The Flyfishers’ Journal: Summer 2026
For many fly-fishers, there’s lots of fascination in exploring the ‘fuzzy boundaries’ of our sport – situations that the great chalk stream innovator G.E.M. Skues might have recognised, such as spiders, nymphs or emergers in the surface film, when the fly isn’t quite wet, and isn’t quite dry – or the idea of skating deer-hair Bombers or waking lures across salmon and sea trout pools.
Another example is a high-floating, foam-backed Finnish streamer pattern called the Surffilauta, an apparent contradiction in terms that’s commonly used for salmon fishing, but also attracts big trout preoccupied with chasing not-so-little bleak and perch through rocky rapids between the lakes of ‘Finnish Troutland’.
Thanks to Finnish blogger and guideIiro Anttonen, ‘Surfboards’ featured in my recently-published book River Trout Streamer Fishing, and they’ve now also popped up in the Summer 2026 issue of the Flyfishers’ Journal as a key detail of Richard Tomiak’s eye-opening article on fishing at Kellankoski Lodge in Finland (a small selection is shown scattered around the Journal in the photo above – with the actual cover shot of Luke Tomiak kindly contributed by photographer Pasi Visakivi).
Mimicking stunned and floating baitfish has clearly caught the imagination of Greg Belcamino, too, whose Letter from America examines his own streamer fishing angles on fishing for predatory trout, alongside his kind review of River Trout Streamer Fishing.
What more can we say? When a fly pattern like the Surffilauta is globally hot, it’s hot!
With themes like these, as well as an introduction to Project White Hart from Alison Baker at the Atlantic Salmon Trust, Ben Doughton’s Lunn family river keeping memories from the legendary Houghton Club water on the Test, Tweedside salmon-fishing moments with Stephen Fielding, Nick Gooderham’s news of the Flyfisher’s Club Special Interest Groups, and much more, I hope this issue of the Journal includes something for everyone as usual…
(The Flyfishers’ Journal, where I’m honoured to be the Editor, is a complimentary benefit for all Members of the Flyfishers’ Club, and it’s also available to non-members by subscription.)
