Name: Trevor Hayman
Where Based: Hampshire
Tuition offered: Fly fishing for trout and single handed fly casting.
Guiding Offered: Trout fishing on the chalk streams of Hampshire and Wiltshire.
Target Species: Trout
Tell us about yourself: I’ve been fly fishing for over thirty years, guiding and teaching for the last three years.
I am fortunate to fish the clear chalk streams in the south of England, sight fishing most of the time. I love the thrill of the stalk, the challenge of making the right presentation of the right fly, without spooking the fish, and the seal of approval of a confident take.
The visual aspect is addictive and to watch the fish as it inspects the fly, deciding on whether or not it will take, is exhilarating.
I never had any particular desire to teach or to become a guide. I loved my fishing and I was quite happy to pursue that and enjoy the pleasure of it selfishly or with close friends. The idea of sharing that with people I didn't know, didn't occur to me until I spent a week end with some instructors from the Association of Advanced Professional Game Angling Instructors (AAPGAI). The improvement in my casting opened a new dimension to my fly fishing and hugely improved my fishing success and the pleasure I got from fishing.
I read with some regularity on forums that you don't need to cast well to catch fish. Well, that’s kind of true, but it’s usually put forward as a reason not to take the trouble to improve your casting. I hope no-one listens to those people. Better casting does mean better fishing and you will catch more fish.
Not only that, but making a good cast in itself gives great pleasure and the more good casts you make, the more pleasure you get in a day’s fishing.
This is what gave me the enthusiasm for teaching and guiding. I want to share the enjoyment I have discovered by sharing what I have learned.
What is your angling ethos: To blend in with the environment, keeping everything simple.
I like to feel I am in some kind of harmony with the environment, that I belong there, not that I jar with it, and I like to keep my fishing as simple as possible. This, I hope, carries through to my teaching.
I make it my business to understand as much as I can about what I am teaching, and I go to great lengths to achieve that, but when teaching, I strip everything down to the bare essentials. I try to make it as simple as possible. I find the more I understand, the simpler I can make it, and I think the people I teach benefit from that.
I get a huge kick out of the pleasure I see, from the pride of the young person at the beginning of the season who, never having handled a rod before, was casting and caught his first trout on a fly; to the old army friends in their eighties, the years falling away as they sneaked up, one behind the other to take, in explosive fashion, a fish in an almost impossible situation; and the great grandfather on a family day, who struggled to get to the bank-side but set everything in proper order by catching the biggest fish of the day, a brown trout of over 8 pounds, on a dry fly.
Your angling influences: My father introduced me to fishing when I was very young and I have barely put down a rod since.
In the meantime, my enthusiasm has been fuelled by great writers, including in fly fishing, the old greats. I read everything I could from the local libraries and now have a fairly extensive library at home.
When I took up fly fishing more than thirty years ago, the fly fishing world in the UK was quite stuffy, but I found my local newsagent used to get a copy of the American magazine, Fly Fisherman, which had a much more exciting and forward thinking outlook. In the UK, I remember Charles Jardine was about the only writer speaking my language and I used to look forward to reading his articles each month.
The Salisbury and District Angling Club (SDAC) gave me the opportunity to fish chalk streams in my area at a price I could just about afford, the annual subscription being less than the price of a day on my local streams (the Itchen and the Test). Without that, I wouldn't have been able to pursue my fly fishing in the same way.
It has been a great privilege, therefore, for the last few years, to have been able to do some teaching and demonstrations with Charles at SDAC open days. I like that. There’s some sort of pleasing circularity to it.
Finally, AAPGAI has been a huge influence. An almost random meeting opened the door to a new world of fly fishing for me and has resulted in my current position teaching and guiding fly fishing. I could mention names, but if I started I would not know where to stop.
That is what I do now. I teach and I guide. On days off (there are a lot of them), I go fishing.
To contact Trevor be sure to visit his webiste thflyishing.co.uk