Services Dry Fly Fishing Association

The Services Dry Fly Fishing Association holds six miles of fishery on the Salisbury Avon, four miles of it double bank, centred on the village of Netheravon in Wiltshire. Membership is open to serving members and veterans of all three Armed Services, to serving and retired Ministry of Defence civil servants, and to Cadet Officers, Adult Volunteers and Cadets over eighteen. If you do not fall into one of those groups you cannot join in the ordinary way, though a very limited number of vacancies do occasionally open to civilian applicants outside it.

The association was founded in 1904 as the Officers Fishing Association, not long after the War Department bought Salisbury Plain as a training ground, and took its present name and opened to all ranks in 1964. Frank Sawyer kept the water through the 1950s and 60s and developed his Pheasant Tail nymph here, a fly still standard on the beat and far beyond it. Membership is capped at 140 rods, and the water ranks with the Piscatorial Society and Salisbury and District Angling Club as one of the three major fisheries of the upper Salisbury Avon catchment.

There is no day ticket route for the general public. Members may bring a guest through a day ticket system run by the secretary, though only one such ticket per member can be used before 15 June. Pricing and the current state of membership are not published outside the members’ area of the association’s own site; anyone interested should contact the secretary directly.