“Therapeutic. Exciting. Peaceful.” – Three words that evoke the very essence of fly fishing for Marina Gibson. 

Marina Gibson is a Fly Fishers International (FFI) Certified Single and Two Hand Casting Instructor. Marina is also a guide and conservationist, whilst she also founded The Northern Fishing Co. in 2019, which teaches over 400 people annually, and co-founded the Cancer and Pisces Trust, supporting cancer sufferers through angling and the outdoors. To hear more about Marina’s work, conservation and passion for fly fishing, and simply to enjoy a day’s fishing, we tied our flies and cast in a quiet spot on the River Rother in the lush surrounds of West Sussex. 

“Fly fishing is all-encompassing, the senses are alive, learning what’s living around you and what’s underneath the surface of the water; it’s being at one with nature.” Marina says, “It can be the simple act of entering the water, hearing the melodic sounds of it on the waders, it’s so therapeutic.” 

Marina was born and raised in a fishing family, picking up a rod at the tender age of five years old and starting salmon fishing when she was eight. After a move to London in her early twenties, and away from fishing for a number of years, Marina became miserable. “I was never a city girl, and I just needed something to get me out on weekends. So, for my twenty-first birthday, my mum and my dad said, ‘What present do you want as a final last one before heading into adulthood?’ It was either going to be a piece of jewellery or a fishing rod, and my parents got me two fishing rods - a trout rod and a salmon rod. Plus, the waders and everything I needed. So, that was it!”

Marina wears Vierzonord and Deltanord Waders.

As we swap our wellies for our waders and slowly sink into the waters of the River Rother, Marina tells us about her passion for conservation. “I almost fell into being a conservationist. For me, being a conservationist is actually a byproduct of being a fisherman. The more you fish, the more you learn about what’s happening to the rivers and wider ecosystem. When you are out on the water, it’s all about observing what is around you or understanding whether something is missing or something is wrong with the river. Then you start thinking, we need to do something about this.”

In Marina’s lifetime, fishing from a very young age, she has noticed a monumental shift in the number of fish in the rivers, alongside a decline in biodiversity. "A lot has changed in the last couple of decades. When I was younger, my parents would keep the salmon they caught. I remember opening the freezer at home and there was always salmon in there. Fast forward twenty-five years and almost every angler I know is catch and release. We never have wild salmon on the table now, because there simply aren't the fish to spare." Marina also believes fishing is a brilliant way in for the younger generation, it gets them learning about conservation and encourages them to pay attention to what's happening around them.

Not long after we enter the golden glistening waters of the river and start casting, Marina has gleefully caught and netted a rather beautiful brown trout. We gaze upon it for a few seconds before removing the fly from its mouth and slowly releasing it back into the river. As we start casting once again, Marina tells us the importance of fish welfare. “Catch and release is something I talk about a lot.” With nearly 80k followers on Instagram, Marina is ready to share her views on such passions. “It is all about making sure you are releasing the fish as quickly and as safely as possible”. 

Another of Marina’s passion project is promoting the survival and issues surrounding wild Atlantic salmon. “I have seen it over the years; wild Atlantic salmon has been dropping off the face of the earth. They are a red list species, and I am very passionate about telling people not to eat farmed salmon.”

On the subject of conservation, Marina continues, "We need to protect our rivers; it's not happening anywhere near fast enough. We've got abstraction, we've got pollution, and the summers are now so hot that rivers are warming up, and in some cases, drying out altogether. That's devastating for fish and every other bit of aquatic life in there. It's affecting spawning too. Salmon and trout eggs need cold, well-oxygenated water to develop, and our winters just aren't cold enough anymore. You see it in the rivers of the Southeast and Southwest particularly."

Marina adds, "Then you widen it out and you've got predation, overfishing, man-made obstructions blocking fish from getting where they need to go. All of it is making life harder for our wild fish, especially the migratory and anadromous ones."

Marina is now in the eighth year of running her fishing school, Northern Fishing Co. which is based in North Yorkshire and with a lease on the River Tyne at Bywell Salmon Fishing. This fishing school teaches hundreds of people every year how to fish. Explore also Cancer and Pisces Trust that Marina has co-founded, a cancer charity that aims to enhance the lives of cancer sufferers through the therapeutic pastime of angling, helping them to connect with both the natural world and one another. 

Discover and enjoy our latest campaign film capturing Marina Gibson fly fishing this Autumn, wearing Le Chameau Vierzonord and Deltanord Waders.