Dr Bell of Wrington: Pioneer of Reservoir Fly Fishing

This book is dedicated to the life, the artificial flies, the pioneering techniques in stillwater nymph fishing and ultimately the angling legacy of Dr Howard Alexander Bell (1888-1974) of Wrington, Somerset. Dr Bell regularly fished Blagdon Lake in the years following WW1 where he sought to devise better methods of catching reservoir trout. As a result of his enquiring and scientific mind Dr Bell did not follow the standard practice of the day of employing ‘attractor’ patterns but rather he studied the creatures that the fish were targeting and endeavoured to design artificial patterns which replicated them, and retrieved them in a manner which mimicked their progression through the water. He was probably the first angler to implement such an imitative approach to reservoirs and his Blagdon Buzzer is the forerunner of the multitude of buzzer artificials employed today. Includes 95 black & white illustrations and 5 maps