Narrators and voice-overs often leave me cold. This is an exception. Niall Toibin’s narration is intelligently scripted and exceptionally well delivered. That narration really holds the episodes together bringing them into a piece, into a story, exactly what a narration should do I suppose.

Follow the Fly is a fairly straightforward DVD. Johnston and Stuart set out to find and fish the Mayfly hatches of some of Ireland’s more famous limestone loughs. Both are clearly experienced anglers and this is aimed at anglers. Following their trip shows me how they get information to make the most of their lough fishing trip, how they glean local information from tackle shops, anglers, guides and hotels. Similarly they show me how they fish the hatches with live Mayfly and with dry and wet artificial flies. Clearly, I’m learning but none of the lessons are rammed down my throat, which I like.

I think this is the first time I’ve seen dapping, specifically dapping with natural Mayfly, featured in a fishing DVD. I can imagine one group of purists are twitching and muttering ‘bait’ about now while another group are muttering ‘what about the casting?’. But here dapping simply seems authentic, it’s part of Irish fishing tradition, it’s how many local anglers choose to fish and probably harks back to the origins of our sport.

The sport Johnston and Stuart find is patchy, some indifferent some good, pretty realistic fishing for wild trout all in all. The reasons the sport is not always as good as they might wish are heartening – on at least one lough the natural insects are simply too abundant for fish to find the angler’s offerings. I’m not sure how many times one or the other said ‘look at the spots on that’ but it was often enough to have me thinking we need a few more interesting ways of praising the beauty of trout.

The great Irish loughs are really the heroes of this DVD, the message seems to be the Mayfly hatches are back and Irish lough trout are fat and fit.