This is part two of a three-part review, this one covering "The New Series".

The dvd's I got through Essential Skills/DGP Productions, who also happens to have a Directory-listing with us.

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

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

Short description of "The New Series".

The scene for the first movie - Streamer Fishing on River, is set on the River Wharfe. In the fishing-part Oliver covers everything from using the right tackle and leaders, casting, retrieves and specific techniques for a couple of his patterns. He shows how to do kicksampling and shows us some of the naturals that we imitate with streamer (that's little fish, not bugs :-). The flytying section covers only two patterns - The Snappy Poodle and the Waggy Tail Sculpin - the latter being by far the best sculpin pattern I've seen so far!

The second movie - Big Dry Flies for Fast Water, covers - well - titles are ded giveaways, aren't they :-). This dvd covers a numvber of different fishing techniques for fast water - amongst other the "Klink and Dink", better known here on Sexyloops as the Hedged Bet and there's an extensive chapter on fishing the Klinkhåmer. The flytying includes the Klinkhåmer, the Balloon Caddis and Oliver Edwards' own Tape Wing Caddis.

The third movie - Wet Fly Fishing on Rivers- is completely devoted to the hallowed North Country wetflies. Oliver shows how to fish them, traditionally as well as using them woth some more "modern" styles. The flytying part includes the March Brown, Snipe Bloa, Dark Needle, Greenwell's Glory, Stewart's Black Spider and Oliver Edwards' own Yellow Spider.

It's hard to say more than I said in the previous review about the quality of these movies without repeating myself, but as with the first ones, the technical quality is amazing. Lots of macro-footage of Oliver tying, and lighting, sound, manuscript etc. is very well done. Oliver speaks a in clear, slow and easily understandable English with a wonderful Yorkshire accent and his instructions, both for fishing and tying, are second to none - years and years of experience clearly shows itself!

The picture below reveals that there are yet two more dvd's to be reviewed - "Quick Ties and Favourite Flies" and "Woven Flies". The will follow later.

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

From "Big Dry Flies for Fast Water", I'll leave you with the best piece of advice I've ever had in flyfishing:

"Up came a fish and I bloody well missed it.... Well, missing the odd fish is path of course in flyfishing, but if you keep missing them then you've gotta do something about it - that's apart from giving yourself a good talking to."

"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 review of "The Original Set" is found here.