 The very first of its kind, the UK Saltwater Flyfishing Festival took place between the 24th and 27th of September 2015. With a definite trend in our customers' angling act of heading towards the idea of saltwater flyfishing, we decided to head down to St. Moz of Cornwall and follow what was going on at the festival. St. Moz is perfectly located for this event and Derek Onger explains. The UK Saltwater Flyfishing Festival this year was the first one we ever held. It was a brainchild of Amelia Whitaker who contacted me because she'd had a visitor through a bed and breakfast establishment who'd been bass fishing locally and she was quite impressed with what he did and he was also impressed with the area. So she contacted her, she was a local people and she really did get a beer and a bottle of that thing. She was really determined to carry on. The idea was to bring saltwater flyfishing, not just locally but to light and give it some sort of profile and to try and produce something that would carry on throughout the years and would bring saltwater flyfishing and people from everywhere all over the world. We've got one gentleman that's coming from checkers back here and so that we bring people to call to help and introduce people to fly fishing for bass, for mullet, for pollock and we've really achieved this and we're really pleased with the approach that we've had this year. Very lucky here because it is a part of the tourism area but what we also have is very good water. We've got quite a good estuary areas, the water is crystal clear and another thing we like to do is to keep the sustainability of fish. All of our catches in competitions and throughout the festival are catch release and that's how it starts and everybody appreciates that and everybody is willing to carry on and do that. The other advantage that we find now with this year's saltwater flyfishing festival is that we can see that it has had so much attention especially from professionals and the media that we realise that there is a great opening for this to happen in future years and even now we're speaking about planning next year in the way we can change things and we've got a lot of response, a lot of help from people that are in the old home. How could you imagine fishing in a more beautiful location than where we are at the moment and this is how the Cornish coast is in general. There's literally hundreds upon hundreds of miles of beautiful coastline and it's just a fantastic place to fish. A good range of species here, the people in the competition have obviously caught garfish, pollock, bass so it's a wide range of species. My particular bent is mullet, a little bit tricky in the media there but if you're prepared to travel 20 minutes in the Cornish, some fantastic mullet fishing available. I took a couple of lads yesterday for the first attempt at mullet fishing and what a wonderful day. You would in fact have thought you were in the Caribbean rather than in the UK, the colour of the water, the light and the golden sand and the mullet are very much like bonefish in that sense so no need to travel to the Caribbean to enjoy some superb fishing and wonderful surroundings. The best way to research places to fly fish on the Cornish coast is by boat and Austin Goldsmith's Zen 2 is the ideal craft for the job. Kitted out with some very good gear that we recognise through the shop, the boat has an incredible fish finder, not that Austin needs it and lots of power on the back. Skipper Austin knows every bit of these waters and he took us out to his favourite spots for pollock but also those wonderful sea bass. Fly fishing is not easy at the best of times, it's a hard way of doing things but fly fishing can feel like that in all its aspects sometimes and the rewards are sort of in balance with the effort that you put in. So it'll be interesting to see where this goes from here. It's also a great learning exercise I just heard because the guys are just back who've been off mullet fishing today and one of the guys who was here from Plymouth to listen to Colin McLeod's talk yesterday apparently went back to Plymouth today and caught his first ever two mullet on the fly which is fantastic so people are learning it's an opportunity for people to come together who haven't met each other before so they meet as strangers and part as friends and that can only be a good thing so we shall see where it goes but I'm thoroughly enjoying myself and look forward to next year. Having the right saltwater flies and fishing the weed beds and drop-offs, Mark Bowler explains how simple it is to get into UK saltwater fly fishing on our coast. My name's Mark Bowler, I'm editor of fly fishing fly time. So we're always looking for the way fly fishing can expand and saltwater fishing and fly fishing for me on the UK coast is one of those most obvious areas where it can happen because when you've got such a resource as this where you've got a huge coastline even just around some malls here just expand that throughout the whole country you've got accessible fishing which is free and you can access it with a fly rod I don't think too too many people realize that what kind of fishing is available within within yards of the coastline. Toby Cole from The Field Magazine reiterates Mark's point. So I'm Toby Cole from The Field Magazine, I'm here to cover the fly fishing festival for an article in The Field. I thought the festival went very very well there was a real mix of anglers and we caught quite a few fish the conditions are quite difficult as you can see it's quite bright today which is never never ideal for fishing from the shore nonetheless we've had several bass caught lots of Pollock, some mackerel, some garfish and overall people had to thoroughly enjoy the weekend and I think it's a very important festival because it's really celebrating fly fishing in the UK it's the fastest growing area of the sport in the UK there's more and more people doing it and one of the great things for me is that it's free anyone can go and see what they want and they want it down here on a day like this and cast there's no restrictions no one can stop you it's completely open which is obviously very different from our river and the fresh water fishing in the UK so I'd highly recommend anyone who wants to try fly fishing assaults you do go and try it yourself or otherwise come next year the end of September in 2016. As the competition element of the festival came to a close anglers were found scurrying around the entire St. Mark's coast trying to catch that last fish before the prize-giving that afternoon. This is the case of Water Amelia and they were looking for a whisky distillery to sponsor the event and we were delighted to get involved and we're a small distillery and we're looking for regional events that we can help in some way to provide a kill-home whisky. So this was an ideal opportunity and we've been delighted to be part of the first event down here in St. Mark's it couldn't have gone better the weather's been fantastic and we very much hope that this will be something that goes forward in the future for many years and we'd like to be involved in it. I'm just delighted we had such a wonderful weekend I. This festival UK Sault has been a year in the making I was inspired last August when we had a guest day at our bed and breakfast to XSAS to sort of fly fish instead of media create a festival it's never been done before in this country and it's been a huge road of discovery and learning for me I I've loved meeting lots of interesting very knowledgeable fly fishers on the way I've loved this weekend I've loved what we've achieved and I'm grateful to all of you out there who fly fish who want to embrace fly fishing in this country. We're very keen that we carry this forward and with all the enthusiasm we've had this weekend we want to plan something else for next year and try and make it bigger and better we're going to take a lot of the feedback we've had from people and and try and create an even better festival for next year as we as we see saltwater fly fishing it definitely is there's something that's coming and I'm getting more and more follow us. The 2016 UK saltwater fly fishing festival will take place between September the 15th and the 18th. The festival will be offering several more workshops and fishing clinics as it was this year and hopefully this will offer something for all saltwater fly fishers to enjoy. Feel free to contact us at anglinactive if you need any more details on the UK saltwater fly fishing festival.