About · the author

About Dimitri, the fly fisher behind First Waters

I'm Dimitri, a French angler who has fished since childhood. These days I fish almost only with a fly rod, mostly dry fly and streamer. First Waters started from one realisation: China's rivers, and the fish in them, are almost unknown to anglers from abroad.

Every method first, then the fly

I came up the way many European anglers do: float fishing, ledgering, lures, live bait. The fly rod came later, nymphing first, then dry fly and streamer, which is how I fish now. Working through all of those methods teaches you to read the water before choosing the tool.

At home in France I mainly fish for carp, asp, chub, perch and trout.

Off the water

Hiking, wild camping and bike touring: the same urge to see what is at the end of the trail. Tech is my main job; it is what runs this site, with no ad trackers.

Why China

My partner is Chinese. On my first trip I arrived with plenty of preconceptions, and a good share of them turned out to be wrong: most of what I thought I knew about the country came from Western coverage, not from time spent there.

What I found instead were rivers and fish that are rarely discussed outside China: snow trout (Schizothorax), the white-spotted char of the Tibetan plateau, the snakeheads (Channa) of tropical waters. The fishing is real, but very hard to reach for anyone who is not local. That is what I want to open up.

What I don't do

Every fish goes back, under the site's catch and release in China charter. And I do not fish for the Sichuan taimen (Hucho bleekeri), which is critically endangered — the Sichuan taimen page explains why.

A question about a trip, a river or a fly? Write to me at[email protected].