Aitor Coteron

More than fifty years back in time, a bubble float and a bunch of classic coq de Leon wet flies achieved the miracle of bringing to my hand a wild brown trout almost nineteen cm long. My first one ever. At the time it looked like a trophy to me, as it still is in my memory.

Thirty years ago I got absorbed into proper fly fishing. As an avid consumer of any information about this art, getting into fly tying just felt like the right thing to do at the time. Shortly after, I also started to develop a special interest in fly casting: I had found out that keeping tying flies without paying attention to how to make them to behave properly wasn’t a good idea, actually.

My interest in fly casting coincided in time with the boom of the internet. It was a revolution in the availability of information never experienced before; moreover, it opened the possibility of contacting in real time with fly anglers from all over the globe through the different forums that soon started appearing. That new way of interaction was the springboard of the most important qualitative jump in fly casting knowledge ever experienced in history.

What all that brainstorming showed me was that fly casting had lots of technical aspects to study, loads of questions which were begging for a proper explanation, and none less casting mechanics myths which didn’t hold water Science-wise. It was time to refresh all those basic Physics concepts I hadn’t visited since my secondary school days, and contrast them with the reality of fly casting viewed in slow motion. Currently I am using my fourth high speed video camera, and I keep in my video library hundreds of slow motion clips about different fly casting mechanics issues; some of them having prompted considerable debate in the castingsphere.

Over time I became a regular contributor to several international casting forums, and was administrator of the Spanish section of the Sexyloops board.
I have been studying fly casting mechanics in depth, learning from world class instructors like Alejandro Viñuales, Carlos Azpilicueta, Bernd Ziesche, Lasse Karlsson, Paul Arden or Jason Borger.

I passed the Instructor test of the Spanish fly casting certification (PAIL) in 2006, and the FFF (Federation of Fly Fishers, currently Fly Fishers International) CI test in 2009.
I have dedicated the last twenty plus years to teaching fly casting to anglers of all levels of ability, both on my own and in collaboration with world reknown instructors like Bernd Ziesche or Chris Rownes.
My work appears listed on the MCI Study Materials of the FFI certification program.

In Spain I wrote regularly for Danica and Trofeo Pesca magazines. Currently I collaborate with the British publication Fly Culture Magazine.
I translated into Spanish three fly fishing related books: The Cast and Troubleshooting the Cast (both by Ed Jaworowski) and Presentation by Gary Borger.
More recently I participated in the proof reading of the encyclopaedic Single Handed Fly Casting by Jason Borger.

I have been lucky of enjoying fly fishing in Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Poland, USA, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Maldives and Zambia.

If someone asks me what fly fishing is, the first thing coming to my mind —without disregarding other species and scenarios— is a spring creek, brown trout and grayling rising to minute mayflies, a #3 or #4 weight rod and a long leader with a 7X tippet knotted to a size #22 emerger. Add some good fishing buddy to the mix and that’s heaven.