Join Sportfish’s own Allan Shephard and Jonathan Tomlinson for a day at Dever Springs – Hampshire’s best known stillwater trout fishery, justifiably famous for the superb fishing it provides and the size and quality of it’s trout. Learn our experts top tips on casting, retrieves, fly selection and how to stalk the biggest trout in the lake! All right here and just a click away.
JT and I always look forward to a trip to Dever – this superb fishery houses some of the UK’s biggest trout in two lovely spring fed lakes. The fishery also boasts abundant wildlife with all the major aquatic fly life being present through the season. The beautiful river Dever (a tributary of the famous Test) cuts through the fishery and is surely one of Hampshire’s prettiest chalkstreams.
Dever produced the UK’s record brown trout of 28lbs 2oz – an amazing fish. No fish are stocked below 4lbs so you never quite know how big your next trout will be – only that it will be big! Double figure fish are relatively common and every angler has a genuine chance of a fish of this size.
On our filming day it was cold – spring was so late this year. We tackled up in the car park – I opted for a 9′ 5 weight Sportfish Purecast Rod (a personal favourite of mine) matched to a reliable Lamson Guru reel and a Rio LT fly line. JT went for his trusty 5 wt Sage TCR rod with a reel from his collection and a Rio Gold flyline. We selected a range of weighted Fulling Mill stalking bugs and heavily weighted nymphs together with our general trout patterns. Useful and essential additions included a Mclean Sea Trout Landing net (perfect size for Dever) and Costa Black-Fin 580 sunglasses for fish spotting and eye protection. You can contact JT and Allan at Sportfish Reading for help and advice with fishing small stillwaters or to find out more about their day and the tackle they used. Just ring 0118 930 3860 and they will be happy to help!
You will have to watch the film below to see how our day went and what we caught!
Dever Springs is a great fishery and definitely one we recommend for our customers to visit.