Oliver is famous for, and the patterns that founded, what shall I say, the modern, semi-realistic fishing fly. On the other hand, the chapters of the North Country Wetflies and Sawyer's flies shows a flytier deeply rooted in the history of flytying as well - locally as well as nationally. On the dvd, Oliver is quite thrilled by the fact that he just might have fished in the very footprint of Sawyer on the Avon!

As you can see on the picture, there are another three DVDs in the "Essential Skills-series", and two flytying DVDs - "Essential Patterns". I'll cover the rest of the "Essential Skills-series" next week!

There more about the Essential Skills dvds on the Essential Skills website, and their Directory Listing is found here.